RF Harvesting System for Low-Power Applications Using FinFETs

Abstract

Two high efficiency FinFET-based negative voltage rectifiers for radio frequency (RF) applications have been proposed. These circuits have very good power conversion efficiency (PCE) especially in small RF input conditions. The designs are simple, yet the novelty lies in realization utilizing normal threshold voltage Si FinFET (NVT), low threshold voltage Si FinFET (LVT), high threshold voltage Si FinFET (HVT) which offers power efficient solutions for RF-harvesting applications. Simulations are carried out on 20 nm FinFET model files employing Cadence software. Performance comparisons of these three models have been done to validate the two-designs and to benchmark them. We have investigated how to improve parameters such as the output DC voltage, output DC power and PCE of rectifier. With LVT FinFET the second rectifier proposed offers 92% of PCE, -342 mV of DC output voltage at RF input of 0.4 V at 915 MHz frequency which is the best performance.