volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

This paper addresses the design and fabrication of an embroidered textile RFID tag antenna. The main feature of this design is that we have embroidered an RFID chip on the textile support which avoids the use of metallic wires or soldering. The modeled equivalent circuit of the tag is presented to get physical insight into RFID tag antenna design. The detailed results given in this paper include the effect of the bending and the human body proximity on the antenna performance. It is shown that the bending does not introduce a conspicuous effect on the tags read range while the dissipative characteristics of the human body cause a gain and read range reduction. The proposed design may find applications in wearable devices dedicated to health monitoring applications.

1. Liukkonen, M., "RFID technology in manufacturing and supply chain," International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Vol. 28, No. 8, 861-880, 2015.
doi:10.1080/0951192X.2014.941406

2. Adame, T., A. Bel, A. Carreras, J. Melia-Segui, M. Oliver, and R. Pous, "CUIDATS: An RFID- WSN hybrid monitoring system for smart health care environments," Future Generation Computer Systems, Vol. 78, Part 2, 602-615, 2018.

3. Mehmood, A., et al. "Body movement-based controlling through passive RFID integrated into clothing," IEEE J. Radio Freq. Identif., Vol. 4, No. 4, 414-419, 2020.
doi:10.1109/JRFID.2020.3010717

4. Yu, M., X. Shang, M. Wang, Y. Liu, and T. T. Ye, "Exploiting embroidered UHF RFID antennas as deformation sensors," IEEE J. Radio Freq. Identif., Vol. 4, No. 4, 406-413, 2020.
doi:10.1109/JRFID.2020.3030790

5. Ivsic, B., D. Bonefacic, and J. Bartolic, "Textile antennas for on-body sensors," SAS 2015 --- 2015 IEEE Sensors Appl. Symp. Proc., June 2015.

6. Koski, K., et al. "Practical read range evaluation of wearable embroidered UHF RFID tag," IEEE Antennas Propag. Soc. AP-S Int. Symp., 2012.

7. Kellomaki, T., "On-body performance of a wearable single-layer RFID tag," IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., Vol. 11, 73-76, 2012.
doi:10.1109/LAWP.2012.2183112

8. Oyeka, D. O., J. C. Batchelor, and A. M. Ziai, "Effect of skin dielectric properties on the read range of epidermal ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification tags," Healthc. Technol. Lett., Vol. 4, No. 2, 78-81, 2017.
doi:10.1049/htl.2016.0072

9. Rahman, N. H. A., Y. Yamada, and M. S. A. Nordin, "Analysis on the effects of the human body on the performance of electro-textile antennas for wearable monitoring and tracking application," Materials (Basel)., Vol. 12, No. 10, 1-17, 2019.

10. Marrocco, G., "The art of UHF RFID antenna design: Impedance-matching and size-reduction techniques," IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag., Vol. 50, No. 1, 66-79, 2008.
doi:10.1109/MAP.2008.4494504

11. Sockolov, K. and D. Arakaki, "UHF RFID antenna impedance matching techniques," 2017 IEEE Antennas Propag. Soc. Int. Symp. Proc., 2433-2434, 2017.

12. Sohrab, A. P., Y. Huang, M. Hussein, M. Kod, and P. Carter, "A UHF RFID tag with improved performance on liquid bottles," IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., Vol. 15, 1673-1676, 2016.
doi:10.1109/LAWP.2016.2521786

13. El Bakkali, M., M. Martinez-Estrada, R. Fernandez-Garcia, I. Gil, and O. El Mrabet, "Effect of bending on a textile UHF-RFID tag antenna," 14th Eur. Conf. Antennas Propagation, EuCAP 2020, 2020.

14., CST STUDIO SUITE CST AG, Germany, www.cst.com.

Dr. Mohamed El Bakkali

Dr. Otman El Mrabet

Dr. Mohammed Kanjaa

Dr. Ignacio Gil

Dr. Raúl Fernandez-Garcia