Abstract
In this paper, a frequency-signature Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) chipless tag for wearable applications is presented. The results achieved for a fully-textile solution guaranteeing a seamless integration in clothes are reported and discussed. The proposed tag consists of two planar monopole antennas and a 50 Ω microstrip line loaded with multiple resonators. In order to achieve a compact size, the resonators are slotted on the ground plane of the microstrip line. As for the antennas, the same geometry was exploited for both the TX and the RX tag antenna. In particular, it consists of a proximity fed planar monopole on a ground plane. The selected geometry guarantees easy integration with the multi-resonator structure. Numerical and experimental data referring to a 2-bit implementation are presented and discussed. For fabricating all the prototypes, a layer of pile was used as a substrate, while an adhesive non-woven conductive fabric was exploited for the fabrication of the conductive parts. Experimental tests demonstrate that although the performance of the final device strongly depends on the properties of the used materials and on the imperfections of the fabrication process, the proposed frequency-signature RFID chipless tag is suitable for wearable applications, such as anti-counterfeiting systems and laundry labels.
Highlights
The success of wearable electronics has been hampered by technological limits and, in particular, by the lack of materials and manufacturing techniques that would enable a seamless integration of the electronic parts in the garments
Taking into account these considerations, to avoid the hand-sticking and to have a smaller area to be processed, the prototype presented in this paper is a stopband microstrip line in a 2-bit configuration fabricated on a single layer of pile
As in Reference [33], an adhesive non-woven conductive fabric produced by Saint Gobain was used for all the conductive parts and a cutting plotter was used for the fabrication [9,10]
Summary
The success of wearable electronics has been hampered by technological limits and, in particular, by the lack of materials and manufacturing techniques that would enable a seamless integration of the electronic parts in the garments. Several conductive fabrics are available on the market [1,2,3] and different low-cost fabrication techniques have been proposed in literature [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15], the wearability of smart clothes and their robustness in operations such as washing, drying and ironing are still strongly limited by the use of chips and ICs requiring tin soldering [5,6] This problem is overcome by chipless devices, such as chipless Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).
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