Feasability of On-Body Backscattering in the UHF-RFID Band using Screen-Printed Dipole Antennas

An increasing number of wearable applications require wireless on-body connections. Some of these links will use radio-frequency (RF) backscattering. A potential technology for this backscattering is ultra-high frequency RF identification (UHF RFID). To investigate the feasibility of using UHF RFID in such links, on-body path loss measurements using screen-printed folded dipole antennas are presented in five different on-body scenarios. These are used to determine a relationship between the on-body links' dynamic range and the potential propagation distance, given a certain outage probability.