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A.R. Harish, Ankita Kapoor, Sneha Singh, Ankit Sharma, Manish Meena, Kanav Gupta, Adarsh Kumar Dubele
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur – 208016, India
arh@iitk.ac.in
Abstract — The performance of an RFID tag depends on the tag itself. For example, it is not quite intuitive to predict the
environment in which it is placed. We place the RFID tag on performance of the tag as the thickness of the material
large wooden boards and measure its performance by recording increases, permittivity changes or if the tag is placed such
the threshold power. Threshold power is the minimum power
required to activate a tag. We show that as the thickness of the that the slab itself blocks the line of sight path between the
wooden slab increase, the performance first deteriorates and tag and the reader antenna.
then it improves. We also make an interesting observation that, In this paper, we present the details of the experiments that
the performance of the tag could be much superior when the have been conducted to assess the performance of the tag
board is blocking the line of sight path. placed on different material surfaces. We use threshold
These observations have been supported by making field power as a measure to assess the performance of the RFID
measurements using a probe and a network analyzer. Further, a
theoretical model based on the interaction of plane waves with a tag placed on a dielectric material. The experimental
dielectric slab has been used to explain the measured observations are correlated with the data generated using a
observations. theoretical model based on the interaction of the plane wave
Index Terms — RFID, tag performance, environment effect. with the dielectric medium.
23
27
23
19
19
15 15
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
Board Thickness (mm) Board Thickness (mm)
Fig. 3. Threshold power for the tag placed on wooden board Fig. 4. Threshold power for the tag placed below the wooden
(Distance between reader antenna and tag: 119 cm). board (Distance between reader antenna and tag: 205 cm).
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-54 5 -50
Probe above the board
-55
S21(dB)
-59
-60
-10 -65
-61
-62
-63 -15 Normalized Threshold Power -70
-64 S21
-65 -20 -75
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
Board Thickness (mm) Board Thickness (mm)
Fig. 6. Network analyzer measurements for wooden board. Fig. 8. Comparison of normalized threshold power and S21 data
(at the bottom surface of the board).
In Fig. 6 we plot the magnitude of S21, as measured by the
A comparison of these two parameters corresponding to
network analyzer, as a function of the board thickness. These
the bottom surface of the board is shown in Fig. 8, and once
plots clearly show an oscillatory nature of |S21| versus the
again a good correlation is seen between the two curves.
thickness of the board, and also the field strength is higher at
It is possible to give a theoretical explanation for this
the bottom of the board as compared to that on the top.
behaviour using a plane wave model. Let us suppose that a
linearly polarized plane wave is incident on a dielectric slab
We can now correlate the measured S21 values and the
of thickness d and relative permittivity r. We can show that
threshold power. It is important to note that higher S21
[4] ratio of fields at the top and the bottom surfaces can be
implies larger field strength and on the contrary higher
written as
threshold power implies weaker field strength. Therefore, 1
instead of plotting the threshold power, we plot the Eb 1
normalized threshold power defined by coskd j sin kd (2)
Et r
Pth,n (dB) =15.7 (dBm) –Pth (dBm) (1) where k is propagation constant for the dielectric medium.
This simple theory indicates that the field strength at the
where, Pth,n is the normalized threshold power in dB and Pth
bottom of the board is always greater than or equal to that at
is the threshold power in dBm. Power level of 15.7dBm
the top.
refers to the minimum power that the RFID reader can
The measured and theoretical field ratios are shown in
transmit.
Fig. 9. For this simulation we have considered the relative
A comparison of normalized threshold power measured
permittivity of wood to be 2.1. We see a good agreement
using the RFID reader and tag combination and S21
between the two results. As the board thickness increases, the
measured using a probe and a network analyzer is shown in
field strength ratio (Eb/Et) increases, touches a maximum, and
Fig. 7. Here, the data for the probe and tag when placed on
starts decreasing. Theory predicts that at about d = 115 mm
the top surface of the board are presented. We can conclude
the field at the back of the board almost goes to zero.
from the figure that there is a good correlation between the
However, measurement shows that it is about 0.4 times the
normalized threshold power and the S21 measurements.
field at the front of the board. This could be due to the
5 -50 inaccuracies in the positioning of the probe.
4
Normalized Threshold Power (dBm)
0 -55 Measurement
3.5
Theory
3
-5 -60
S21(dB)
2.5
-10 -65 2
1.5
-15 Tag Above the Board -70
1
Probe above the board
-20 -75 0.5
0 25 50 75 100 125 150
0
Board Thickness (mm) 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175
Board Thickness (mm)
Fig. 7. Comparison of normalized threshold power and S21 data
(at the top surface of the board). Fig. 9. Ratio of fields at the top and bottom surfaces.
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IV. CONCLUSION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was partially supported by the funding provided
The effect of environment on the performance of the RFID
by Boeing Company, USA under the project No.
tag has been studied in this work. We have considered
BOEING/EE/20060179 and MCIT, under the project No.
wooden boards, placed an RFID tag on the board, and
MIT/EE/20070038.
measured its performance via “threshold power”. We show
that the thickness of the board has a strong effect on the
performance of the tag. We have demonstrated that simply REFERENCES
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