Improving radiation characteristics of UHF RFID antennas by zigzag structures

An antenna structure for UHF RFID tag matched to ST Microelectronics XRAG2 passive tag IC is proposed in this paper. The design is realized on PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) substrate that has the overall dimension of 82.5 mm × 45.29 mm. The simulation shows that the proposed zigzag-shaped antenna has the return loss at the resonant frequency of −39 dB and omni-directional radiation characteristics with the maximum gain of about 1.97 dBi that is much better than that of the initial meander dipole. The prototype antenna was tested by Rohde & Shwarz ZVB Vector Network Analyzer and showed good fit with the simulation results.

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