Abstract
Radiofrequency identification (RFID), particularly passive RFID, is extensively employed in industrial applications to track and trace products, assets, and material flows. The ongoing trend toward increasingly miniaturized RFID sensor tags is likely to continue as technology advances, although miniaturization presents a challenge with regard to the communication coverage area. Recently, efforts in applying metamaterials in RFID technology to increase power transfer efficiency through their unique capacity for electromagnetic wave manipulation have been reported. In particular, metamaterials are being increasingly applied in far-field RFID system applications. Here, we report the development of a magnetic metamaterial and local field enhancement package enabling a marked boost in near-field magnetic strength, ultimately yielding a dramatic increase in the power transfer efficiency between reader and tag antennas. The application of the proposed magnetic metamaterial and local field enhancement package to near-field RFID technology, by offering high power transfer efficiency and a larger communication coverage area, yields new opportunities in the rapidly emerging Internet of Things (IoT) era.
Highlights
As a key enabling component in many Radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology platforms, RFID microsensor tags are increasingly prevalent throughout our lives with the development of modern electronics and micro/nanofabrication technology
The reader antenna is a loop antenna enhanced by magnetic metamaterials composed of an array of unit cells featuring metallic helices
We demonstrate that the synergy between the metamaterial and magnetic local field enhancement package (M-LFEP) yields a higher degree of improvement in magnetic field strength when compared with the results of the metamaterial or M-LFEP acting alone
Summary
As a key enabling component in many RFID technology platforms, RFID microsensor tags are increasingly prevalent throughout our lives with the development of modern electronics and micro/nanofabrication technology. Pertinent to the work presented microsensor technology has been applied in the oil and gas industry to gain a better understanding of the variations in the physical and chemical environments of oil reservoirs[3–5]. The size limitations of the microsensor tags prohibit the use of large-capacity onboard batteries, leading to relatively short sensor lifetimes. To address this shortcoming, passive sensor tags without onboard batteries, which harvest energy from external RF transmission for charging and subsequent data readout, have been proposed[6]. The mutual coupling between the transmitter and receiver in the near-field decays rapidly as a function of distance (∝1/d3), compromising the wide applicability of this approach[10]
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