The UHF Gen 2 RFID System for transcutaenous operation for orthopedic implants

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a UHF Gen 2 RFID system for transcutaneous operation for identifying and monitoring orthopedic implants. The major problems of using existing RFID antennas at UHF band for transcutaneous operation include possible interference with pacemakers and interference with other RFID systems working at the same band. To provide a solution for the above problems, this paper uses transcutaneous near field communication (TNFC) technology based on capacitive coupling between the reader and the tag. The reader and tag both have two electrodes and the energy and signal transmission occurs with the coupling between the electrodes. Both the reader and the tag are impedance matched for maximum power transmission efficiency. A reading range of 4.1 cm is achieved through pork skin using 30 dBm power from the reader. The proposed UHF RFID system is a feasible solution to provide high efficiency for transcutaneous operation while can eliminate an interference with other medical devices or RFID devices.