A linearly polarized (LP) reader antenna for LP and orientation insensitive (OI) chipless RFID tags

A single element linearly polarized (LP) aperture coupled microstrip patch antenna (ACMPA) in microwave frequency band is presented in this paper. The paper starts with the requirement for developing a low profile, low cost, lightweight, wideband LP antenna suitable for commercial chipless RFID tag readers. Then, a thorough review is done on existing low profile wideband antenna designs to find out a suitable match with all required reader antenna specifications. From the literature analysis, ACMPA design technique is found as the best match for developing the reader antenna, which is followed next. First, antenna specifications are listed for developing a single element LP ACMPA. Then, a single element is designed and optimized to achieve the targeted values, which is fabricated and assembled next. After that, this ACMPA is measured in a vector network analyzer (VNA), which fulfills the set targets. Next, tag reading performance of the antenna in three different measurement setups is evaluated through measurement of ‘O’ slot loaded orientation insensitive (OI) tags. These tag measurement results have confirmed the usability of the developed antenna in commercial tag reader.

[1]  Nemai Karmakar,et al.  A novel compact chipless RFID tag and near-field reader , 2011, Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference 2011.

[2]  Nemai C. Karmakar,et al.  Design of fully printable planar chipless RFID transponder with 35-bit data capacity , 2009, 2009 European Microwave Conference (EuMC).

[3]  S. Weinreb,et al.  Measurements of a 1 to 13 GHz model of a dual polarized low-profile log-periodic feed for US-SKA , 2005, 2005 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium.

[4]  M. Bartocci,et al.  UWB Double polarised phased array , 2009, 2009 3rd European Conference on Antennas and Propagation.

[5]  U. Kaiser,et al.  A low-power transponder IC for high-performance identification systems , 1995 .

[6]  Md. Aminul Islam,et al.  Orientation independent compact chipless RFID tag , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on RFID-Technologies and Applications (RFID-TA).

[7]  Ran Liu,et al.  An ultra-low-cost RFID tag with 1.67 Gbps data rate by ink-jet printing on paper substrate , 2010, 2010 IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[8]  Nemai Chandra Karmakar,et al.  Compact printable orientation independent chipless RFID tag , 2012 .

[9]  Etienne Perret,et al.  Novel Compact RFID Chipless Tag , 2011 .

[10]  S. Tedjini,et al.  High-Capacity Chipless RFID Tag Insensitive to the Polarization , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.