Performance of silver-based textile UHF passive RFID tags after recurrent washing

We investigate the suitability of textile glue coating for protection of textile-based passive UHF RFID tags during machine washing. The study includes tags with textile antennas made by patterning of silver-plated fabric and brush-painting of silver ink on cotton fabric. Prior washing, both tags exhibit good performance, but our results evidence that the washing impacts the tags notably differently: the reduction in the peak read range of the silver-plated fabric tag over 10 washing cycles is 33 %, whereas the brush-painted tag suffers much smaller reduction of only 5 % over 15 washing cycles.