Tag Placement Studies

A.R. Harish, Ankita Kapoor, Sneha Singh, Ankit Sharma, Manish Meena, Kanav Gupta, Adarsh Kumar Dubele
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur – 208016, India
arh@iitk.ac.in
Abstract — The performance of an RFID tag depends on the tag itself. For example, it is not quite intuitive to predict the
environment in which it is placed. We place the RFID tag on performance of the tag as the thickness of the material
large wooden boards and measure its performance by recording increases, permittivity changes or if the tag is placed such
the threshold power. Threshold power is the minimum power
required to activate a tag. We show that as the thickness of the that the slab itself blocks the line of sight path between the
wooden slab increase, the performance first deteriorates and tag and the reader antenna.
then it improves. We also make an interesting observation that, In this paper, we present the details of the experiments that
the performance of the tag could be much superior when the have been conducted to assess the performance of the tag
board is blocking the line of sight path. placed on different material surfaces. We use threshold
These observations have been supported by making field power as a measure to assess the performance of the RFID
measurements using a probe and a network analyzer. Further, a
theoretical model based on the interaction of plane waves with a tag placed on a dielectric material. The experimental
dielectric slab has been used to explain the measured observations are correlated with the data generated using a
observations. theoretical model based on the interaction of the plane wave
Index Terms — RFID, tag performance, environment effect. with the dielectric medium.

I. INTRODUCTION II. THRESHOLD POWER MEASUREMENT

A Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system consists The RFID system under consideration consists of an Alien-
of a reader and a tag. The tag is usually attached to the object 8800 reader and a squiggle tag (Fig. 1). The frequency of
which needs to be identified. The tag has a small amount of operation of the system is 865 MHz. It is possible to attach
memory in which the information about the identity of the four antennas to the reader, but for our experiments we use
object being recognized is stored. The reader interrogates the only two antennas.
tag and accesses the information stored in the tag and then
passes it on to the back-end system. Apart from establishing a
communication link between the reader and the tag, the
electromagnetic waves are used to supply the DC power to
the passive tag. A passive RFID tag consists of an antenna Fig. 1. Photograph of the Alien Squiggle tag used in this study.
and an integrated circuit (IC). One of the design objectives of
a tag is to maximize the power transfer between the antenna In the first experiment the tag is attached to a wooden
and the IC [1-3]. This is achieved by choosing the geometry board and is placed at a distance of about a metre from the
and dimensions of the antenna such that the antenna terminal reader antennas (Fig. 2). The measurements are carried out
impedance and the IC terminal impedance form a complex inside an anechoic chamber so that the interference from
conjugate pair. The terminal impedance of an antenna is a external signals and neighboring objects is minimized.
strong function of the environment in which it is radiating.
That is, the environment in which a tag is placed can alter the
terminal impedance of the tag and hence the performance of
the tag itself. Reader
Antennas
Propagation of electromagnetic waves is influenced by the
environment. Therefore, the amount of energy reaching the
tag antenna depends on the interaction of the waves and the
environment in which the reader and the tag are placed. For
example, if a tag is placed very close to a conducting sheet
such that the fields due to the induced current on the sheet
opposes the fields due to the current established on the
antenna, the tag becomes unreadable. Tag
The behaviour of a tag stuck on a dielectric sheet, such as a
wooden board or a glass sheet, depends on the permittivity of
the material, thickness of the material and the location of the Fig. 2. Photograph of the measurement setup.

978-1-4244-2802-1/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE 2379

 35 27

Tag Above the Board

31

Threshold Power (dBm)

Tag Below the Board
Threshold Power (dBm)

23
27

23
19

19

15 15
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
Board Thickness (mm) Board Thickness (mm)

Fig. 3. Threshold power for the tag placed on wooden board Fig. 4. Threshold power for the tag placed below the wooden
(Distance between reader antenna and tag: 119 cm). board (Distance between reader antenna and tag: 205 cm).

We now change the transmit power of the reader in steps of

III. FIELD MEASUREMENTS
0.1 dB and make an attempt to read the tag. We record the
lowest power at which a tag is read, and it is known as Performance degradation of a tag placed on a dielectric
“threshold power”. Threshold power indicates the smallest slab could be explained by making field measurements in the
power at which a tag can be read. We can also measure the vicinity of the board. Fig. 5 shows the experimental
threshold power for writing the tag, but in this study we do arrangement used to measure the field near the board. It
not present the results for this. consists of a reflector backed dipole antenna placed at a
Threshold power is a power parameter to compare the height of about a metre from the wooden board. A probe
performance of the tags placed in different environments. located at the surface of the board is used to measure the field
Higher threshold power indicates degradation in the system strength at the top and bottom surfaces of the board. Fig. 5
performance. Of course, threshold power has a correlation shows the probe located at the top surface of the board. The
with the read range of a tag. Read range is the longest two cables, one from the antenna and the other from the
possible distance at which a tag can be read with a specified probe are connected to a network analyzer. We vary the
reader transmit power. Therefore, lower threshold power number of wooden slabs, and for each case the S21 values
implies longer read range, and hence a better system. are measured by placing the probe on the two surfaces of the
We now measure the threshold power with the tag kept board.
above the wooden board, i.e. the tag is placed between the
board and the reader antennas (Fig. 2), and plot threshold
power as a function of thickness (d) of the board (Fig. 3). For
this study, we use 17 mm thick wooden boards. Zero
thickness indicates that the measurement is carried out
without any board. When the tag is above the board, as the
thickness increases, the threshold power increases, touches a Transmit
maximum (for d = 51 mm) and then starts decreasing. Antenna
Beyond d = 120 mm, the threshold power again goes up.
Here the distance between the tag and the reader antennas
was 119 cm. What is really interesting is that, when the tag is
placed below the board, the tag gets detected at the lowest
possible power that can be set in the reader (15.7 dBm). The
threshold power is lower when the board is blocking the line
of sight path between the antenna and the tag.
If we now move the antenna away from the tag (spacing:
205 cm), as expected, the threshold power increases and is
Probe
shown in Fig. 4. In this case too the threshold power changes
with the thickness of the board. The threshold power
increases up to a thickness of 50 mm, and then decreases
until the thickness reaches 75 mm. Further increase in the
thickness results in higher threshold power.
Fig. 5. Experimental setup used to measure the field at the
surface of the board.

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 -54 5 -50
Probe above the board
-55

Normalized Threshold Power (dBm)

Probe below the board
-56 0 -55
-57
-58
-5 -60
S21 (dB)

S21(dB)
-59
-60
-10 -65
-61
-62
-63 -15 Normalized Threshold Power -70

-64 S21
-65 -20 -75
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
Board Thickness (mm) Board Thickness (mm)

Fig. 6. Network analyzer measurements for wooden board. Fig. 8. Comparison of normalized threshold power and S21 data
(at the bottom surface of the board).
In Fig. 6 we plot the magnitude of S21, as measured by the
A comparison of these two parameters corresponding to
network analyzer, as a function of the board thickness. These
the bottom surface of the board is shown in Fig. 8, and once
plots clearly show an oscillatory nature of |S21| versus the
again a good correlation is seen between the two curves.
thickness of the board, and also the field strength is higher at
It is possible to give a theoretical explanation for this
the bottom of the board as compared to that on the top.
behaviour using a plane wave model. Let us suppose that a
linearly polarized plane wave is incident on a dielectric slab
We can now correlate the measured S21 values and the
of thickness d and relative permittivity r. We can show that
threshold power. It is important to note that higher S21
[4] ratio of fields at the top and the bottom surfaces can be
implies larger field strength and on the contrary higher
written as
threshold power implies weaker field strength. Therefore, 1
instead of plotting the threshold power, we plot the Eb  1 
normalized threshold power defined by  coskd   j sin kd  (2)
Et   r 
Pth,n (dB) =15.7 (dBm) –Pth (dBm) (1) where k is propagation constant for the dielectric medium.
This simple theory indicates that the field strength at the
where, Pth,n is the normalized threshold power in dB and Pth
bottom of the board is always greater than or equal to that at
is the threshold power in dBm. Power level of 15.7dBm
the top.
refers to the minimum power that the RFID reader can
The measured and theoretical field ratios are shown in
transmit.
Fig. 9. For this simulation we have considered the relative
A comparison of normalized threshold power measured
permittivity of wood to be 2.1. We see a good agreement
using the RFID reader and tag combination and S21
between the two results. As the board thickness increases, the
measured using a probe and a network analyzer is shown in
field strength ratio (Eb/Et) increases, touches a maximum, and
Fig. 7. Here, the data for the probe and tag when placed on
starts decreasing. Theory predicts that at about d = 115 mm
the top surface of the board are presented. We can conclude
the field at the back of the board almost goes to zero.
from the figure that there is a good correlation between the
However, measurement shows that it is about 0.4 times the
normalized threshold power and the S21 measurements.
field at the front of the board. This could be due to the
5 -50 inaccuracies in the positioning of the probe.
4
Normalized Threshold Power (dBm)

0 -55 Measurement
3.5
Theory
3
-5 -60
S21(dB)

Field Ratio (dB)

2.5

-10 -65 2

1.5
-15 Tag Above the Board -70
1
Probe above the board
-20 -75 0.5
0 25 50 75 100 125 150
0
Board Thickness (mm) 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175
Board Thickness (mm)
Fig. 7. Comparison of normalized threshold power and S21 data
(at the top surface of the board). Fig. 9. Ratio of fields at the top and bottom surfaces.

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 IV. CONCLUSION
The effect of environment on the performance of the RFID
tag has been studied in this work. We have considered
wooden boards, placed an RFID tag on the board, and
measured its performance via “threshold power”. We show
that the thickness of the board has a strong effect on the
performance of the tag. We have demonstrated that simply
blocking the line of sight path between the tag and reader
antennas does not result in degradation of the performance.
In fact, we have observed that for the case of wood, the
performance of a tag placed behind the board (i.e. the line of
sight blocked by the board) is much superior. A simple
theoretical explanation has been given using a model based
on plane wave interacting with an infinitely large dielectric
slab. This model has been verified by making transmission
measurements using a linearly polarized antenna, a probe and
a vector network analyzer.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was partially supported by the funding provided
by Boeing Company, USA under the project No.
BOEING/EE/20060179 and MCIT, under the project No.
MIT/EE/20070038.
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