Battery-Free Wireless Light-Sensing Tag Based on a Long-Range Dual-Port Dual-Polarized RFID Platform

Abstract

Radio frequency identification (RFID) represents an emerging platform for passive RF-powered wireless sensing. Differential Multi-port RFID systems are widely used to enable multiple independent measurands to be gathered, or to overcome channel variations. This paper presents a dual-port/dual-integrated circuit (IC) RFID sensing tag based on a shared aperture dual-polarized microstrip antenna. The tag can be loaded with different sensors where the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) of one IC is modulated using a sensor, and the other acts as a measurand-insensitive reference, for differential sensing. The 868 MHz tag maintains a minimum unloaded read range of 14 m insensitive to deployment on metals or lossy objects, which represents the longest reported range of a multi-port RFID sensing tag. The tag is loaded with a light-dependent resistor (LDR) to demonstrate its functionality as a battery-less wireless RFID light sensor. Following detailed RF characterization of the LDR, it is shown that the impedance, and consequently the RSSI, of the sensing tag are modulated by changing the light intensity, whereas the reference port maintains a mostly unchanged response for a correlated channel. The proposed tag shows the potential for channel variations-tolerant differential RFID sensing platforms based on polarization-diversity antennas.