Advanced design of RFID tag antennas using artificial magnetic conductors

We summarize a successful method to increase reading distances of passive radio frequency identification (RF-ID) tag antennas, which is integrated with an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) ground plane. By introducing the AMC ground plane, our tags become insensitive to target platform materials. In other words, our tags can be directly attached onto metal or dielectric materials with high permittivity with almost no degradation in their performance. In addition, using the reflection phase variation property of the AMC, we can increase a recognition distance and reduce overall height of the tag antenna, remarkably.