Meanderline antenna for RFID-chemical sensor applications

An RFID-based chemical sensor is being developed for detecting biological warfare agents (BWA). When interrogated with a Reader, the sensor responds with a positive or a negative reading. Future versions of the sensor will also identify the type of agent present. Figure 1 shows the sensor board housing a chemical sensor, the RFID chip and the antenna. The entire board occupies a space of 65mm × 30mm × 2.36mm. The chemical sensor comes with its own packaging, is glued to the substrate and interfaces with the RFID chip via a circuit. The antenna occupies most of the space and is connected to the ATMEL ATA5590 RFID chip's antenna ports. The focus of this paper is the design, fabrication and testing of the antenna.