Reliable UHF long-range textile-integrated RFID tag based on a compact flexible antenna filament

Wagih, M. , Wei, Y., Komolafe, A., Torah, R. and Beeby, S. (2020) Reliable UHF long-range textile-integrated RFID tag based on a compact flexible antenna filament. Sensors, 20(12), 3435. (doi: 10.3390/s20123435)

Abstract

This paper details the design, fabrication and testing of flexible textile-concealed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags for wearable applications in a smart city/smart building environment. The proposed tag designs aim to reduce the overall footprint, enabling textile integration whilst maintaining the read range. The proposed RFID filament is less than 3.5 mm in width and 100 mm in length. The tag is based on an electrically small (0.0033λ 2 ) high-impedance planar dipole antenna with a tuning loop, maintaining a reflection coefficient less than −21 dB at 915 MHz, when matched to a commercial RFID chip mounted alongside the antenna. The antenna strip and the RFID chip are then encapsulated and integrated in a standard woven textile for wearable applications. The flexible antenna filament demonstrates a 1.8 dBi gain which shows a close agreement with the analytically calculated and numerically simulated gains. The range of the fabricated tags has been measured and a maximum read range of 8.2 m was recorded at 868 MHz Moreover, the tag’s maximum calculated range at 915 MHz is 18 m, which is much longer than the commercially available laundry tags of larger length and width, such as Invengo RFID tags. The reliability of the proposed RFID tags has been investigated using a series of tests replicating textile-based use case scenarios which demonstrates its suitability for practical deployment. Washing tests have shown that the textile-integrated encapsulated tags can be read after over 32 washing cycles, and that multiple tags can be read simultaneously while being washed.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grants EP/M015149/1 and EP/P010164/1.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Wagih, Dr Mahmoud

Creator Roles

Wagih, M.: Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

• Authors: Wagih, M., Wei, Y., Komolafe, A., Torah, R., and Beeby, S.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Journal Name: Sensors
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 1424-8220
• ISSN (Online): 1424-8220
• Published Online: 17 June 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Sensors 20(12):3435
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons license