Washing durability of embroidered polymer coated RFID tags

Embroidered RFID tags can be used in fabric integrated on-body applications such as tracking and access control. Moreover, embroidered antennas are important also in other wearable, body-centric wireless systems. The durability of the embroidered tag antenna is essential for garment-integrated applications due to the high probability to encounter different environmental conditions. In this paper, the effect of washing on an embroidered RFID tag with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer coating is investigated by measuring the realized gain of the antenna before and after each washing procedure. It was found that coating the embroidered tag antenna with a polymer increased its washing durability.