Design of RFID tag antenna for metallic surfaces using lossy substrate

A novel low-cost antenna design suitable for radio frequency identification (RFID) tags mountable on metallic surfaces is presented. The antenna consists of two shorted patches printed on a lossy FR4 substrate and their radiating edges are facing each other. A tag chip feed is placed between two patches and a stacked shunt capacitor is formed to adjust the antenna impedance. The proposed design reduces the substrate loss and improves the radiation efficiency by more than double compared with a conventional planar inverted-F antenna, which is verified by simulation and measurement.