WoodTag

Wurth-Embids
Miniaturized RFID Tag designed for the use on wood, Showing Omni-directional radiation pattern for effective tracking.

Introduction:
Radio frequency identification has seen a rapid growth in the Ultra high frequency in the past decades. Because of its long read range capability and its compact size, its has been used in all inventories and asset tracking. Tag defined below is designed for the use on wood surfaces. The Size is considerably small, in the range of 68*21, and it is tuned for the NXPs G2XM. It can also be tuned for other ICs with the variation in the structure of the tag. Specifications: Mechanical Specification: 68*21*1mm Substrate Used: FR4, Er=4.4 and Dielectric Constant is 0.025 Tag 3D View

IC Used: G2XM

Simulation: Simulation of the tag and the whole structure which comprises of tag with 10mm of wood on the back, was done using Electromagnetic solvers like ADS Momentum and CST Microwave studio. Various parameters have been set like size, gain and S11 values. The simulated radiation pattern and S11 values are shown below.

As from the plots of S11, we can come to the conclusion that the tag covers a band of almost 15MHz, from 859 to 874Mhz, with peak at 866.5 Mhz. The wood block, considered in the simulation is a general one, so when the tag is tested under influence of moisture or water, there is a variation in the read range and tag performance also.

Conclusion:
The proposed antenna has been designed to easily conjugate match the complex impedance of any commercial ICs available in the market. The Directivity of the tag with wood back up also 3dbi and the gain of the tag with wood back up is around -4db. Negative symbol is because the antenna is omnidirectional and it is on the surface of the wood. But the gain varies for different environment. So we can get the clear picture of the gain, when the tag is tested in the real-time environment with wood back up. But from the simulated values of the transponder, it can be said that read range values may be between 1.0m to 2.5m.