Impact of recurrent washing on the performance of electro-textile UHF RFID tags

Author

Bjorninen, Toni ; Virkki, Johanna ; Sydanheimo, Lauri ; Ukkonen, Leena

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Commun. Eng., Tampere Univ. of Technol., Tampere, Finland

fYear

2014

fDate

8-9 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

251

Lastpage

255

Abstract

We present the simulation-based design of UHF RFID tags based on electro-textile antennas and analyze the impact of recurrent washing on their performance through measurements. The antennas were fabricated from silver plated stretchable fabric made of nylon and elastic fibers. We coated half of the tested samples with acrylic spray to compare the influence of recurrent washing on the performance of the coated and uncoated tags. The fully functional tags including the microchip were washed ten times in a household washing machine using a typical 40°C program and detergent. The performance of the tags was measured after each wash. Prior washing, the peak read ranges of the tags were over 5.5 m. After ten washing cycles, the read ranges of coated and non-coated tags were 1.5 m and 2.8 m, respectively.

Keywords

UHF antennas; cleaning; polymers; radiofrequency identification; silver; textile fibres; wearable antennas; elastic fiber; electro-textile UHF RFID tag performance; electro-textile antenna; household washing machine; nylon fiber; recurrent washing; silver plated stretchable fabric; temperature 40 C; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Coatings; Integrated circuits; RFID tags; Textiles; RFID; conformal coating; radio-frequency identification; tag antenna; textile antenna; washable electronics; wearable antennas; wearable electronics;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

RFID Technology and Applications Conference (RFID-TA), 2014 IEEE

Conference_Location

Tampere

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFID-TA.2014.6934238

Filename

6934238