Design of A Chipless UWB RFID Tag Using CPW

Circular Monopole Antennas and Multi-Resonators

Muhammad A. Ashraf1, Osama M. Haraz1, Mohammed R. AlShareef2, Hatim M. Behairy2 and S. Alshebeili1
1
KACST TIC in Radiofrequency and Photonics (RFTONICS) for the e-society, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
2
National Center for Electronics and Photonics, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
mashraf@ksu.edu.sa, oharaz@ksu.edu.sa, alshareef@kacst.edu.sa, hbehairy@kacst.edu.sa, dsaleh@ksu.edu.sa

Abstract— This paper presents the design of a chipless ultra-

wideband radio frequency identification (UWB RFID) tag. The
tag is composed of two modified coplanar waveguide (CPW)
circular monopole antennas and seven bit multi-resonator. The
proposed tag can be identified based on spectral signature (SS)
that is used to encode the incident signals in the frequency range
from 6 GHz to 8 GHz. The designed monopole antennas and
multi-resonator are characterized using full wave simulation
program. Complete RFID system is modeled and time domain
characteristics of the pulse received at the receiver’s antenna is
studied. Results show that the encoded pulse exhibits different
signature compared to the incident pulse that can be easily
distinguished in time domain.

Index Terms— Coplanar waveguide, incident wave, multi-

resonator, time domain reflectometry, radiofrequency
identification, ultra-wideband.

I. INTRODUCTION
Ultra-wideband (UWB) chipless radiofrequency
identification (RFID) tags offers a promising solution for items
tracking [1]. In order to develop very low cost, flexible and Fig. 1. Geometry of broadband CPW circular monopole with two steps and
an offset circular slot antenna.
power efficient, RFID tags, the designed circuit’s fabrication is
done over very thin substrate or paper substrate using inkjet based cross-polarized circular monopole antennas and 7-bits
printing technology [2-4]. Chipless RFID tags requires multi-resonators. Initially, CPW fed circular disc monopole
encoding of data without integrated circuits (ICs) that is antenna is designed. The multi-resonator is designed to exhibit
accomplished by two different techniques based on: (i) time
spectral signature across 6 GHz to 8 GHz frequency band. To
domain reflectometry (TDR) and (ii) spectral signature (SS).
ensure flexibility of tag, both antenna and resonators are
Different chipless TDR and SS based RFID tags have been designed over a thin substrate
reported in the literature [5-8]. The TDR based encoding uses
capacitive loading at different points of microstrip lines which
produces the precisely delayed backscattered pulses of incident II. BROADBAND ANTENNA DESIGN
signals [5, 6]. The space-filling curves and capacitively tuned
The circular monopole antenna with two steps and an offset
dipoles are used for spectral signature encoding [7, 8]. The
circular slot is designed by following the guidelines described
capacitive loading in TDR base tags is achieved by delay lines.
in [9], [10]. In order to reduce fabrication efforts and cost,
In order to encode each bit, multiple delay lines are required
antennas and resonators circuits are designed based on CPW
which significantly increases the size of a tag. Similarly, to
technology. Therefore, the proposed UWB monopole antenna
encode data using space filling corves requires unrealizable
is modified to have good impedance matching with stable
circuit modifications. Moreover, undesired parasitic coupling
radiation characteristics over the required bandwidth. It is
of tuned dipoles restricts the efficient encoding of interrogation
worthy to mention that UWB regulations at Saudi Arabia
signals.
allows a band from 6 GHz to 8 GHz for RFID application [11].
This paper presents a design of fully printable chipless
Fig.1 shows the geometry of CPW fed circular disc
RFID tag developed by using co-planar waveguide (CPW)
monopole antenna. The antenna is designed on Rogers®

978-1-4673-6555-0/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

 TABLE I. OPTIMIZED PARAMETERS OF UWB MONOPOLE ANTENNA Based on the calculated antenna performances, the
Parameter W L W0 S0 W1 W2 R1 R2 proposed UWB monopole antenna can be considered a good
candidate for RFID localization applications.
Value (mm) 25 31 3.3 0.3 3.5 3.5 8.5 3.5

Parameter d R1e R2e L1 L2 L3 LG --

Value (mm) 1 5.1 4.2 2 2
RO4003C high frequency laminate with relative permittivity of
εr = 3.55 and loss tangent of tanδ = 0.0027. The thickness of
substrate material is 0.508 mm. The optimized antennas
geometry parameters are summarized in Table I.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Fig. 2(a) presents the simulated return loss |S11| and
maximum realized boresight gain of the proposed CPW UWB
monopole antenna. All simulations have been carried out using
CST Microwave Studio program [12]. The designed antenna
exhibits a good impedance matching performance from 3.5
GHz to 8 GHz covering the proposed frequency range. Results
present that the antenna gain is varying with frequency from
3.2 dBi to 4.1 dBi.
It is very essential to analyze the radiation characteristics of
the proposed monopole antenna. Fig. 3 presents the antenna
three dimensional radiation patterns at 6.8 and 7.2 GHz. The
colored bar besides each radiation pattern correspond to the
realized gain values. The presented results reveals that
designed antenna exhibit omnidirectional radiation
characteristics. Moreover, gain performance is stable over the
design spectrum which is important to design a spectral
signature based RFID tag.
5
0
& Gain, dB
IV. GEOMETRY OF CHIPLESS CPW RFID-TAG
4.9 12.1 --
The geometry of proposed CPW multi-resonators based
chipless RFID tag is shown in Fig. 4. Two modified monopole
antennas are attached to 7-bit multi-resonators in cross-
polarization configuration. In order to receive and re-transmit
the corresponding polarized signal from and to the interrogator,
the monopole antennas were placed at 90° orientation. The
multi-resonators were modified to operate within our band of
interest by following the design guideline discussed in [13].
Fig. 4 (b) shows the geometrical configuration of multi-
resonators. It consist of two open stubs attached to a
rectangular slot. The resonant frequency of each resonator is
controlled by its slots length. Therefore, all parameters of
different resonators are kept constant except the slot lengths.
Two adjacent resonators are placed apart by 3 mm to avoid
mutual coupling. The minimum dimensions of the designed
resonator is not less than 0.3 mm, so the structure can be easily
fabricated using conventional printed circuit board technology
based on chemical processes. The resonant frequency of each
resonator can be controlled by
S
11
Gain

-5 (a)

-10
11

s6
S

-15

-20
s4
2 3 4 5 6 7
Freq. (GHz)
8 9 10 11 12
s3
Fig. 2. Simulated reflection coefficient and antennas maximum realized gain s2
s1 s5

W0
(b)
Fig. 4. Geometrical configuration of (a) the proposed CPW RFID tag
Fig. 3. Radiation pattern of circular monopole, circular slot antenna antenna, (b) the 7-bit multi-resonator.
 TABLE II. GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS OF THE RFID TAG

Parameter S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 Lt Wt
Value 0.8 0.3 0.3 0.4 3 0.3 117 51

Parameter LR1 LR2 LR3 LR4 LR5 LR6 LR7 --

Value 5 4.8 4.6 4.4 4.2 4 3.85 --

varying LRx and S6. The optimized geometrical parameters of

resonators are described in Table II.

A. CPW Multi-Resonator

Rx nn
The number of bits in a multi-resonators corresponds to the

An

numbers of resonant sections. Due to UWB regulations, only 2
GHz bandwidth is available which results a fewer number of
bits that can be used for encoding without introducing inter-
mode coupling. Initially we started our design with four
numbers of bits. However, it was challenging and cumbersome
to have more numbers of bits with restricted bandwidth. The
designed resonators are of 7-bits operating at 6.13 GHz, 6.36
GHz, 6.62 GHz, 6.91 GHz, 7.20 GHz, 7.51 GHz and 7.81
GHz, distributed over 6 GHz to 8 GHz band with
approximately 300 MHz separation. Fig. 5 presents the
simulated transmitted coefficient of S21 of CPW multi-
resonator. There are seven nulls across the proposed band that
can be used to encode incident wave required for RFID tag
application. It is important to have nulls as lower as possible
for a distinct spectral signature. Using “0” and “1” logic
representation for having a null and for not having a null,
respectively, there are possible 128 different data patterns
which depends upon the physical structure of the designed tag.
B. Electric Fieldt Distribution and Scattering Waveforms
Using full wave simulation software CST Microwave
Studio, the electric field distribution at resonant frequencies
and the encoding of incident wave is studied.
. a
te
Fig. 6. Configuration of RFID tag antenna illuminated by a uniform plane
wave for calculating the current distribution and encoded waveform.
Fig. 6 shows the configuration of an RFID tag antenna
illuminated by a uniform plane wave from a distance D = 0.8 m
which satisfies the far-field conditions. Electric field probe is
placed in front of tag transmitted antenna to record encoded
time domain waveform.
Fig.7 shows the electric field distribution at 6.13 GHz and
6.91 GHz related to resonant frequencies of 1st bit and 4th bit,
respectively. It is obvious that the waveform received at the
tag’s Rx. antenna is retransmitted by the tag’s Tx. antenna
with 90º polarization. Moreover, at 6.13 GHz and 6.19 GHz
frequencies, the maximum power is coupled to the 1st and 4th
bit respectively and so on.
Fig. 8 shows the time-domain incident and encoded
waveforms coming out from the RFID tag antenna. The default
pulse generated by CST program having full width half
maximum (FWHM) approximately equal to 0.723 ns is used
for comparison. To have fair comparison both pulses are
normalized and time scale is adjusted to overlap each other.

0
7-bit Resonator
-2

-4
Insertion Loss (S 21) , dB

-6

-8

-10

-12

-14

-16 b1 b7
-18
b2 b5 b6
b4
-20 b3
5 5.5 6 6.5
b1 7 7.5 8 8.5 9
Freq. (GHz)
Fig. 5. Simulated transmission coefficient (S21) of multi-resonator. Fig. 7. Electric field distribution of RFID tag at two different frequencies.
 1.5 [6] Shrestha, S.; Balachandran, M.; Agarwal, M.; Phoha, V.V.;
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Normalised Amplitude

0.5
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domain by one ns. Therefore, due to distinguishable time citc.gov.sa/arabic/RulesandSystems/RegulatoryDocuments/Equi
domain signature it is suitable to use the proposed structure for pmentApproval/Pages/Technical_Specification.aspx.”
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Chipless UWB RFID System Using A CPW Multi-
This work is supported by King Abdul-Aziz City for Resonator," Antennas and Propagation Magazine, IEEE ,
Science and Technology (KACST) Technology Innovation vol.55, no.1, pp.13,31, Feb. 2013.
Center (TIC) in Radiofrequency and Photonics (RFTONICS)
for the e-society hosted by King Saud University (KSU).

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