Simulation Analysis of Dual Band Microstrip
Antenna Strain Sensor Based on RFID
Guo Chun Wan, Meng Meng Li, Cong Wang and Mei
Song Tong
Department of Electronic Science and Technology
Tongji University
Shanghai, China
Mei Song Tong @tongji.edu.cn
Abstract—In this paper, a RFID antenna for structural health
detection (SHM) is studied. The antenna is a dual frequency
resonant antenna. In the simulation, the law of the strain of the
dielectric plate is generated by the Poisson coefficient of the
dielectric plate. The change in the shape of the antenna affects
the electric current distribution on the antenna patch, causing
the resonant frequency to drift, and further determining the
nature of the strain through the return loss parameter. The
simulation results show that the first resonant frequency of the
microstrip antenna can be used to detect the direction of strain,
and the second resonant frequency is used to detect the
magnitude of strain. Compared with other products of the same
type, the requirements of structural strain measurement can be
met. It laid a theoretical foundation for experimental research.
Keywords—SHM, RFID, microstrip antenna,
I. INTRODUCTION
With the continuous development of the Internet of Things
technology, RFID is widely used not only in the traditional RF
field, but also is beginning to be accepted by the SHM field
because it is characterized by low cost and high sensitivity.
Traditional structural health monitoring methods include
Ground Monitoring, Ground Photogrammetry, GPS
deformation monitoring, Satellite Telemetry, etc. However, in
the implementation of traditional monitoring systems, wired
sensors used for power and data transmission often complicate
the SHM system, and it is very difficult to maintain the
system.
With the increase of area and complexity of building
structure, the traditional way to adapt to the connection
between a large number of sensors often needs to be
redesigned, which makes it expensive, so the advantages of
the RFID monitoring system begin to emerge.
The RFID system consists of three parts: an electronic tag,
a reader and an antenna. The electronic tag is used to store
information that needs to be identified and transmitted. The
basic function of the reader is to provide a way to transmit
data with the tag. Through some protocols, it is possible to
read multiple tags in a short time and in a small space; the
antenna functions to transmit and receive radio signals.
For the monitoring of strain in structural health, the RFID
antenna is used as the strain sensor of the system, and its input
XIE Liyu
Dept. of Civil Engineering
Tongji University
Shanghai, China
liyuxie@tongji.edu.cn
is structural strain, and the output is the drift frequency of the
patch antenna. In order to meet the exact requirements of the
corresponding variable monitoring, we hope that the
frequency of the resonant antenna can change regularly with
the micro-strain of the structural size. Therefore, the sensor
must meet two important requirements of stability and
accuracy.
The microstrip antenna has the advantages of small size,
light weight, simple manufacturing process, etc [1], and is
widely used. Tata designs a rectangular microstrip antenna
using eccentric feed, and analyzed the results of strain
measurement of the microstrip antenna [2]. The feasibility of
the microstrip patch antenna strain sensor was confirmed.
II. DESIGN OF DUAL-FREQUENCY MICROSTRIP ANTENNA
According to the theory of electromagnetic field, the
current direction of the main mode (first resonance frequency)
of the circular microstrip line is consistent. its first high mode
(second resonance frequency) does not have this feature, as
shown in Fig. 1.
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. Surface current distribution of microstrip antena. (a) First resonance
frequency. (b) Second resonance frequency
Since the surface current distribution of the two resonant
frequency of the circular microstrip antenna is different, it is
preliminarily concluded that when the antenna structure is
strained, the two resonant frequency changes will be different,
it means different frequency drift will occur.
In this article, we designed a coaxially fed dual-frequency
RFID antenna. It consists mainly of a copper cladding layer
and a dielectric plate, the back side is a thin copper layer. The
dielectric board is made of FR4 material. Due to the Poisson We used HFSS to simulate the antenna, the simulation
effect, the longitudinal dimension will be shortened as the diagram is shown in Fig. 3. The simulation results show that
lateral dimension is extended. The ratio of the change in the the antenna has a return loss of -10.94 dB at 2.386 GHz and a
lateral dimension to the change in the longitudinal dimension is return loss of -10.66 dB at 3.98 GHz.
the Poisson's ratio [3], as in:
L = L0 (1 + ε ),W = W0 (1 − vε ) (1)
In (1), L represents the actual lateral dimension, W
represents the actual longitudinal dimension, L0 represents the
original lateral dimension, W0 represents the original
longitudinal dimension, ε represents the magnitude of strain, v
represents the Poisson's ratio.
The Poisson's ratio of the FR4 material was 0.31. When the
circular microstrip antenna is strained, it becomes a standard
ellipse, and the Poisson's ratio can be used to simulate the
strain process. The microstrip antenna designed in this paper is Fig. 3. The simulation diagram of Microstrip antenna
shown in Fig.2.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
If the designed tag antenna is used as a strain sensing unit
to measure the strain change of the target structure, when the
target structure undergoes a stress change, the change of the
label size will cause the resonance frequency to shift.
According to this, the strain change of the target structure is
judged. From the previous analysis, the strain of the antenna
will have different effects on the two resonant frequencies. To
this end, the angle θ is defined as shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 2. Dual band microstrip antenna

The theoretical cut-off frequency of the circular microstrip

antenna is 2.4 GHz. The thickness of the antenna should
satisfy:
c
h≤ (2)
4 fm ε r − 1
In (2), c is the speed of light, fm is the maximum operating
frequency, and εr is the relative dielectric constant. Fig. 4. The definition of θ
For dielectric substrates with known dielectric constants,
the patch radius of a circular microstrip antenna is: The dotted line is the line connecting the feed point to the
center of the microstrip antenna, and the red line is the
k direction of strain.The HFSS is used to simulate the antenna,
R= (3) and then we try to observe the variation law of the resonant
2h πk
{1 + [ln( ) + 1.7726]}0.5 frequency of the antenna under different strain directions. The
πε r k 2h simulation results are shown in the Fig. 5 below.
8.794
k= (4)
fr ε r
In (3) and (4), fr is the operating frequency; εr is the
relative dielectric constant; h is the thickness of the dielectric
substrate.
In order to achieve impedance matching, the feed point
should be set properly.Through calculation, the parameters of
the antenna are shown in Table I.

TABLE I. THE PARAMETERS OF ANTENNA

Parameter R r h d
Scale(mm) 26 16.67 1.8 8.1
(a)
 IV. CONCLUSION
This paper designs a circular microstrip strain antenna for
measuring small strain changes. The antenna has two resonant
frequencies. The simulation data shows that the first resonant
frequency of the antenna is sensitive to the direction of the
variable force and can be used to measure the direction of the
structural strain; the second resonance is insensitive to the
direction of the variable force and can be used to measure the
magnitude of the structural strain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities.
(b)

Fig. 5. The simulation results. (a) the drift of first resonance frequency. (b)
the drift of second resonance frequency
The results of Fig. 5 (a) are shown in Table II. It can be
seen from the Table II that the sensitivity of the first resonant
frequency changes greatly with the change of θ, and when θ is
60°, the sensitivity of the resonant frequency change is only
12.16% of 0° with the change of strain. Therefore, the
direction of the strain force can be judged by rotating the
microstrip antenna and using the sensitivity change of the first
resonant frequency.
TABLE II. THE DRIFT OF FIRST RESONANCE FREQUENCY WITH
DIFFERENT ANGLE
Angle (θ) 0° 30° 60°
Normalized sensitivity(KHz/με) -2.057 -1.737 0.3126
The results of Fig. 5 (b) are shown in Table III. It can be
seen from the table III that the sensitivity of the second
resonant frequency remains substantially constant with the
change of θ, and has a good linear relationship with an
average sensitivity of -5.6 KHz/με. It is superior to references
[4] (-5.2188 KHz/με) and references [5] (-2.6820 KHz/με).
Carries on the data fitting to the experimental findings, and the
linearity is up to 0.9959(0°), 0.9808(30°), 0.9965(60°) and
0.9965(90°) respectively, which indicates the feasibility and
validity of this method.
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TABLE III. THE DRIFT OF SEDOND RESONANCE FREQUENCY WITH

DIFFERENT ANGLE
Angle (θ) 0° 30° 60° 90°
Normalized sensitivity(KHz/με) -6.851 -5.904 -5.190 -5.553