Research on smart sensing RFID tags under flexible substrates in printed electronics

Taking advantage of the printed electronic interconnection technology and development of radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, a novel design and integration approaches for fabricated sensing RFID tags on flexible substrates is presented in this paper. The design is a semi-passive tag which includes a RFID chip, an additional microcontroller unit (MCU), a LED, and external sensors. The antennas and all electronic components interconnects were screen-printed on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate using silver ink. Their behaviors are in a good agreement with those simulations in electromagnetic simulation software. The acquisition of sensor data through answering to the RFID reader directly. Practical measurements have validated the reliability of the technique in low energy consumption and shown important advantages to monitor environment and display operating information.