Glasses frame‐based wearable antenna design for ultrahigh frequency radio frequency identification and Internet of Things applications using characteristic mode analysis

Abstract

A novel ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) passive tag antenna based on a glasses frame is proposed for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The glasses frame structure is exploited using characteristic mode analysis (CMA) to explore different modes for both 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. The proposed design consists of a glasses metallic frame and a loop for conjugate matching with an RFID chip (Alien Higgs H4). First of all, an already manufactured glasses metal frame structure is simulated in Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave studio using CMA to get CM modes in the required RFID band. After that, a small loop is used along with the RFID chip as a capacitive coupling element to excite modes at 900 MHz by placing it at current minima. Moreover, the proposed tag antenna is also simulated with the voxel head model in CST and there is no significant change in impedance and reflection coefficient. The simulated specific absorption rate (SAR) is 0.5 W/Kg. Furthermore, the tag design is simulated with different glass materials and also with different frame structures to prove the robustness of the proposed solution. This tag design covers the entire US UHF RFID band (902–928 MHz) and features a read range of 2 m, measured using a UHF RFID reader setup with 4 W EIRP. Therefore, this antenna design can be a good candidate for future IoT technologies such as RFID, long range (LoRa), and other IoT applications.