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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 9, 2010

An Electrically Small Spherical UHF RFID Tag Antenna With Quasi-Isotropic Patterns for Wireless Sensor Networks
Hong-Kyun Ryu, Student Member, IEEE, Gichul Jung, Dea-Keun Ju, Sungkyun Lim, Member, IEEE, and Jong-Myung Woo

AbstractAn electrically small spherical UHF (911.25 MHz) radio frequency identication (RFID) tag antenna is proposed. A dipole-typed RFID tag antenna is wound into a spherical shape to achieve small size and quasi-isotropic pattern. The overall diameter of the antenna is 25 mm (0.076), and the resulting electrical size is a kr of 0.24. A short stub is employed for good conjugate impedance matching with a RFID chip (Zchip = 14 j145
). The designed antenna has a 10-dB bandwidth of 7 MHz (0.77%) and the maximum readable distance of 132 cm at 5.2 W EIRP. Index TermsElectrically small antennas, quasi-isotropic patterns, radio frequency identication (RFID) tag antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION

HF band (860~960 MHz) passive radio frequency identication (RFID) technology has been widely used for asset identication, retail item management, and tracking applications due to low production cost with reasonable readable range [1]. Recently, UHF passive RFID systems have been also applied to wireless sensor applications [2], [3], where straight or meandered dipole-typed RFID tag antennas were typically used. The dipole-typed tag antennas, however, require a half-wavelength in length and have null points in radiation pattern at both ends. Therefore, a small antenna size is desirable because of the need to be incorporated into a limited volume. Also, an isotropic pattern is preferred to increase detectability regardless of the tags position, which results in improvement of the communication reliability between the tag and the reader. Under these considerations, cube-shaped and spherical-shaped antennas are good candidates. Previously, a cube-shaped RFID tag antenna,
Manuscript received January 08, 2010. Date of publication February 17, 2010; date of current version March 05, 2010. This research was supported by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), Korea, under the Information Technology Research Center (ITRC) support program supervised by the Institute of Information Technology Advancement (IITA) [IITA-2008-(C1090-0801-0034)]. H.-K. Ryu, G. Jung, and J.-M. Woo are with the Department of Radio Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 305-764, Korea (e-mail: jmwoo@cnu.ac.kr). D.-K. Ju is with the RF Team, Research and Development Department, Ubiquitous Gwangyang & Global IT Institute, Gwangyang 545-030, Korea (e-mail: dkju@ugii.re.kr). S. Lim is with Hawaii Center for Advanced Communications, College of Engineering, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA (e-mail: limsungk@hawaii.edu). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2010.2043046

composed of an inductively coupled feed and meander lines, was reported for wireless sensor network application [4]. The electrical size of the antenna is a of 0.49, and the antenna has quasi-isotropic radiation pattern. Recently, an electrically small spherical wire antenna [5] and a spherical inverted-F antenna [6] were introduced. Both antennas have electrical sizes of 0.42 and 0.86, respectively. In this letter, we propose an electrically small spherical UHF RFID tag antenna with quasi-isotropic radiation patterns for potential applications in wireless sensor networks. The electric size , of the designed antenna is 0.24. A dipole-type RFID tag antenna is wound into a spherical shape to make the antenna small. Furthermore, quasi-isotropic patterns are achieved by aligning current directions along the -, -, and -axes. The antenna is designed at 911.25 MHz for a Korean UHF RFID band (bandwidth: 5.5 MHz, 0.6%). A short stub is used to match at with a micro RFID chip impedance ( 911.25 MHz, Alien H2 RFID chip). Simulations are performed with HFSS ver. 11. A prototype is fabricated and measured for verication.

II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed RFID tag antenna. As shown in Fig. 1(a), the initial design is a half-wavelength straight dipole antenna with a short stub. The total length of the initial dipole is 165 mm (0.5 at 911.25 MHz). The RFID chip is located in the middle of the dipole. Next, as portrayed in Fig. 1(b), the dipole antenna is packed onto a spheres surface, where the diameter of the sphere is 25 mm (0.076 ) and the elecof 0.24. The left arm [Fig. 1(c)] and the right trical size is a arm [Fig. 1(d)] of the antenna are bent differently at ve junctions. The angle at each junction can be either 30 ( ) or 100 ( ). Next, conjugate impedance matching between the RFID chip and the miniaturized tag antenna is achieved by tuning the short stub length and the overall dipole length. The short stub is connected between the rst junction on the right arm (a junction and ) and a point along on the left arm. Asymbetween metrical connection of the stub is for ease of fabrication, and it is conrmed that the performance of the asymmetrical connection is not much different from that of a symmetrical connection. Note that the total length (216 mm) of the designed antenna is longer than that of a half-wavelength straight dipole due to current cancellations caused by the small size of the antenna.

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RYU et al.: ELECTRICALLY SMALL SPHERICAL UHF RFID TAG ANTENNA WITH QUASI-ISOTROPIC PATTERNS

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Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed RFID tag antenna: (a) an initial half-wavelength straight dipole antenna with a short stub; (b) front view of the spherical RFID tag antenna; (c) left arm only; (d) right arm only; (e) bottom view.

III. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The return loss with the RFID chip impedance and input impedance of the spherical RFID tag antenna are simulated and compared to measured results in Fig. 2. The simulated minimum return loss is dB at 912 MHz, where the input impedance of the antenna is . Although the resonant frequency is slightly shifted from the target frequency dB at 911.25 MHz is (911.25 MHz), the return loss of still acceptable. A prototype of the spherical RFID tag antenna is fabricated as shown in the inset of Fig. 2(a). A spherical ) with a diameter of 25 mm piece of styrofoam ( ) is used as a support for the antenna, which is made ( of thin copper strips. In fabrication, the prototype is tuned to have a minimum resonance at 911.25 MHz by adjusting the short stub length ( mm in simulation) and the overall mm in simulation). The specic dipole length ( , dimensions of the prototype are illustrated in Table I. Input impedance was measured rst with an Anritsu 37369D vector network analyzer and a quarter-wavelength coaxial balun. During the measurement, the measurement plane was moved to the end of the quarter-wavelength coaxial balun from the initial calibration plane for accurate impedance measurement. As a result, the measured input impedance of the prototype at 911.25 MHz. The return loss is then is calculated from the measured input impedance and plotted as a solid line in Fig. 2(a). The measured minimum return loss is dB at 911.25 MHz, and the measured dB bandwidth is 7 MHz (0.77%), which covers the required Korea UHF RFID bandwidth (5.5 MHz, 0.6%). Simulated and measured input
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Fig. 2. Return losses and input impedances from simulation and measurement: (a) return loss (inset: fabricated prototype); (b) input resistance; (c) input reactance.

TABLE I DIMENSIONS OF THE SPHERICAL RFID TAG ANTENNA

impedance curves are illustrated in Fig. 2(b) and (c), and the agreement is fairly good except for a slight frequency shift. Next, radiation patterns of the designed tag antenna are simulated at 911.25 MHz as shown in Fig. 3. Although patterns and planes have dips at 30 and 210 due to the in the complex current of the miniaturized dipole, these dips are compatterns. As a result, the total radiation patterns pensated by (shown as solid lines) become quasi-isotropic in the , , and planes. This is because both arms of the dipole are wound in the same current direction along each axis as shown in Fig. 4. The gain of the designed tag antenna is also simulated and the maximum gain is 0.75 dBi.

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 9, 2010

Fig. 3. Simulated radiation patterns of the antenna: (a) xz plane; (b) yz plane; (c) xy plane.

Fig. 5. Measured readable-range patterns in an anechoic chamber: (a) xz plane; (b) yz plane; (c) xy plane.

Fig. 4. Current directions in both arms along (a) x-axis, (b) y -axis, and (c) z-axis.

Finally, the readable-range patterns instead of the gain measurements of the designed tag antenna at 911.25 MHz are measured in an anechoic chamber since input impedance of the tag antenna is matched with the chip impedance, and therefore it is difcult to measure the antenna gain directly in a 50- characteristic impedance system. As for an RFID reader antenna, a linearly polarized corner reector antenna [7] with 10.2 dBi gain is used to detect polarization of the designed antenna. The power of the RFID reader (model: MR-5800, WJ communications) is set at 27 dBm. Readable ranges in both -polarization and -polarization are measured respectively in the , , and planes and are also plotted in Fig. 5 for direct comparison with the simulated radiation patterns ( , , and ) shown in Fig. 3. The measured readable range patterns show good agreement with simulated radiation patterns. Quasi-isotropic patterns are observed, and the maximum readable range is 132 cm. IV. CONCLUSION In this letter, a spherical UHF (911.25 MHz) RFID tag antenna was proposed. A dipole-typed antenna with a short stub

is packed into a spherical shape for antenna size reduction and quasi-isotropic pattern. The diameter of the antenna was 25 mm ( ), and the size of was 0.24. The designed tag antenna ). The matched well with a RFID chip ( simulated results agree fairly well with the measured data. The dB bandwidth, 7 MHz (0.77%), covered the remeasured quired bandwidth (5.5 MHz, 0.6%). Quasi-isotropic patterns in planes were veried by both simulations and the , , and measurements, and the maximum readable range was found to be 132 cm. The designed antenna would be potentially useful in wireless sensor networks for environmental and biomedical applications. REFERENCES
[1] K. V. S. Rao, P. V. Nikitin, and S. F. Lam, Antenna design for UHF RFID tags: A review and a practical application, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 38703876, Dec. 2005. [2] M. Philipose, J. R. Smith, B. Jiang, A. Mamishev, S. Roy, and K. Sundara-Rajan, Battery-free wireless identication and sensing, Pervasive Comput., vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 3745, Jan.-Mar. 2005. [3] L. Catarinucci, M. Cappelli, R. Colella, and L. Tarricone, A novel lowcost multisensory tag for RFID applications in healthcare, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 28772880, Nov. 2008. [4] C. Kruesi and M. M. Tentzeris, Magic-cube antenna congurations for ultra compact RFID and wireless sensor nodes, in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propag. Soc. Int. Symp., San Diego, CA, Jul. 2008, pp. 14. [5] A. Mehdipour, H. Aliakabarian, and J. Rashed-Mohassel, A novel electrically small spherical wire antenna with almost isotropic radiation pattern, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 7, pp. 396399, 2008. [6] G. H. Huff and J. J. McDonald, A spherical inverted-F antenna (SIFA), IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 8, pp. 649652, 2008. [7] J. D. Kraus and R. J. Marhefka, Antennas for All Applications, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002, pp. 352362.

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