The development and design of a novel chipless RFID system for low-cost item tracking

In this paper, the novel chipless RFID system uses multiresonators to encode the spectral signature into multi-bit identification data for items. We have shown simulation and experimental results which confirm that by interrogating the transponder with a multi-frequency signal, it is possible to detect the distinct magnitude and phase variations of the received tag signal and thus decode the transponders ID. The frequency signature based system is the first of its kind to use the amplitude as well as phase to encode data which increases the reading range from a few millimeters to more than 20 cm. The chipless tag has a great market potential if printed on plastic substrate using transparent conductive (silver) ink for low-cost item tracking.