UHF RFID Conductive Fabric Tag Design Optimization.

This paper presents the design of a 920 MHz Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band radio frequency identification (RFID) conductive fabric tag antenna. The DC (Direct Current) resistance and impedance of the conductive fabric are measured by a DC multimeter and by a network analyzer at a UHF frequency band. The conductivities of the fabrics are calculated with their measured DC resistance and impedance values, respectively. The conductivities of the fabric are inserted into the CST simulation program to simulate the fabric tag antenna designs, and the results of the tag designs with two conductivities are compared. Two fabric UHF RFID tag antennas with a T-Matching structure, one with the name-tag size of 80 × 40 mm, and another with 40 × 23 are simulated and measured the characteristics of tag antennas. The simulated and measured results are compared by reflection coefficient S11, radar cross-section and reading range. The reading range of the 80 × 40 mm fabric tag antenna is about 4 m and 0.5 m for the 40 × 23 size tag. These fabric tags can be easily applied to an entrance control system as they can be attached to other fabrics and clothes.

A Review of IoT Sensing Applications and Challenges Using RFID and Wireless Sensor Networks.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless sensors networks (WSNs) are two fundamental pillars that enable the Internet of Things (IoT). RFID systems are able to identify and track devices, whilst WSNs cooperate to gather and provide information from interconnected sensors. This involves challenges, for example, in transforming RFID systems with identification capabilities into sensing and computational platforms, as well as considering them as architectures of wirelessly connected sensing tags. This, together with the latest advances in WSNs and with the integration of both technologies, has resulted in the opportunity to develop novel IoT applications. This paper presents a review of these two technologies and the obstacles and challenges that need to be overcome. Some of these challenges are the efficiency of the energy harvesting, communication interference, fault tolerance, higher capacities to handling data processing, cost feasibility, and an appropriate integration of these factors. Additionally, two emerging trends in IoT are reviewed: the combination of RFID and WSNs in order to exploit their advantages and complement their limitations, and wearable sensors, which enable new promising IoT applications.

Durability Study of Thermal Transfer Printed Textile Electrodes for Wearable Electronic Applications.

Textile-based electronics hold great promise because they can endow wearable devices with soft and comfortable characteristics. However, the inherent porosity and fluffiness of fabrics result in high surface roughness, which presents great challenges in the manufacture of high-performance fabric electrodes. In this work, we propose a thermal transfer printing method to address the above challenges, in which electrodes or circuits of silver flake/thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) composites are prefabricated on a release film by coating and laser engraving and then laminated by hot-pressing to a variety of fabrics and textiles. This universal and scalable production technique enables fabric electrodes to be made without compromising the original wearability, washability, and stretchability of textiles. The prepared fabric electrodes exhibit high conductivity (5.48 × 104 S/cm), high adhesion (≥1750 N/m), good abrasion/washing resistance, high patterning resolution (∼40 µm), and good electromechanical performance up to 50% strain. To demonstrate the potential applications, we developed textile-based radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for remote identification and a large-sized heater for wearable thermotherapy. More importantly, the solvent-free thermal transfer printing technology developed in this paper enables people to DIY interesting flexible electronics on clothes with daily tools, which can promote the commercial application of smart textile-based electronics.

Optimization of UHF RFID Five-Slotted Patch Tag Design Using PSO Algorithm for Biomedical Sensing Systems.

In this paper, a new flexible wearable radio frequency identification (RFID) five-shaped slot patch tag placed on the human arm is designed for ultra-high frequency (UHF) healthcare sensing applications. The compact proposed tag consists of a patch structure provided with five shaped slot radiators and a flexible substrate, which minimize the human body's impact on the antenna radiation performance. We have optimized our designed tag using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method with curve fitting within MATLAB to minimize antenna parameters to achieve a good return loss and an attractive radiation performance in the operating band. The PSO-optimized tag's performance has been examined over the specific placement in some parts of the human body, such as wrist and chest, to evaluate the tag response and enable our tag antenna conception in wearable biomedical sensing applications. Finally, we have tested the robustness of this tag by evaluating its sensitivity as a function of the antenna radiator placement over the ground plane or by shaping the ground plane substrate for the tag's position from the human body. Our numerical results show an optimal tag size with good matching features and promising read ranges near the human body.