13.56Mhz contactless smart card

Multinational company required a new 13.56MHz RF smart card system to be developed. The design included an embedded 1.2µm full custom mixed signal CMOS IC to provide the RF Detector, modulators and demodulators, PLL and data detector. The IC also contained a regulator to provide a stable output supply voltage.

The second part of the project was the development of the reader section. This included the design of a power amplifier to drive a loop aerial at 13.56MHz which also doubled as the AM modulator for the data being sent to the card. The reader included a base band detector to demodulate the data from the card.