Design of a High-Performance Microstrip Array Antenna with Coplanar Corporate Feed Network for Long-range RFID System

摘要

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a technology deployed in all areas of automatic data capture which allows contact-less identification of objects via Radio Frequency (RF). The Current applications range from industrial automation to access control, from animal identification to e-Passport, from medical applications to ticketing and inventory tracking. RFID technology solutions are acquiring much attention in research and development projects of large corporations. RFID is a major growth area in auto identification applications, providing the technology behind contact-less smart card, production automation and the electronic supply chain. In this paper a 16-element (4×4) transmitting array antenna and 4 element (1×4) receiver array antenna with their printed feed network on same plane is designed for high-performance long range RFID Reader operating at 2.403GHz ISM band. The Receiver receives the back scattered signal from RF Tag i.e. 4806 MHz, and the predicted radiation patterns, return-loss, VSWR, directivity and gain are presented, good agreement with measured results are obtained. The design is verified by fabricating the array antenna on a PTFE Glass Fiber -RT Duriod 5870(ε_r =2.33) with a thickness of 62 mils (1.575 mm).