Abstract: This paper presents a new circuit scheme to control the current surge in the boosting phase of an radio frequency idenfication–nonvolative memory pump. By introducing a circuit block consisting of a current reference and a current mirror, the new circuit scheme can keep the period-average current of the pump constantly below the desired level, for example, 2.5 μA. Therefore, it can prevent the rectified supply of the RFID tag IC from collapsing in the boosting phase of the pump. The presented scheme could effectively reduce the voltage drop on the rectified supply from more than 50% to even zero, but could cost less area. Moreover, an analytical expression to calculate the boosting time of a pump in the new scheme is developed.

Key words: charge pump