A novel “Universal” inkjet-printed EBG-backed flexible RFID for rugged on-body and metal mounted applications

A novel inkjet-printed electromagnetic bandgapbacked (EBG) RFID tag has been designed and tested for wearable and metal mount applications. An array of split-ring resonators and a dipole antenna matched to an RFID chip at 915 MHz were designed and inkjet printed on paper substrate. Measurements of the tag in free space show that the required reader's minimum transmit power for successful tag reading decreases by 6 dB compared to the case without EBG, while for on-body and on-metal measurements, the read range increases by nearly a factor of 2. It has to be noted that the proposed RFID tag is flexible since it can be easily fabricated by inkjet printing nano- silver particles on paper or platic substrates. It can find numerous applications ranging from wearable antennas and bio-monitoring to transportation and logiitics for mass shipping.