On the use of power-transfer efficiency to analyze the performance of a 3D-printed wearable UHF-RFID antenna

Novel Yagi-like antenna structures were investigated here to design a UHF-RFID wearable antenna. The textile antennas were designed to be integrated into a smart glove, together with a compact UHF-RFID reader. Parasitic elements, acting as either a reflector or directors, were included to focus the field out of the operator's hand, thereby limiting the radiation toward undesired directions. To predict and compare the performance of the proposed near-field antennas, the power-transfer efficiency was numerically computed as a function of the reader-tag distance.