Antenna Analysis

The flat spiral rectangular loop antenna is improved from the rectangular loop antenna
to provide better magnetic field distributions in various directions a spiral
configuration as shown in Fig. 2, where d is the separation distance between each
spiral loop In this design, the dimension of antenna are 50 cm of width and 80 cm of
height (with d=10 cm). In addition, the matching circuit is designed to match the
antenna to the reader 50 Ω input impedance as shown in Fig. 3. The percentage of
volume of magnetic field intensity is used as a figure of merit. The percentage of
volume for communication achievement is probability of all points in the space that
have magnetic field strength stronger than the activation field intensity (Ht) of a tag.
This paper considers the percentage of volume in three principal axes (x-axis, y-axis
and z-axis) as a antenna performance. where Pvx, Pvy and Pvz are the percentages of
volume in x, y and z axes, respectively. The evaluation of percentage of volume starts
from considering percentage of line (Pl). It is determined by considering a tag goes
through gate along a straight line from the entrance to the exit. If some points in the
line (parallel to the x-axis) has H(x,y,z) ≥ Ht, then the percentage of that line is 100%.
However, if every point along the line has H(x,y,z) < Ht, the percentage of line is 0%.
Note that H(x,y,z) is the magnetic field intensity simulated by NEC [4] at any point
parallel to the x-z plane. (Ht is assumed to be 56 mA/m for the ISO card). The
evaluation of the percentage of surface is subsequently calculated by (1).
N

 P (z )
l n
Ps ( ym )  n 1

, N (1)
where N is the total number of lines along the z axis, Ps(ym) is the percentage of
surface in the x-z plane, Pl(zn) is the percentage of line along the x axis. Note that
Ps(ym)≤100%. The subdivided area is shown in Fig.4a. The percentage of surface is
consequently used to evaluate the percentage of volume (Pv) by equation (2).
M
 Ps ( ym )
Pv  m1
M , (2)
where M is the total number of surface parallel to the x-z plane between two gate as
shown in Fig.4b. Note that Pv≤100%. In addition, the considered volume must cover
all regions between two antennas. Therefore, this paper uses the following dimension
to obtain the percentage of volume: x-axis from -0.25 m to 0.25 m, y-axis from 0 to 1
m and z-axis from -0.4 m to 0.4 m. The simulation result of the percentage of volume
in principle axes equal to 100%, 97.01% and 90.06%.