Detection of Strain Magnitude and Direction Based on an RFID Sensor Array

A Review of Radio Frequency Identification Sensing Systems for Structural Health Monitoring

“…Some scholars studied the relationship between the resonance frequency and horizontal/vertical strain [ 14 , 67 ] and the influence of transverse strain on the resonance frequency of the patch antenna. A novel design was reported in [ 18 ] to realize omnidirectional strain detection. Short stub feed patch antennas with different sensitivities in the length and width directions were combined to form a sensor tag array for strain magnitude and direction detection.…”

“…Short stub feed patch antennas with different sensitivities in the length and width directions were combined to form a sensor tag array for strain magnitude and direction detection. The feasibility of this method has been confirmed through experiments and numerical simulations [ 18 ]. However, further studies are needed for the wireless performance of the array.…”

“…Meanwhile, the reduction of antenna dimensions could increase the current in a specific area and thus improve the crack and corrosion sensitivity and resolution [ 11 , 45 ]. Several miniaturization methods can be found in recent investigations, such as short circuit vias [ 18 ], folding [ 11 ], slotting [ 23 ] and substrate with high dielectric constant [ 112 ]. From Equation (10) it can be concluded that the length of antenna and the effective dielectric constant has a contrary relationship within a frequency point.…”

“…Recent works have demonstrated the potential of various RFID-based sensing techniques for SHM systems. Taking the RFID antenna as a sensor, it can detect cracks [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ], corrosion [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ], or stress [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ] in structures. These defects can cause changes in the RFID signal, such as radar cross section (RCS) [ 20 , 21 ], received signal strength indicator (RSSI) [ 17 , 22 ], phase [ 10 , 23 , 24 ], S-parameters [ 25 , 26 ], and turn on power [ 9 , 15 ].…”

“…In addition to communication and sensing problems, there are still numerous scientific challenges to be addressed before the large-scale application of RFID-based SHM systems, for example, multi-parameters detection for robustness monitoring, the low sampling rate of RFID sensing systems and antenna design. After several years of development (2017–2022), the technical challenges faced in the past may have been solved or new solutions have emerged, such as strain direction or omnidirectional strain detection solution [ 18 , 25 ], and novel corrosion prediction methods based on chipless RFID [ 29 ]. To facilitate its application from simple laboratory stage modelling and testing to large-scale real-world structures, this paper presents a systematic review of RFID-based SHM systems.…”