Design of a Compact PIFA Tag Antenna for Wearable Electronics

Abstract

A UHF RFID wristband tag is designed using a planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA). With the use of the folding technique and the PP-2 soft foam substrate, the tag can be made compact, light-weight, and flexible for electronic package. The tag's footprint is only 900 mm2 with almost 100% power transmission. From simulation, the wristband tag has a theoretical read range of 8.3 m at 923 MHz when placed on a rectangular phantom. With a 3.28 W EIRP, it is also experimentally demonstrated that the wristband tag can be read from 5.1 m when it is tested on minced meat.