A Novel Enhanced-Performance Flexible RFID-Enabled Embroidered Wireless Integrated Module for Sensing Applications

A novel wireless embroidered integrated platform for radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled strain sensing that takes advantage of the nonlinear behavior of the RFID chip impedance as a function of the incident power is introduced. Due to the nonlinearity of the chip impedance as a function of the power, a large variation of chip impedance value and thus a large difference of radar cross section values for appropriately chosen power levels are achieved. Taking advantage of this idea, the sensing parameter is detected by interrogation of the sensor tag using two distinct transmitting power levels and calculating the difference of backscattered response. As a proof of concept, we applied the proposed method for the detection of an embroidered RFID-enabled strain sensor that is fabricated using electrotextiles in order to observe the variations of the magnitude and the corresponding strain levels. The proposed model for the chip impedance helps in predicting the RFID chip impedance variation for different strain conditions, an extremely important issue for RF/RFID modules and packages operating over a wide power dynamic range as well as enabling the accurate estimation of the maximum range of the RFID-enabled sensing modules for the maximum allowable power levels.