Feasibility of wireless temperature sensing by passive UHF-RFID tags in ground satellite test beds

Satellite ground testing is nowadays suffering from long and complicated measurement procedures, where cabled sensors are involved: as such, it could strongly benefit from wireless sensing capabilities, enabling simplified measurement setup procedures and substantial cost reduction. Passive RFID wireless sensors are improving in maturity and robustness for Earth use and could be optimal candidates also for Space-related applications. The present work shows a first attempt to evaluate the performance of newly developed temperature-monitoring RFID sensor tags for satellite ground testing, both from a sensor point of view and from a EMC/EMI perspective.