A Power-Harvesting Pad-Less Millimeter-Sized Radio

A wireless-powered pad-less single-chip radio is implemented in 65 nm CMOS for applications in Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless tagging. This fully-self-sufficient mm-wave radio has no pads or external components (e.g., power supply), and the entire radio is a single chip with dimensions of 3.7 mm by 1.2 mm. To provide multi-access, and to mitigate interference, it uses two separate mm-wave bands for RX/TX and integrates both antennas to provide a measured communication range of 50 cm. The transmitter uses a modified Multipulse Pulse Position Modulation (MPPM) with 2 GHz of bandwidth on a 60 GHz carrier to communicate the data sequence as well as the local timing reference. The entire system operates with standby harvested power below 1.5 mu W and achieves an aggregate data rate > 12 Mbps.