Abstract
A novel ultra-high-frequency (UHF) RFID reader antenna is proposed, designed and measured. The proposed antenna is capable of 2-dimensional (2D) beam-scanning from 0° to 360° in the azimuth plane, and 0° to 40° in the zenith plane. The minima of the antenna's axial ratio (AR) follows its gain maxima during beam-scanning, resulting in an equivalent 3 dB AR beamwidth of over 136° for every phi cut. Moreover, the antenna's AR can be easily modified without affecting other parameters. It is shown experimentally that the antenna's 2D beam-scanning ability and the improved AR performance lead to better tag-reading results, improving the percentage of missing tags by up to 21.6% compared to a standard antenna which has a degraded AR and only supports 1D beam-scanning. In addition, the antenna needs no matching network and has a -10 dB return loss bandwidth from 860 MHz to 880 MHz.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 9097294 |
Pages (from-to) | 468-475 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 20 May 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Dec 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Channel Optimised Distributed Passive Sensor Networks) under Grant EP/S-19405/1.
Funding
This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Channel Optimised Distributed Passive Sensor Networks) under Grant EP/S-19405/1.
Keywords
- Antenna arrays
- phased arrays
- radio-frequency identification
- UHF antennas
- UHF propagation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Instrumentation