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Translational Engineering Forum, November 20th 2018

Jukka Voutilainen, CEO, Voyantic Ltd.

Contents

• The Past: Measuring Moisture in Buildings

• The Beginning: Pioneers of RFID Measurements• The Theory Behind the Measurements

• The Present: The RFID Industry’s Partner in Tagging Quality

• The Future: Current Trends in the RFID Industry

Measuring Moisture in Building Structures

Monitoring Moisture in Bathrooms

Measuring Drying of Concrete

Contents

• The Past: Measuring Moisture in Buildings

• The Beginning: Pioneers of RFID Measurements• The Theory Behind the Measurements

• The Present: The RFID Industry’s Partner in Tagging Quality

• The Future: Current Trends in the RFID Industry

First Office and First Prototype (2006)

First Anechoic Chamber

UHF Passive Tag Principle

• Backscatter radio; reader sends commands and offers CW

• Tag doesn’t send anything, it just modulates it’s reflectivity

• Tag only needs Microwatts of power for the IC

• The power is harvested from the reader carrier

Physics Behind the Measurements

PT

PR

GT

λ

PTF

PTR

Field Regions

• Reactive near field• Non-radiating field components (electric field or magnetic field) dominate

• Tag affects antenna properties (matching, bandwidth)

• Radiating near field• Radiating fields dominate• Angular field distribution is dependent on distance from antenna

• Far field• Only radiating field components are significant• Fields can be approximated as plane waves• Power density decays as the inverse square of distance

• Field region limits are approximate and depend on the wavelength and the dimensions of the antenna

λ

3

62.0D

R <λ

22D

R >

Field Regions

12

λ

3

62.0D

R =

cmR 9=

λ

22D

R =

Reactive near field Radiating near field Far field

cmR 23=

Approximateregion limit:

Region:

Example:

mDm 2.0,3.0 ==λ

D

R

Nov 2011

Forward Link Physics

• The power density at the tag location is

• ISO uses electric field strength at the tag location as a measure of tag sensitivity

• However, sensitivity can also be expressed as power on the tag. The effective aperture of an isotropic antenna is

• Thus, power on the tag is

PT

R1

E

GT

PEIRP

λ

S

Aeff2

14 R

PS EIRP

π=

π4

1

1

ZP

RSZE EIRP==

π

λ

4

2

=effA

( ) ( )2

1

2

2

1

2

44 RGP

RPSAP TTEIRPefftag

π

λ

π

λ===

Ptag

Return Link Physics

• The power density at the receiver antenna is

• The effective aperture of the reciever antenna is

• Thus, the received backscatter power is

PR

R2

GR

λ

2

2

,

4 R

PS

BStag

π=

π

λ

4

2

Reff GA =

( )2

2

2

,4 R

GPSAP RBStageffRπ

λ==

Ptag,BS

S

Aeff

Link Budget

Reader-based Measurements

• Typically where everyone starts

• Measuring read-range• Hold the tag and walk away from the reader

• Reliability of reader functionality?• Is the limiting factor forward or return link?

• What is the effect of the environment?

• Attenuating transmitted and received signal• Keep the measurement distance constant

• Measure how much attenuation can be added to each path, so that the tag can still be read

Threshold Measurement

• Challenging the power source of the tag, i.e. findingthe minimum power required to activate the tag

• Procedure1. Start from a transmit power where the tag does not

respond2. Send a command to the tag3. Check if there is a response

1. If yes, you have found the threshold transmit power2. If no, increase power and return to 2

4. Use knowledge of measurement geometry to calculate a comparable value such as electric field strength, power on tag, read range

5. Repeat with different frequencies, orientation, materials, external interfernce etc.

Backscatter Measurement

• Measure the strength (and phase) of the signal returning from the tag

• Use a coherent (superheterodyne) receiver

• Repeat with different transmit powers, frequencies, materials etc.

• What to measure:• Received signal includes carrier leaking from the transmitter

• Power distribution: If a carrier of power P is modulated with binary 100% ASK (OOK), the total power is P/2, which is divided between the carrier and the sidebands, P/4 each

Theoretical Read Ranges

• Read ranges are an intuitive way to assess tag performance

• The forward link and return link should be assessed separately

• Forward link: What would the acquired read range be with the maximum allowed transmit power (e.g. 2 W erp) if the response can always be detected and decoded?

• Return link: What would the acquired read range be if the tag is always powered up and a receiver with a given sensitivity and antenna gain (e.g. -70 dBm and 4dBi) is used?

π

λ

4

max,

max⋅=

tag

EIRP

P

PR

π

λ

4,,

,

max,⋅=

limitBSEIRP

BStag

BSP

PR

Tagformance RF Block Diagram

Baseband

Processor

New Year 2017:Tagformance lite

Tagformance Software

Required Engineering Skillset

• System design

• Understanding of electronics and RF

• Embedded systems

• LabVIEW software development

• In-depth understanding of RFID

• Understanding of mechanical design

RFID World 2007, Dallas, TX

UHF Inlay detuning

UHF Inlay detuning

UHF Inlay detuning

UHF Inlay detuning

So, how to design a good tag?

Short Open50Ω

Inductive

Capacitive

• Check IC impedance and design a matching antenna?

• To learn about the old school tag design RF side of things, check Monza 1&2 datasheets

Sometimes easier approach

Road Shows 2007

2008: And We Hit a Wall

“Thank you for the update. Unfortunately

I will not be at RFID Journal LIVE as most

travel has been suspended and RFID has

been greatly scaled down here. Any

additional spending for RFID equipment is

unlikely for the remainder of the calendar

year and likely beyond.”

“XXX is still struggling financially.I don’t think we’ll be able to purchaseany new equipment until Q1 ‘2010. Please keep in touch.”

Where to Get Revenue?

JapanChina

Tag productiontesting

Systemintegrators

End of Part One

Contents

• The Past: Measuring Moisture in Buildings

• The Beginning: Pioneers of RFID Measurements• The Theory Behind the Measurements

• The Present: The RFID Industry’s Partner in Tagging Quality

• The Future: Current Trends in the RFID Industry

Voyantic Ltd.

Voyantic provides RFID measurement and testing solutions

• Installation base of over 600 systemson five continents

14 years of successful history• Entrepreneur driven, growing and profitable business• 19 experts in Finland, Taiwan and USA• 8 distributors across four continents

Core Deliverable

Voyantic enables companies to utilize RFID technology to it’s fullest potential by offering expertise, insights, test systems, training and our contact network.

Two Domains of Testing and Measurements

In laboratoriesTag and IC design

Component selection

Benchmarking

Application development

Training & troubleshooting

In productionQuality assurance

Process monitoring

Cost management

EncodingPersonalization

Going Back to 2008-2009:What Did We Do?• Entering Japanese market was crucial

• Changes in organization• Management job rotation• Bring in office manager

• The market recovered in Spring 2010 and the work started to pay off

• We did attempt Market Development and Product Development as well

• Expanding to system integrators has not really worked out

• Production testing did, but a lot slower than we expected

Response test

Combination of three measurement functions for the analyzation and development of UHF RFID applications:

Interference measurement

Population analysis

Testing with reader is not enough

42

Narrow frequency

Power output variation

poor and detuned tags may appear to be exactly as sensitive as good ones, if checked on single frequency.

Accuracy of the output power is poor and not calibrated, distinguishing difference is uncertain.

functionality testing ≠ performance testingTesting at reader frequency does not consider detuning.

Snoop Pro test antenna

43

Far-field measurements in RFID cabinet Testing tags on a roll cannot be done with normal farfield or nearfield antennas.

Snoop Pro near-field measurements

Good correlation between near field and far field enable reliable performance testing in production!

Example of variation in UHF Tags

Roll of 7000 UHF tags measured in production with:

- Tagsurance UHF

- Snoop Pro UHF near field coupling element

44

6 tags were chosen and picked out:

- Chosen to represent the overall variation

- Chosen tag responses highlighted in the graph

Variation detected in near field and far field

45

6 chosen tags were measured also in far field:

- There’s offset both in frequency and power domain between near field and far field

- But the differences between tags are similar in both

- This is the case only with Snoop Pro near field coupling

Tag Variation in Application Point of View

• This is how the tag was designed to work

• 6-8m read range both free air and plastic

• This was found with 6 chosen tags from the same roll of 7000 tags

• 2-8m read range in free air

• 5-10m read range on plastic

46

Screening out the variation

47

• Testing on multiple frequencies, typically the tags resonance frequencies

870MHz

1010MHz

Reelsurance Pro

Smart label personalization machine

Reelsurance Pro

Smart label personalization machine

Reelsurance Pro

• Versatile machine for finalizing different smart labels

• Encoding and testing different RFID technologies in one process step

• Easy and fast to reconfigure for different label projects

• Easy-to-use Ensuranceuser interface

Contents

• The Past: Measuring Moisture in Buildings

• The Beginning: Pioneers of RFID Measurements• The Theory Behind the Measurements

• The Present: The RFID Industry’s Partner in Tagging Quality

• The Future: Current Trends in the RFID Industry

Antenna Radiation Pattern Measurements

The radiation pattern of an antenna can be measured easily by turning the antenna into an ad-hoc RFID tag.

1. Terminate the antenna with a connectorized RFID tag chip.

2. Measure the orientation sensitivity of the “tag” and normalize the results.

Self-Reconfigurable RFID Reader Antenna

P. Nikitin, "Self-reconfigurable RFID reader antenna" 2017 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID), Phoenix, AZ, 2017, pp. 88-95.

The author developed an antenna, theradiation pattern of which changeswith time.

RFID Sensors

There are several different ways to design an RFID sensor. Depending on the type, testing may include RF tests and/orprotocol level testing.

Pictures from Voyantic bloghttp://voyantic.com/blog

Voyantic Tools for Sensor Tag Development

1. Sensor Suite forTagformanceCharacterizes sensor tags RF properties at variable Ptx, frequencies and C1G2 commands

2. Protocol analyserWaveform capture and analysis to show C1G32 command flow and timings

3. Protocol Testing Suite for TagformanceBuild and test various C1G2 default and custom commands at fixed power levels

Embroidered Strain Sensor

M. Hasani, A. Vena, L. Sydänheimo, L. Ukkonen and M. M. Tentzeris, "Implementation of a Dual-Interrogation-Mode EmbroideredRFID-Enabled Strain Sensor," in IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, vol. 12, no. , pp. 1272-1275, 2013.

The authors developed an antennasewn with conductive thread, the properties of which change as it isstretched.

HF Tags and Moisture

T. Björninen, J. Voutilainen, L. Sydänheimo, and L. Ukkonen. “Characterization of HF RFID Tags Exposed to Moisture Based onThreshold Power Measurement.” Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Stockholm, Sweden, Aug. 12-15, 2013

The authors studied how the propertiesof an HF RFID Tag change in presenceof moisture. This could be used formoisture sensing.

Thank you!

Contacts:jukka.voutilainen@voyantic.com

www.voyantic.com