DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF UHF-RFID TAG ANTENNAS FOR SENSOR & IoT APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to develop new configurations of RFID-UHF tag antennas for traceability applications, as well as the realization of a characterization bench and performance measurements at low cost. The performance of the proposed RFID-UHF tag antennas was evaluated by electromagnetic simulation using the commercial software ‘CST Microwave Studio’ and by measurements. In this thesis, we also focused our attention on extending the field of application of this technology to the field of sensors. The main idea of this study is based on the fact, that the RFID tag antenna (which plays here the role of a sensor) is sensitive to its environment, which modifies the properties of the antenna, and thus the matching. The measurement of the variation in the concentration of the solutions (Sugar, NaCl, and Alcohol) was carried out in this part by measuring the activation power of the tag. This measurement system, we propose in this thesis, has several advantages such as low cost, non-invasive, rapid, and the possibility of sending measurements over a long distance using a repetitive cycle of measurements. In this thesis, we propose three contributions. The first one consists of the UHF RFID antennas characterization bench we propose to measure the performances of this antenna with an automated low cost measurement platform. In the second contribution, we propose a new configuration of RFID-UHF tag antennas for a range of industrial traceability applications. The performances of the proposed RFIDUHF tag antennas were evaluated by electromagnetic simulation using ‘CST Microwave Studio’ commercial software and by measurements. Finally, in the third contribution, we focused our attention on extending the field of application of this technology to the field of RFID-UHF food product sensors. The main idea of this study is because the RFID tag antenna (which plays here the role of a sensor) is sensitive to its environment, which modifies its properties. The measurement of the variation in the concentration of the solutions (Sugar, NaCl, and Alcohol) was carried out in this section by measuring the activation power of the tag. The measurement system proposed in this thesis has several advantages. For instance, this is a low cost, noninvasive and rapid measurement system, which has the possibility of sending measurements over a long distance using a repetitive cycle of measurements