Near-Field Modular Antenna Concept With Configurable Reading Area for RFID Applications

This paper presents a near-field antenna with significant reading area that is reconfigurable. This antenna is used to realize near-field radio frequency identification technology in the UHF band (UHF RFID) reader. The antenna is printed on a flexible plastic substrate and then cut to the desired dimensions to be positioned over the area where it is desired to carry out the reading of near-field UHF RFID tags. This new concept of configurable antenna on demand, which is cut to fix the reading zone, shows extremely modular characteristics and can be simply implanted in a real environment. The performances of different configurations of the antenna that tell about different reading surfaces are presented. Significant reading surfaces never obtained before for near-field UHF RFID tags (1 × 1 cm²) up to 42 × 76 cm² with a minimum range of 15 cm for the 868 MHz band are reported. Reading areas in three dimensions of such antennas are characterized experimentally with commercial tags to confirm the performances in a real environment.