(Radio frequency identification) RFID tags integrated into clothing enable monitoring of people without their conscious effort. This requires tags to be an unnoticeable part of clothing and comfortable to wear. In this study, RFID antennas were screen printed on two different fabrics, six different coating materials for the (integrated circuits) ICs were applied, and the reliability of these RFID tags was tested with moisture and laundry tests. Generally, glue-type coating materials were easier to handle and could be spread precisely. All the tags were operational immediately after the coatings were applied, and five of the coating materials were seen to protect the IC from detaching in the laundry. It was found that the uneven fabric surface caused discontinuities and breaks in narrow conductors, and thus hard coatings may also be needed to keep the tag from breaking in laundry.
Future welfare and healthcare applications require wearable radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags where the tag antenna is an integral part of clothing and endures repeated stretching. In this study, wearable passive ultra-highfrequency (UHF) RFID tag antennas were fabricated from silver-plated stretchable fabric and by screen printing them on non-conductive, stretchable fabric. The reliability of the tags was studied by stretching them repeatedly from the initial length of 10 cm to 13.5 cm, up to 200 stretching cycles. According to our results, the electro-textile tags achieved read ranges of 6.5 meters, also after the 200 harsh stretches. The screen-printed tags initially achieved read ranges of 9.5 meters and after the 200 stretches the read ranges were only 2.5 meters shorter, that is, still about 7 meters. These measurement results and the strengths and weaknesses of both types of wearable tags are discussed in this paper.The miniaturization of electronics and sensors and the development of versatile wireless systems is generating an explosive growth in the applications of wearable electronics. 1,2 Recently, many innovative products have appeared and expectations of the potential of wearable electronics are high. For example, wearable RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags have an enormous potential in future welfare and healthcare applications. 3 These applications require the tag antenna to be an integral part of clothing and to endure different environmental stresses, such as repeated washing and stretching.In this study, we present two types of wearable UHF (ultra-high-frequency) RFID tags and test their ability to withstand continuous stretching. Type 1 tag antennas were manufactured from silver-plated stretchable fabric and Type 2 tag antennas were manufactured by screen printing polymer thick film (PTF) silver ink on stretchable, non-conductive fabric.The work presented here is organized as follows: the second section 2 gives a short review of UHF RFID systems and introduces the development of wearable antennas and RFID tags. The third section briefly introduces our tag design and the used fabrication methods. The stretching tests and tag measurements are presented in the fourth section. The fifth section
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