Professor Dr. Eng-Hock Lim
Chairperson of the Center for the UTAR Communication Systems and Networks
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia
Title:
Design, Optimization, and Applications of the Metal-Mountable UHF RFID Tag Antennas
Abstract:
Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) Technology exists everywhere! When you are driving on the road, the electronic toll collection system is designed using the RFID. Your eWallet is also an RFID! In fact, the RFID technology has been widely applied for assets tracking, inventory checking, supply chain management, gate automation, and many more. In the first half of this tutorial, the applications of different types of RFIDs will be introduced. A typical RFID system comprises an interrogator, a tag antenna, and a server that is connected to the internet. This makes the data access very convenient, and the data processing can be performed on the powerful CLOUD platform. Advancement of RFID has been very fast in recent few years due to its incorporation with the IoT. The RFID is one of the most convenient ways to connect and identify through the wireless mechanism. Also, in this part, the working principles and design techniques of the RFID systems will be introduced. The main challenge for RFID is that the tag antenna must be specifically designed for a certain application. In many practical applications, however, the RFID tags are required to be placed on different types of objects. The tag antenna’s performances are greatly affected by its backing objects, especially those made of metallic materials. This issue has attracted increasing attention from many researchers, and much effort has been devoted to designing the tag antennas that can be mounted on metals for achieving long read distances. In this tutorial, the recent technical developments and design tradeoffs of the metal-mountable UHF tag antennas will be discussed. Design techniques will be introduced for miniaturizing electrically small tag antennas for on-metal applications. A couple of low-profile and metal-mountable UHF tag antennas, which have a compact dimension, will be discussed. Novel tuning mechanisms will be explored for performing coarse- and fine- tunings on the tag’s resonant frequency without affecting the read performances.
Dr. R. Prasanna
Head-Centre for Antenna and Electronic Materials
Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Avadi, Chennai, India
Title:
Effect of Graphene the efficiency improvement of rigid and flexible RF structures
Abstract:
Antenna is the primary module in any modern electronic communication system. The materials used in the antenna dimensions of antenna and shape of the antenna are responsible for the performance of the antenna modules. In the current trend graphene based antennas are more efficient and convenient for flexible applications. Graphene is a 2D form of carbon material with sophisticated electrical and thermal properties. These remarkable advantages make the graphene most suitable for printed electronics particularly in high efficient rigid and flexible antenna structures. The surface relaxation time of the graphene antenna will be responsible for the efficiency improvement in terms of parameters compared to the copper antenna structures. By replacing the conventional copper material with graphene an efficiency of 30% can be observed compared to the copper based structures. The pre layout and post layout correlation will be more precise in the graphene structures. Single graphene layer with a thickness of 16um can replace a copper antenna with a thickness of 35um functionally. The parameters can be enhanced by multilayer approach which is not possible in copper technology. The Deployable and retractable antenna structures are in the need of ink based and Nano material based conductive material where copper will be failed. Graphene materials can be more positive towards new generation rapid prototyping methods for the realization of the prototypes. Both powder and ink based graphene can be used for antenna applications instead of metal elements. This graphene element slowly replacing the copper in the antenna industry and will dominate completely in future.