Performance and Benchmarking of Multisurface UHF RFID Tags for Readability and Reliability

Abstract

As the price of passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags continues to decrease, more and more companies are considering item-level tagging. Although the use of RFID is simple, its proper application should be studied to achieve maximum efficiency and utilization in the industry. This paper is intended to demonstrate the test results of various multisurface UHF tags from different manufacturers for their readability under varying conditions such as orientation of tags with respect to reader, distance of tag from the reader, and materials used for embedding tags. These conditions could affect the reliability of RFID systems used for varied applications. In this paper, we implement a Design for Six Sigma Research (DFSS-R) methodology that allows for reliability testing of RFID systems. In this paper, we have showcased our results about the benchmarking of UHF RFID tags and have put forward an important observation about the blind spots observed at different distances and orientations along different surfaces, which is primarily due to the polarity of the antenna chosen.