Analysis of quadratic dickson based envelope detectors for IoE sensor node applications

This paper presents a study of passive Dickson based envelope detectors operating in the quadratic small signal regime, specifically intended to be used in RF front end of sensing units of IoE sensor nodes. Critical parameters such as open-circuit voltage sensitivity (OCVS), charge time, input impedance, and output noise are studied and simplified circuit models are proposed to predict the behavior of the detector, resulting in practical design intuitions. There is strong agreement between model predictions, simulation results and measurements of 15 representative test structures that were fabricated in a 130 nm RF CMOS process.