A Study of Factors Affecting the Design of EPC Antennas & Readers for Supermarket Shelves
09-04-06 11:18
Age: 3 yrs
BY: COLE, PETER H.
The factors which govern the design of antennas and readers for EPC labels attached to objects in supermarket shelves are identified and analysed. Because it is desired to give the results as far as possible both a theoretical and an experimental basis, and because many of these factors arise from fundamental properties of electromagnetic fields, a review of fundamental aspects of both electromagnetic theory and of RFID theory is given. Experimental results to establish (a) the nature of u.h.f. fields in supermarket shelves, and (b) the feasibility of reading u.h.f. RFID tags in supermarket shelves, and are described. The importance of field stirring or antenna multiplexing is clearly established. Feasible antenna configurations for reading h.f. tags in supermarket shelves are derived from fundamental theory. Future work will be concerned with the experimental evaluation of such fields for a range of HF antennas in supermarket shelves, and will also involve demonstrations of successful reading of multiple read h.f. tags.