A High-Density L-Shaped Backscattering Chipless Tag for RFID Bistatic Systems

Chipless radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology is very promising for sensing, identification, and tracking for future Internet of Things (IoT) systems and applications. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a compact 18-bit, dual polarized chipless RFID tag. The proposed tag is based on L-shaped resonators designed so as to maximize the spectral and spatial encoding capacities. The proposed RFID tag operates an over 4 GHz frequency band (i.e., 6.5 GHz to 10.5 GHz). The tag is simulated, fabricated, and tested in a nonanechoic milieu. The measured data have shown good agreement with the simulation results, with respect to resonators’ frequency positions, null depth, and null bandwidth over the operating spectrum. The proposed design achieves spectral and spatial encoding capacities of 4.5 bits/GHz and 18.8 bits/cm2, respectively. This, in turn, gives an encoding density of 4.7 bits/GHz/cm2. For code identification, we exploit the frequency content of the backscattered signals and identify similarity/correlation features with reference codes.