In this contribution, the author examines the feasibility of on-body backscatter radio frequency identification (RFID) systems in the ultra high frequency range. Four different on-body RFID systems are investigated operating monopoles or patch antennas at 900 MHz or 2.45 GHz. The systems' feasibility is analyzed by means of on-body channel measurements in a realistic test environment. The measured channel transfer functions allow to evaluate if enough power is available for a reliable backscatter communication. This evaluation is done with the aid of outage probabilities in the forward link and the backward link of the systems. Using these probabilities, the on-body systems prove feasible when using state-of-the-art reader and transponder chips. In particular, the use of semi-passive RFID transponder chips leads to a reliable performance in the systems' forward links. The robust performance of the systems' backward links is clearly shown for the 900 MHz monopole antenna configuration, while the limitations in the backward links of the other systems have to be overcome by the use of a second reader unit on the person's back. The novel feasibility analysis presented here allows to examine each system parameter individually and thus leads to reliable and robust backscatter RFID systems.
The work of Valentina Palazzi, Paolo Mezzanotte, and Luca Roselli was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) through the PRIN Project "Development and promotion of the Levulinic acid and Carboxylate platforms by the formulation of novel and advanced PHA-based biomaterials and their exploitation for 3D printed green-electronics applications" under Grant 2017FWC3WC 003. This work did not involve human subjects or animals in its research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.