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Beam Scanning UHF RFID Reader Antenna with High Gain and Wide Axial Ratio Beamwidth

  • Rui Chen
  • , Shuai Yang
  • , Ajeck M. Ndifon
  • , Ian H. White
  • , Richard V. Penty
  • , Michael Crisp
  • University of Cambridge

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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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 languageEnglish
Article number9097294
Pages (from-to)468-475
Number of pages8
JournalIEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification
Volume4
Issue number4
Early online date20 May 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 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

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