LC Passive Wireless Sensors Toward a Wireless Sensing Platform: Status, Prospects, and Challenges

Inductor-capacitor (LC) passive wireless sensors use a transformer with loose coupling between an external readout coil and an inductor that receives power through this inductive coupling. Changes in the sensor are wirelessly and remotely detected by the readout coil, which makes them highly useful in applications that require the sensor to be powered remotely and to occupy a small volume, such as harsh and sealed environments, where physical access to the sensor is difficult. Although the sensor to accomplish this function dates from the 1960's, its rapid extension over the past decades has benefited from microelectromechanical systems. This paper provides an overview of the status and challenges in the LC passive wireless sensor toward a wireless sensing platform. The basic sensing principles are first categorized into detecting changes of the sensor in response to the capacitance, resistance, inductance, or coupling distance due to the parameter of interest through monitoring the impedance magnitude and phase spectrum. The present state of the art in sensor applications for pressure, strain, temperature, humidity, biochemical, gas, and so on is then reviewed and compared. For emerging applications from many Internet of Things scenarios, geometrical constraints, such as small and non-invasive coils, reduce the magnetic coupling between the sensor and the readout coil, resulting in a limited interrogation distance. Furthermore, an increasing number of applications also require the simultaneous measurement of multiple parameters. Recent efforts to increase the interrogation distance and to extend the measurement of single parameter to multiple parameters are finally outlined.