A novel “Universal” inkjet-printed EBG-backed flexible RFID for rugged on-body and metal mounted applications

A novel inkjet-printed electromagnetic bandgapbacked (EBG) RFID tag has been designed and tested for wearable and metal mount applications. An array of split-ring resonators and a dipole antenna matched to an RFID chip at 915 MHz were designed and inkjet printed on paper substrate. Measurements of the tag in free space show that the required reader´s minimum transmit power for successful tag reading decreases by 6 dB compared to the case without EBG, while for on-body and on-metal measurements, the read range increases by nearly a factor of 2. It has to be noted that the proposed RFID tag is flexible since it can be easily fabricated by inkjet printing nano- silver particles on paper or platic substrates. It can find numerous applications ranging from wearable antennas and bio-monitoring to transportation and logiitics for mass shipping.