DESIGN OF SENSE AMPLIFIER FOR NON-VOLATILE MEMORY LABONNAH F. RAHMAN 1 , MAMUN BIN IBNE REAZ 1 , CHANG TAE GYU 2 , MOHD. MARUFUZZAMAN 1 Key words: Sense amplifier, Electrically erasable read only memory (EEPROM), Radio frequency identification (RFID), Tag, Low power. Design of Sense Amplifier (SA) for non-volatile memory (NVM) in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag is illustrated in this research. SA is one of the significant module in NVM like electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM). In low power applications, memory access time, power dissipation and the reliability influenced the performance of the SA to store data in RFID transponder EEPROM. Among the current or voltage type SA, first one dissipates higher power than the second one, which is usually avoidable for low voltage applications. The proposed design of SA is able to operate under a very low VDD, which is implemented with CEDEC 0.18µm CMOS process within the temperature range from –25 o C to 125 o C. Moreover, the proposed SA required less power with better performances than other research works. 1. INTRODUCTION EEPROM is mainly used as a storage medium for the low voltage techonologies like RFID transponder, which is widely used to identify products or objects. In order to attain high speed read/write process, RFID necessitates EEPROM as RFID tag IC design also gives importance on low power and low cost [1–3]. Morever, over the last few years EEPROM become the foremost substitute to any low power applications in NVM semiconductor devices [4]. Reading and writing operations of EEPROM are usually the edge factors in low-power RFID transponders [5–6]. The power of the EEPROM sense amplifier must be lower to increase RFID reading space [7]. In EEPROM, the read access time is a key factor to determine the read path, which is strongly affected by the SA. One of the main challenges for new generation non-volatile memories is to develop a robust and high-speed read circuit with a low power supply voltage. As 1 University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia, E-mail: mamun.reaz@gmail.com 2 Chung-Ang University, School of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Seoul 156–756, Korea Rev. Roum. Sci. Techn. – Électrotechn. et Énerg., 58, 2, p. 173–182, Bucarest, 2013