INVITED

PAPER

Design of Antennas for

UHF RFID Tags
Recent progress in the design of antennas for UHF RFID tags is discussed in
this paper, and an automated simulator for tags is demonstrated.
By Etienne Perret, Member IEEE , Smail Tedjini, Senior Member IEEE , and
Raji Sasidharan Nair, Student Member IEEE

ABSTRACT | This paper is mainly dedicated to the design of thousands of applications and its deployment in numerous
radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, particularly the an- areas where an identification process is required [3].
tennas that allow the tag to be fed, communicate, and exchange Most of the RFID chip development was accomplished
data with the reader. Good performance tags require optimized during the last decade of the last century. The remarkable
antenna that take into account numerous constraints as well as progresses in microelectronics and RF domains are at the
the environment of the application under consideration. Both origin of this huge development of wireless application in
conventional tags and robust tags are discussed. This paper general and RFID in particular. Such developments were
also discusses how to transform a tag into an RFID sensor. accelerated by the standardization process and the defini-
tion by the International Standards Organization (ISO) of
standards for communication protocols as well as the air
KEYWORDS | Antenna design; antenna sensitivity; genetic
interface link. Today ISO standards [4] are accepted
algorithm; RFID; sensing RFID tag; UHF RFID
worldwide and allow a certain level of interoperability be-
tween equipment coming from different sources. How-
I. INTRODUCTION ever, a real high degree of interoperability is still missing
in applications particularly using ultrahigh-frequency
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is one of
(UHF) bands. There are many reasons behind this weak-
the major methods for identification purposes. Its operat-
ness that negatively impact the deployment of RFID solu-
ing principle was very clearly explained by Harry
Stockman in an IRE publication of 1948 [1], and one of tions in many sectors. Two main factors should be
underlined for tag designers.
the early application is the identify friend or foe (IFF).
First, it is very important to notice that RF regulations are
Today, RFID tags are more compact and more complex [2].
not the same worldwide. Indeed, contrary to high-frequency
Indeed they are based on an integrated circuit (IC,
(HF) RFID for which there exists a single frequency band
commonly known as the RFID chip), which embeds in
adopted worldwide, there are at least three frequency bands
the same passive components such as analog, radio
for UHF RFID depending on specific country regulations.
frequency (RF), and digital circuitry. Such a complexity
In addition to that, the emission power and the
is able to support many functions and processing routines,
which allow RFID technology to be considered in communication channel parameters are not the same for
different geographic regions. This diversity of regulations is
the source of many technical problems that can be very
challenging if not considered during the design process. It
Manuscript received November 6, 2011; revised January 23, 2012; accepted is also important to remark that tag cost is a very important
January 27, 2012. Date of publication March 20, 2012; date of current version
June 14, 2012. Most of the developments presented in this paper were supported by factor that RFID supplier needs to maintain as low as pos-
the SCS project BPac-ID Grande Distribution,[ ANR project BTHID la RFID du futur[ sible. As a consequence, these constraints will not allow the
(ANR-09-VERS-013), as well as the BQR program of the Grenoble Institute of
Technology. development of multifrequency and multistandard tags. So,
The authors are with Laboratoire de Conception et d’intégration des Systèmes (LCIS), the Buniversal[ tag is still not realistic. As far as the tag cost is
Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble-INP), F26902 Valence, France
(e-mail: etienne.perret@grenoble-inp.fr; smail.tedjini@grenoble-inp.fr; considered, chipless approach is an interesting option.
raji-sasidharan.nair@lcis.grenoble-inp.fr). Chipless RFID tags (also named BRF barcodes[) can be
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JPROC.2012.2186950 considered as an emerging area of RFID technology for

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

ultralow-cost RFID applications. Even if the first realized

chipless tags are based on surface acoustic wave (SAW)
substrate [5], many other low-cost approaches are under
development [6], [7].
The second factor is due to the characteristics of an-
tenna in general. The role of the tag antenna and its impact
on the global performance of the tag is very critical. In-
deed, for any antenna there are two operating regions:
near-field and far-field depending on the communication
distance between reader and tags. In practice, UHF RFID
tags have to operate irrespective of the distance, reader-to-
tag, the environment of application, the item we want to
identify, and wherever the tag is attached. So, compact and Fig. 1. Passive RFID system.
low-profile antennas exhibiting low cost and relatively
broad band represent, at the present time, an important
issue in the field of UHF RFID technology. A major objec-
tive of designers is to develop compact and Brobust[ tags two states Z0c and Z1c . At each impedance state, the RFID
[8] that are less sensitive to the environment application tag presents a specific complex radar cross section (RCS).
and frequency bands. The tag generates the information back by varying its input
The sensitivity of the antenna is certainly one of the impedance and thus modulating the backscattered signal
major weaknesses of UHF tags. However, this characteris- (uplink).
tic can be exploited to transform a simple tag into a sensing An RFID chip has, at least, two distinct impedances [2].
device. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that under some For a given antenna impedance, one should maximize the
specific design, the RFID tag can acquire interesting sens- power available for the chip’s internal circuitry, which
ing capabilities [9], [10]. Such an evolution is rapidly means power optimization for the downlink, and the other
evolving RFID from a powerful identification technology maximizes the signal that is reradiated toward the reader,
(just as an optical barcode) to a more attractive and versa- which means power optimization of the uplink. In this
tile technique that opens the door to a new paradigm, case, for each state, the reader receives two signal levels
commonly called Internet of things (IOT) [11]. that are different enough to encode the data. The power

From the previous discussion it appears that antenna matching condition to optimize the downlink is Za ¼ Z0c ,
design for RFID tags is still very specific and a challenging where Z0c is the chip impedance in the absorbing stateV
topic. This paper will review some advanced design meth- absorbing impedanceVwith the shunt transistor switched
ods that can help tag designers to reach good performance off. The chip impedance in reflecting state Z1c with the
in many cases. Several realistic examples will be consid- shunt transistor switched on is denoted as the reflecting
ered. Two main aspects will be studied: robust and sensing impedance. If the matching condition is realized, the chip
tags. can use the entire power available at the tag antenna.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II presents Hence, proper impedance matching is an important factor
the principle of operation of RFID. Section III discusses while considering an RFID system. Adding an external
the chip impedance. Section IV presents general tag an- matching circuit is not cost effective. So the matching
tenna design considerations. Section V deals with the should be established by optimization on the geometry of
conventional antenna design. Automated antenna design the antenna. If we consider the equivalent circuit of an
tool is introduced and discussed in Section VI. Various RFID system, the complex antenna impedance and the
study cases are discussed in Section VII followed by the use chip impedance are given by Za ¼ Ra þ jXa and Zic ¼ Rci þ
of the RFID tag as a sensor. jXci , respectively. Moreover, the complex chip impedance
is generally dependent on the frequency and the input
power applied to the chip [i.e., Zic ðf ; pÞ].
II . RFID PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION Consider the equivalent circuit diagram of a tag, as
The principle of operation of a passive RFID system is shown in Fig. 2, where the Thevenin equivalent circuit is
illustrated in Fig. 1. It usually contains two parts: a base used. It is important to notice that using this equivalent
station, also called the RFID reader and an RFID tag. The circuit, it is assumed implicitly that the electro magnetic
tag consists of an antenna and an application specific in- (EM) field scattered by an open circuit antenna is zero.
tegrated circuit (ASIC) chip. Both exhibit complex impe- This approximation holds for the family of small antennas
dances Za and Zc , respectively. The tag can operate in the [12], [13] such as linear dipole antennas and also for the
interrogation zone of the reader. When it receives the UHF RFID antennas that are assumed to be belonging to
modulated signal with sufficient power from the reader this family. As we will see in the following sections, the
(downlink), the tag switches the chip impedance between topology of the antennas used for the RFID tags resembles

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

Now, let us consider the variations of the parameters 

and K for different values of the antenna chip impedance.
An antenna loaded with the complex conjugate impedance
will transmit and also reradiate the same amount of power.
At the same time, if the antenna impedance is purely real,
short circuit antenna reradiates back four times as much
power as the complex conjugate matched one. Also the
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of an RFID tag. maximum power will be backscattered if the real value of
the impedance becomes zero. It is clear that the power
transmission coefficient  and the power backscattering
coefficient K will not give a maximum value simulta-
a folded dipole. Hence, it exhibits similar radiation neously. So a tradeoff has to be made between these two
characteristics. So, the total power collected by the tag coefficients based on the application. In practice, for a
Ptag and received by the chip Pchip can be expressed in given chip, this means that the condition Z0c ¼ Za is not
terms of impedances Zc and Za . The power at the chip Pchip necessarily the condition that maximizes the read range r
is given by Pchip ¼ Ptag , where , the power transmission [14]. However, in the case of passive UHF RFID tags, we
coefficient, can be expressed as observe that the sensitivity of the reader is always good
enough for not limiting the downlink condition. In this
case, the read range depends only on the impedance Z0c . To
Zc  Za optimize it, we will try to maximize the parameter  in
 ¼ 1  jtag j2 ; where tag ¼ order to obtain a good matching (complex conjugated)
Zc þ Za
between the antenna and the chip in the entire bandwidth.
4Ra Rc
upon substitution; ¼ : It is considered as sufficient to activate the tag so that the
jZa þ Za j2 communication is established. In this case, the read range
can be expressed as follows:

An increase in the value of  implies the maximum

sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 
power delivered to the chip, which in turn increases the
 Ptrans Greader Gtag 1  jj2
distance ddown at which the tag receives the power and r¼ (1)
responds to the reader. The value of  is between 0 and 1. 4 Pth
The power Pchip should be greater than the threshold
power Pth , which is the minimum power necessary to
power on the RFID chip. where  is the reflection coefficient.
In order to increase the modulation efficiency of the However, when the communication is to be provided
return link and hence improve the robustness of the com- for longer distances, irrespective of active UHF RFID,
munication link, the power reradiated by the tag should be constraints on the uplink must be considered. In this case,

Prec ¼ K i Ptag , where K i is the backscattering coefficient. for a given chip, the value of the antenna impedance, which
K i ¼ ð4Ra2 =jZic þ Za j2 Þ by assuming that the electromag- maximizes the read range r for the uplink. Such impedance
netic field reradiated by an open circuit antenna is is given by [14]
negligible.
The differential power delivered from the chip due to
the two different chip impedance states is given by Za;opt ¼ Ra;opt þ jXa;opt

Prec ¼ ðK 0  K 1 Þ Ptag . If we consider that the informa-
tion encoded is different in amplitude and suppose that the
reader has a sensitivity , the condition at which the so that
reader is able to collect the signal from the tag is given by
Prec > , where Prec is a function of the distance
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
  ffi
between the tag and the reader. This former expression  2  
Ra;opt ¼ 0 1 0
Rc Rc 1 þ Xc  Xc = Rc þ Rc 1 0 1
determines the maximum distance dup from which the
reader is able to decode the information from the tag. But
remember that unlike the downlink, this distance is based
on the two states of the impedance of the chip. In addition,
and
it is clear that the two characteristic distances we obtained
are different and independent of each other. In general,
the maximum reading distance r will be the minimum    
value between ddown and dup . Xa;opt ¼  Rc0 Xc1 þ Rc1 Xc0 = Rc0 þ Rc1 :

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

II I. DISCUSSION ON THE CHIP UHF RFID passive tags is to match the impedance of the
IMPEDANCE ZIC antenna in order to transfer maximum power to the chip.
In practice, to maximize the tag read range, the antenna An antenna optimization should be required in order to
impedance Za is matched to the chip impedance at the achieve such an antenna design. In practice, we consider
threshold power Pth . Once the power is sufficient to turn that the reader should always be able to collect the infor-
on the chip, the tag continues to operate when it is brought mation from the tag as long as the chip receives sufficient
closer to the reader. In return, when the distance becomes power and then is activated.
too short, the incident power on the tag can be very However, perfect matching cannot be achieved in
important and can cause a significant variation in the chip practice. The best way is to minimize the power reflection
impedance, which in turn causes an impedance mismatch coefficient  or to maximize the read range r. It is impor-
and a dead zone. Hence, more emphasis should be given to tant to notice that since there are strong constraints on the
the antenna design process regarding the impedance mis- size of the tag as well as applications, an omnidirectional
match. While considering the frequency regulation, it tag is mostly used. So, increasing the tag antenna gain is
states that if we want to make a tag that operates world- not an objective. The other parameters of the expression of
wide, it must be able to operate globally in the band 860– the read range are either imposed by the regulation
960 MHz. Moreover, the information provided by the chip ðPtrans Greader Þ or by the chip ðPth Þ.
manufacturer is often incomplete. Z0c ðf Þ is only available
from an equivalent circuit model, at the threshold power, Design Process: In order to satisfy the design require-
where Z0c ðf Þ  Rc þ 1=jC!, for a given capacitance C, and a ments, the tag range must be closely monitored. A tunable
series resistance Rc . antenna design is preferred to provide tolerance for the tag
As previously explained, the chip impedance is a func- fabrication process and also for optimizing antenna per-
tion of frequency and power. But no information is avail- formance on different materials in different frequency
able regarding the input power, which makes a challenging bands. But compromise has to be made to obtain good tag
design issue for the RFID tag. The variation of the chip performance since there are constraints in terms of the
impedance with power and frequency can drastically affect size, bandwidth, and the environment of use.
the performance of the tag. Similarly, no information is Since the structures under consideration are mostly
given for Z1c , which is a main parameter for the uplink planar, commercial 2-D 1/2 EM simulators are often used.
communication. The estimation of parasitic effects is also There are several standard tag dimensions, such as 9 
usually inaccessible. In this context, a measurement tech- 1 cm2 , 9  3 cm2 , and 7  7 cm2 , that are small when
nique for both values of the chip impedance has a greater compared to the UHF wavelength (31 cm at 960 MHz).
importance [15]. The difficulty of this approach lies in the Hence, miniaturization techniques must be implemented.
fact that the measurement must be performed on a chip The most popular method of miniaturization is simply to
that needs to be excited by an RFID frame. fold the arms of the dipole in order to get the desired
Now, if we consider the antenna, we notice that the template as well as good EM features. Also since the
value of the impedance can vary as well. As we can see, material on which the tag will be attached is unknown,
another challenging issue in the design of the RFID tag is traditional antenna design approaches cannot be applied
to reduce the effect of this impedance variation caused by directly. One possible way is to test different antenna
the physical environment changes. Because of the cost, the topologies until we get the solution for the initial problem.
tag must be able to operate on different objects, and since Thus, the design of UHF RFID antennas remains largely
we are not aware of the carrier at which the tag will be empirical and requires much expertise.
deployed, care should be given to the antenna design,
which should be more robust to the environmental V. CONVENTIONAL ANTENNA DESIGN
changes. In the following section, the standard method-
ology used to design RFID antennas is explained, followed While considering the conventional antenna design ap-
by a more advanced design methodology that takes into proach, three distinct steps can be noticed. The first step is
account the influence of the environment. to design a loop around the IC to compensate for its capa-
citive part. The system loop will resonate around the
desired UHF. Also the loop facilitates the very near-field
communication, which could be interesting in practice.
IV. GE NERAL T AG ANTENNA The second step involves adding metal strips such as dipoles
DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS to the loop in order to achieve an EM coupling (inductive or
While considering the general tag antenna design, contrary capacitive coupling). The radiating element could be either
to HF RFID, one of the most critical points in passive UHF physically connected to the loop or positioned near the
RFID systems is that there are no realistic analytical for- loop. The space between the two arms (conducted cou-
mulas which link the geometrical parameters to the elec- pling) and the space between the radiating element and the
trical model. In practice, the objective of the design of loop (inductive coupling) are key parameters, which have a

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

direct impact on the tag antenna performance [16]. The ature [19]. More precisely, this antenna design approach
final step involves tuning and optimization of the antenna guarantees to obtain a large panel of antenna topologies
to satisfy specific design requirements. and generate original shapes. Due to FASG and contrary
Tuning involves the main design challenges such as to the conventional antenna design, the users do not have
finding an antenna topology that has an effective corre- to suggest any initial antenna shape; instead, they just
lation between the variation of some geometrical dimen- have to define the chip parameters [the complex impedance
sions and the changes of antenna EM characteristics. of the chip ðZ0c Þ], the minimum power activation ðPchip Þ,
Parametric studies on the geometrical dimensions of the the maximum allowed size of the tag ðLt ; W t Þ, and some
antenna, such as spacing between the arms, length of the information concerning the tag environment. The principle
radiating element, etc., will provide a good understanding is based on the ability of the method: 1) to generate the
of the electrical behavior of the antenna. Also, the designer form of the antenna of the simulation; 2) to determine
has to find out the key parameters, i.e., parameters that the performance corresponding to the specifications; and
impact a specific antenna quantity, and which should be 3) to select the best performing antennas. These three steps
fixed as much independently as possible of other electrical are repeated iteratively in order to converge to the best
quantities. Also, we observe that by playing on a fairly solution that meets the specification of the user. This
small number of geometrical parameters identified cor- process is fully automated; the application returns an
rectly, we will be able to deal with the adaptation and the output form of an antenna that satisfies the input
operating frequency. Finally, optimization can be done for constraints or parameters.
a certain material with known permittivity and tangent However, the design of the platform-tolerant tag an-
loss. tennas can be found in literature [20], [21]. A platform-
In practice, if we look at the well-known RFID tags tolerant tag is achieved by adding a ground plane in the
made by different manufactures, we can seen that all tags design so as to make it as much independent as possible
consist of a loop and a radiating element. We can also see from the object on which the tag is positioned. So, these
that the same manufacturer, for different chips and hence antennas have narrow bandwidth, high complexity, and
for different impedances, keeps the same shape of the most importantly, high cost compared to the dipole type
antenna while changing certain key parameters like the tag antennas. For all these reasons, they are unsuitable for
total length of the dipole strips, or the width of the strips, many applications. The approach presented here is ra-
or the surface of the metallic part at the end [17]. It is dically different and it remains compatible with the stan-
evident that the choice of the imposed form of the antenna dard fabrication process constraints of RFID.
is the most important step, as the final performance is fully
dependent on this initial geometry. From this form we will
A. Fully Automated Shape Generation
be able to determine a minimum number of key param-
The idea is to generate the most varied shapes of an-
eters (the shape is more relevant, more parameters are tennas with a limited number of unknown parameters. The
independent, and their number is reduced more), which
method of generating antennas is a crucial aspect of our
allows readapting the antenna according to the needs
approach. This will directly determine the performance of
(change in the chip, also taking into account the different
our design process. It is interesting to generate original
environments or the sensitivity of the manufacturing,
antenna forms, but it is also important to be able to re-
etc.). The classic UHF RFID tag design process that we
produce the common RFID antenna shapes. Thus, the
have discussed so far is for a specific environment. It is
presented antenna generation approach is based on the
highly sensitive to this particular environment and it
class of folded wire structures. This antenna generation
changes its behavior when the environment changes. Thus, approach allows obtaining meanders (which intend to
the design process is not efficient in order to receive robust
reduce the length of the antenna) and offers the possibility
UHF RFID tags. In Section VI, we introduce a design
of getting loops. This last point is important as the loops
approach that also includes the environmental constraints.
are used in RFID to match the chip impedance to the
The process performs a new antenna shape generation
antenna, or to allow the tags operation in the near-field
technique to get a large panel of topologies.
region. The design is based on the end-to-end setting of
wires to obtain symmetric forms centered from the chip
VI . AUTOMATED ANTENNA location. The chip location in the structure can move, and is
DESIGN TOOL thus optimized. To generate antennas, we just have to de-
fine a vector of parameters to describe the antenna shape:
The antenna design approach presented in this section is
/ N: the elementary wire number;
based on a fully automated shape generation (FASG)
/ Lw : the elementary wire width;
coupled with the evolutionary programing technique based
/ C p : the chip location;

on the genetic algorithm (GA) [8], [18]. The significance of Li 2½Lmin Lmax 
GA for optimizing the complex structures comprising a / i 2½0ð=2Þð3=2Þ i¼1:N
: two parameters defining the
large number of parameters is already proved in the liter- position of each wire to another.

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

Fig. 3. (a) Tag antenna assembly example: C p : chip position;

Lw : wire width; Li Liþ1 : successive wire lengths; Lt W t : maximum
tag size. (b) Reference NXP tag (FFL95-8).

To construct each wire, we consider two points A and B

  xiþ1 ¼ xi þ Li  cosði Þ
Aðxi ;yi Þ Bðxi1 ;yiþ1 Þ : : (2)
yiþ1 ¼ yi þ Li  sinði Þ

These parameters have to be optimized during the

antenna generation process. The proposed antenna design
approach enables us to generate various forms from the Fig. 4. Schematic illustration of the GA on the shape of the antennas.
combination of simple elementary elements. Moreover, From one generation to another, depending on the evaluation of
this antenna generation requires a restricted number of each antenna, new forms are obtained in order to best meet the
unknown factors ð2N þ 3Þ. Fig. 3(a) shows an example of specification of the designer.

the form of an antenna generated by the automatic design

approach.
power is given by the manufacturing data [16]. In this level,
B. FASG Coupled With GA we also note that it is possible to add some weighing co-
An optimization process based on the concept of GAs efficients to (3) so as to favor one frequency over another.
[8], [18] is used to satisfy the constraints imposed during
the design process. The GA is the core of the automated
design process. Indeed, it evaluates the performance of the VI I. STUDY CASES
antennas and evolves from one generation to another so as
to make them better suited to the constraints imposed A. Common Fabrication Constraints
initially (see Fig. 4). Evaluation of the antenna consists of We consider the standard fabrication process con-
two steps: 1) EM characteristics of the antenna are straints of the RFID tag to validate our approach. The tag
obtained using Ansoft Designer; and 2) a function (fitness must have a maximum size of 95  10 mm2 . The antenna
function) that takes into account both the initial specifica- is made using aluminum with a thickness of 9 m and
tions and EM characteristics of the antenna returns a value printed on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with relative
that describes the performance of the antenna. permittivity 3.2 and thickness 50 m. The used chip has a
In the case of an RFID antenna, the read range r complex input impedance of Zchip ¼ 22  j 195  at
defined by (1) is a good indicator of the performance of the 915 MHz. Zchip corresponds to the chip impedance in the
antenna. The read range factor will be calculated in the absorbing state ðZ0c Þ. The objective is to obtain an antenna
UHF band (860–960 MHz) and the fitness function is making it possible to achieve the condition Zchip ¼ Za .
defined as the minimum value of r in all bands This chip is the NXP GX2L designed by Philips. For this
chip, the manufacturer develops the FFL 95-8 Tag that is
shown in Fig. 3(b). This tag is considered as the reference
fitness ¼ minfreq ðrÞ: (3) one for comparison with our designed tags.

The power emitted by the reader Ptrans Greader is fixed to B. Antenna Design Process Convergence
the 2-W effective radiated power (ERP) according to the As we explained, the antenna design process is an
European standards [4]. The minimum chip threshold iterative procedure and like any iterative procedure it is

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

Table 1 Typical GA Parameters

important to study the convergence and determine the loop. Fig. 5 depicts the topology and fitness evolution as a
simulation time. Table 1 summarizes the GA parameters function of GA generations. The presented antennas are
used in this example. those exhibiting the most important cost function for their
The proposed approach allows getting results for the generation.
optimization process in nearly 13 h of execution time According to Fig. 5, a large panel of topologies is ob-
with a dual core processor (2 GHz, memory: 4 Go). tained along the optimization process. Antenna shape
Indeed, we observe that the convergence results were changes from one generation to another. We also observe
obtained after 30 generations (28 generations in the that the evolution of the shape around the chip converges
example presented here, with a population of 40 chro- to a loop. It appears at the 15th GA generation, once it has
mosomes, so 28  40 iterations). This simulation time is appeared; it remains the same until the end of the
quite important but requires no human interaction; process.
everything was done to completely automate the design
process. C. Design of the Robust Tag by Considering
When we focus on the optimized antenna shape as the Environment
shown in Fig. 3(a), we observe that the approach automa- A universal tag that can be used regardless of the pro-
tically converges to an antenna with a loop. This behavior duct and the environment does not exist. It is then neces-
is not isolated; it appears to be related to the use of the sary to envisage gathering the objects under families of
read range in the cost function, which means searching products. The determination of these families is based
for the conjugate matched impedance [8]. Indeed, the primarily on the disturbances that these objects can intro-
search for another condition [14] can lead to a form duce on EM behavior of the antenna of the tag. Now we
without loop. Therefore, it is interesting to study the can make the distinction between the product families as
antenna topology evolution along the optimization process dielectric dominant families and metal dominant families.
in order to trace how the shape around chip evolves to a Here we are going to discuss the first case.

Fig. 5. Topology and fitness evolution, as a function of GA generation. Only one part of the antennas is shown. For each generation,
the shown antenna corresponds to the largest fitness function. Forty branches are present in every generation.

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

Fig. 6. Consideration of the environment in the design process of

automated robust RFID tags. EM disturbance of the tag because of
a product family of low dielectric permittivity is implemented in
the simulation by adding the tag to a dielectric plate of variable
permittivity.

For the family of the dielectric dominant product, it is Fig. 7. Simulated read range versus the frequency for the antenna
the value of the permittivity, the losses as well as the obtained by the automatic design approach in free space. Then, the
geometry (in particular the thickness) that intervene on same antenna is positioned on a dielectric plate (Fig. 6) with a
permittivity between 2.2 and 5.7.
the behavior of the antenna. On the basis of what we have
just explained, let us see how it is possible to add the
perturbation induced by the physical environment of the
tag during the design phase. impact of the dielectric plate on the performance of the
The first step consists of as simple modeling as possible antenna: the higher the permittivity, the lower is the
of the environmental disturbance of the tag in such a way read range.
as to integrate it into the simulation parameters. It was We see that for a value of permittivity of 5.7, the read
shown that by adding a tag to a thin dielectric plate where range can drop below 2 m at certain frequencies. This
the permittivity can be varied, it is possible to simulate the behavior is identical to that observed when one chooses
behavior of a certain family of objects [18]. Fig. 6 sum- the classical antenna design method. Indeed, if we con-
marizes this principle. In the example we present, we sider the NXP antenna [see Fig. 3(b)], we observe the same
consider a variation of permittivity between 1 and 6. This behavior in all similar points: the antenna is optimized for
range of values of permittivity corresponds to most of the free space and it has a very good read range (higher than
permittivity of the widespread objects that surround us 9 m), which also means that any variation of the envi-
(paper, paperboard, polymers, plastics, etc.). ronment will degrade its behavior.
From there, for each generated antenna, the simulation Now we focus on an antenna obtained with the auto-
of the tag on a dielectric plate of a permittivity in the matic design approach taking into account the influence of
considered interval will be carried out. For each simula- the environment. The resulting antenna and its read range
tion, the performances compared to the specifications will as a function of frequency for several values of the dielec-
be obtained by using the previously presented cost func- tric is shown in Fig. 8. It is observed clearly that the be-
tion. The difference here compared to the free-space case havior is stable regardless of the dielectric considered.
is that we will take into account the performances of the Indeed, the read range permanently lies between 5 and 7.
tag for each dielectric. Thus, the selected antenna must It is therefore a case where the external environment has
have a given read range for each frequency band and each less impact on the performances of the antenna. Measure-
considered environment. ments with everyday objects were carried out and these
results were confirmed [18]. It is also noticed that this
D. Results robustness comes at the expense of the maximum per-
To show the interesting part of this approach, we formance when the tag is placed in free space. Fig. 9 shows
will start by applying it to the hypothetical case where a comparison between the simulation and the measure-
the antenna is designed to operate in free space. In this ment, in a case where the tag is kept in free space and in a
case, there is no need to model the external environ- case where the tag is placed on a dielectric plate of
ment. Fig. 7 presents the antenna obtained in this case. 2.2 permittivity and 1-cm thickness.
This antenna is placed thereafter on a dielectric plate
whose permittivity can be varied. Fig. 7 also presents E. Toward the Use of RFID as a Sensor
the read range for each value of permittivity for the From the simulation results shown in Fig. 7, one can
entire RFID bandwidth. We clearly see the negative conclude that this tag is very sensitive to the environment.

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

Fig. 10. Activation power delivered by the reader as a function

Fig. 8. Simulated read range according to the frequency for an antenna
of the permittivity of the tag support. The tag (see Fig. 7) is positioned
obtained by the automatic design approach to function on a family
on a dielectric plate of 1-cm thickness with permittivity between
of objects of low permittivity. The antenna is positioned here on
2.2 and 5.7. The distance is 1 m.
a dielectric plate (Fig. 6) which varies the permittivity between
2.2 and 5.7.

harmful. Thus, one must choose a strategy to develop

In several practical implementations, this sensitivity is robust tags as explained previously and illustrated in
observed and usually considered as a negative effect and as Fig. 8.
one of the major weaknesses of UHF RFID. This is because Now, considering the tag of Fig. 7, its sensitivity be-
the antenna behavior is sensitive to the environment, i.e., comes an enormous advantage if one transforms this
the physical phenomena surrounding it and located in its weakness in a sensing capability. Some works [9], [22]
near-field region. Thus, one can potentially see the effect demonstrated that it is possible to use the RFID com-
on the communication signal of humidity, the proximity of munication protocol, fully standardized and mature tags to
dielectric materials, metal, or even the effect of coupling fulfill a function of the wireless sensor.
(due to near-field interaction with other resonant tags) As an example let us consider the tag response shown
observed when multiple tags are close to each other. For in Fig. 7. Considering the response at 915 and 955 MHz,
identification and tracking applications, these effects are we can determine the minimum required power to activate
the tag for different tag environments. This measured
parameter is given in Fig. 10, where the activation power
delivered by the reader is dependent on the dielectric
permittivity of the support of the tag. One notices that the
sensitivity of the sensor is quite interesting and could be
improved with an optimized antenna design. In a more
general case, at a given frequency, we can focus either on
the variation of the minimum power to activate the tag or
the variation of the received power by the reader. Both are
nonlinear functions of the physical quantities to monitor.
It was shown that it is possible to use low-cost RFID tags as
wireless sensors for temperature, humidity, displacement,
and liquid level while using the standard RFID commu-
nication protocol [23]–[26].

VIII. CONCLUSION
Even if the design of the antennas is a well-established
Fig. 9. Measurement and simulation comparison of the read range technique for many wireless applications, it is still a very
according to the frequency for an antenna obtained by the challenging problem when considering the UHF RFID
automatic design approach. tags. Indeed, the tag design should meet numerous

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

constraints due to RFID chip characteristics: low cost and On the other hand, more and more developments
small size requirements. In addition to that, there are consider the transformation of the RFID tags into the RFID
specific standards and RF emission regulations to meet. sensing tags. One very interesting method to deal with this
The latter regards frequency allocation and emission level is to exploit the sensitivity of the tag antenna to its envi-
that are different from region to region worldwide. Last, ronment. Some experimental results have demonstrated
but not least, the environment of the application should be this technique and its applicability to parameters such as
carefully modeled and included in the design process; the temperature, humidity, distance, etc. However, the
otherwise, the tags will be very specific to a limited sensing performance should be analyzed and thus opti-
number of environments. In this paper, we demonstrated mized thanks to a substantial electromagnetic simulation
that an automated EM simulator for realistic and quite phase. The automated approach presented in this paper fits
robust tags could be developed. This tool is based on the very well with such a requirement. More generally, the
principle of the automatic generation of the antenna shape flexibility and the versatility of this approach make it very
in such a way as to allow the maximum degree of freedom attractive for the RFID tag design in general, including the
during the antenna design process. The optimization emerging approach of the chipless RFID technology. h
process exploits the power of the GA and its ability to
define the cost function that groups several constraints.
Whereas manual RFID design optimization requires hours Acknowledgment
of human interaction, the use of a computer-aided design The authors would like to thank the Ph.D. students of
approach allows automating the process and drastically the Optoelectronic and Radio Frequency Systems (ORSYS)
speeding it. Antennas designed from this approach show group, in particular H. Chaabane and A. Vena, for their
good performance compared to commercial RFID tags. valuable and relevant contributions to the RFID project
They also present low sensitivity to a dielectric perturba- at the Laboratoire de Conception et d’intégration des
tion which model real RFID environment. Systèmes (LCIS).

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 Perret et al.: Design of Antennas for UHF RFID Tags

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Etienne Perret (Member, IEEE) was born in rams are under collaboration with international universities in Europe,
Albertville, Savoie, France, on October 30, 1979. United States, Canada, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt, Maghreb, etc. In 2006–
He received the Eng. Dipl. degree in electrical 2007, he serves as the Director of ESISAR. He has been involved in
engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure academic research supervision since 1982. His main research topics are
d’Electronique, d’Electrotechnique, d’Informa- applied electromagnetism, modeling of devices, and circuits at both RF
tique, d’Hydraulique et des Télécommunications, and optoelectronic domains. His current research concerns wireless
Toulouse, France, in 2002 and the M.Sc. and systems with specific attention to radio-frequency identification (RFID)
Ph.D. degrees from the Toulouse Institute of Tech- technology and its applications. He is the founder and past Director of the
nology, Toulouse, France, in 2002 and 2005, Laboratoire de Conception et d’intégration des Systèmes (LCIS).
respectively, all in electrical engineering. Currently, he is ORSYS group leader. He has more than 250 publications.
From 2005 to 2006, he held a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Dr. Tedjini is a member of several technical program committees
Fundamental Electronics (IEF), Orsay, France. His research activities (TPCs) and serves as expert/reviewer for national and international
cover the electromagnetic modeling of passive devices for millimeter and scientific committees and conferences including the International Stan-
submillimeter-wave applications. His current research interests are in dards Organization (ISO), Progress In Electromagnetics Research Sym-
the field of wireless communications, especially radio-frequency identi- posium (PIERS), IEEE, the International Union of Radio Science (URSI),
fication (RFID) with the design and development of antennas for RFID Agenre Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR), Fonds de Recherche du
tags. Since September 2006, he has been an Assistant Professor of Québec - Nature et Technologies (FRQNT), etc. He organized several
Electronics at the Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble-INP), conferences/workshops. He is President and founder of the IEEE
Valence, France. He has authored and coauthored more than 60 Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society French
technical conferences, letters and journal papers, and book chapters. Chapter, Vice-President of IEEE Section France and was elected as the
Dr. Perret is a Technical Program Committee member of IEEE-RFID. He Vice-Chair of URSI Commission D BElectronics & Photonics[ in 2008. He
was recently keynote speaker and the Chairman of the 11th Mediterra- was reelected as Vice-Chair of IEEE-France Section and will serve as the
nean Microwave Symposium (MMS’2011), Tunisia, and the SBMO/IEEE Chair of URSI Commission D3 for the triennium 2011–2014.
MTT-S International Microwave and Optoelectronics Conference
(IMOC’2011), Brazil. He also served as the Co-Chair of the 29th PIERS
2011 in Marrakesh, Morocco. Raji Sasidharan Nair (Student Member, IEEE) was
born in Kerala, India. She graduated in electronic
Smail Tedjini (Senior Member, IEEE) received the science and computer hardware from Mahatma
Doctor in Physics degree from Grenoble Univer- Gandhi University, Kerala, India, in 2005 and
sity, Grenoble, France, in 1985. received the M.S. degree in electronic science
He was Assistant Professor at the Electronics from Cochin University of Science and Technology
Department, Grenoble Institute of Technology (CUSAT), Kerala, India, in 2007. Currently, she is
(Grenoble-INP), Valence, France, from 1981 to working towards the Ph.D. degree at the Grenoble
1986, and Senior Researcher for the Research Institute of Technology (Grenoble-INP), Valence,
French National Center (CNRS) from 1986 to 1993. France.
He became University Professor in 1993 and since She worked as a Project Fellow at the Centre for Research in Electro-
1996 he has been Professor at the ESISAR, magnetics and Antennas, CUSAT. Her current research activity is mainly
Embedded Systems Department of Grenoble-INP. His teaching topics the design and development of chipless radio-frequency identification
concern electromagnetism, RF, wireless and optoelectronics. He served (RFID) tags.
as coordinator and staff member in numerous academic programs both Miss Nair was the recipient of the best scientific student paper award
for education and research. He was coordinator for Ph.D., Master, and at the 2011 IEEE International Conference in RFID Technologies and
Bachelor Programs at the University of Grenoble; some of these prog- Applications.

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