Selecting Equipment

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Selecting Equipment
TOMAS GRAJALES Vice President RD

• Authorized Distributor RFID Support Center
• Texas Instruments RFID
• IDmicro Incorporated RFID
• Impro Technologies RFID
• Zebra RFID, Feig RFID, X-ident RFID

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Right Equipment for the Application
Decide on Technology that best fits - Range
Comparison and factors that will affect
performance - Number of tags in the field - Tag
location and mounting - Time in the field -
Environmental Requirements - Encoding/printing
the tags
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Range comparison 1
Low Frequency passive

• 4 to 5 ft. range with large tags(3.3 in disk)
• 1 to 2 ft. range with small tag (1 in.disk)

High Frequency passive

• 19 to 23 in. range with credit size foil
• 4 to 6 in. range with 1 in. disk

Low Frequency Active

• 8 to 12 ft. range with 3 in. disk

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Range Comparison 2
UHF passive

• 8 to 10 ft. range with credit card size foil
  (900 MHz)
• 2 to 6 ft. range with 3 in. tag (2.4 GHz)

UHF semi-active
15 to 30 ft. range with 1.5 in. disk
UHF active

150 ft. range with 2 in. cube
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What affects Range
- Noisy environment Do a site survey/consider
other RFID readers For LF and HF limit antenna
size Use noise cancellation techniques
and baluns Keep antenna feeder cable away from
noise Power supply noise - Antenna size and
pattern Building antenna is possible for LF and
HF Rule of thumb- one to one range to
size Large Voltages are present Antenna must
be rated for right power UHF antennas are
smaller and available
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What affects Range
- Position of tag relative to Antenna View
attached slides - Transmit Power Fixed readers
for max range Portables one to one read - Reader
processing speed -Large price difference for
large computing power -HF detects an average
of 30 tags/sec -UHF detects an average of 150
tags/sec - UHF multipath
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READERS
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What affects Range
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Antenna Design 1
Equipment

• VSWR meter
• LCR meter
• Antenna analyzer
• Oscilloscope
• Test tags/test software

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HF Power vs. Range
Note that doubling the power only increases range
15 to 20
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HF Antenna Patterns
Antennas are designed for coupling energy in a
transformer type fashion to the tag. New ISO
tags sensitivity of aprox. 98s DBuA/m. Due to
skin effect, for large antennas use 1/2 in.
pipe or tape. Consider Multiplexing antennas
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HF Antenna Patterns
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HF Antenna Patterns
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UHF Antenna types
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UHF ANT Polarization
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UHF multipath
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RFID label printer
Considerations 1. Foil size and
location. 2. Encode HF tags 3. Test RFID
label before printing. 4. Verify RFID
label after printing.