UHF RFID Tag Antenna-Based Sensing for Corrosion Detection & Characterization Using Principal Component Analysis

Recently, structural health monitoring (SHM) using radio frequency identification (RFID) tag antenna-based sensing (TABS) has received increasing attention because of its wireless, passive, and low-cost characteristics. However, a great challenge in the SHM using RFID TABS is multiple influences in the measurement. This paper presents an ultrahigh frequency RFID sensor system for corrosion detection and characterization. In this paper, a 3-D antenna sensor is designed to work on the surface of a protective coated steel sample. Sweep-frequency measurements are applied for analog identifier with principal component analysis (PCA) to overcome the multiple influences from reader-tag orientation, distance, and environment. Feature extraction and selection though PCA can get robust and sensitive defect information by projecting the test data into an orthogonal feature space. The test results demonstrate that the proposed method can be applied to detect and characterize early-stage corrosion in metals.