Novel MIMO-based technique for EM-imaging of chipless RFID

A novel MIMO-based technique is proposed for fast data decoding of a printable chipless RFID tag through SAR-imaging approach. The tag includes an array of 45° inclined conductive meander line polarizers. Reader comprises a set of fixed MIMO-based Tx and Rx antennas resulting in a long virtual array antenna. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image processing through the MIMO-based antennas provides a fast approach for electromagnetic (EM) imaging of the RFID chipless tag that reveals the encoded data. Provided EM-image resolution yields 17-bit data from a tag of one fifth of a credit card size. Therefore, encoding of 93 data bits is feasible in a credit card. The tag´s immunity to multipath, reflective surfaces, interferences, bending effects and printing inaccuracies along with its high data capacity attributes huge potentials for low cost item tagging.