Design criteria for the RF section of UHF and microwave passive RFID transponders

A set of design criteria for the radio-frequency (RF) section of long-range passive RF identification (RFID) transponders operating in the 2.45-GHz or 868-MHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) frequency ranges is derived in this paper, focusing in particular on the voltage multiplier, the power-matching network, and the backscatter modulation. The paper discusses the design tradeoffs between the error probability at the reader receiver and the converted RF-dc power at the transponder, determining the regions of the design space that allow optimization of the operating range and the data rate of the RFID system.