Design and Implementation of a Wirelessly Powered RFID System Enclosed Inside Metal Containers

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of a wirelessly powered RFID system enclosed inside closely sealed aluminum containers. The system enables power and data transfer to an RFID tag enclosed inside a closely sealed 1 mm thick aluminum container at a distance of up to 1 m from the reader. Utilizing custom-designed magnetic dipoles operating at 103 kHz, the system achieves a maximum harvested power of $408~\mu \text{W}$ AC and $96~\mu \text{W}$ DC. Also, bidirectional communication is demonstrated at a maximum data rate of 1.2 kbps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a passive RFID system operating at a distance of 1 m, while its RFID tag is enclosed inside a closely sealed aluminum container, and without using batteries.