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Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering

 

Editor: Professor Kai Chang, Texas A&M University

 

The Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering publishes authoritative treatments of foundational areas central to Microwave and Optical Engineering as well as research monographs in hot-topic emerging technology areas. The Series was founded in 1988 and to date includes over 100 titles.

A complete list of the titles in this series appears at the end of this volume.

ADVANCED CHIPLESS RFID

MIMO-Based Imaging at 60 GHz-ML Detection

 

By

 

NEMAI CHANDRA KARMAKAR

MOHAMMAD ZOMORRODI

CHAMATH DIVARATHNE

 

 

 

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to\break special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

The book is dedicated to our families.

Shipra, Antara, and Ananya Karmakar
Fathemeh Sajjadidokht, Mohammadkasra, and Zoha Zomorrodi
Navarathne Banda and Dayani Chandramali

PREFACE

The author's group has developed various chipless RFID tags and reader architectures at 2.45, 4–8, 24, and 60 GHz. These results were published extensively in the form of books, book chapters, refereed conference and journal articles, and finally, as patent applications. However, there is still room for improvement of chipless RFID systems. In this book, we proposed advanced techniques of chipless RFID systems that supersede their predecessors in signal processing, tag design, and reader architecture.

The book introduces a few novel and advanced-level high-capacity data encoding and throughput improvement techniques for fully printable multibit chipless RFID tags and reader systems, respectively. These techniques enhance data content capacity of tags and perform reliable tag detection for readers at the instrumentation, scientific, and medical (ISM) frequency bands 2.45, 24, and 60 GHz. First, a comprehensive review of existing chipless RFID tags provides the state of the art in the field and exposes impediments for commercial success. The limiting factors for commercialization of reported chipless RFID tags are (i) printing errors, (ii) degradation of tag performance on low-grade laminates, (iii) low data capacity, (iv) errors in tag reading in industrial environment, (v) reading reliability, and (vi) read range. This book addresses these limitations and provides solutions with an image-based tag design and advanced signal processing techniques.

The book provides the details of the new approaches – electromagnetic (EM) imaging, high-capacity data encoding, and robust tag detection techniques. In the introduction chapter first, a comprehensive review of the available and reported chipless RFID systems is presented. Then, their above-mentioned impediments for commercial success are analyzed. The analysis shows that the conventional techniques used for chipless RFID tag encoding and detection do not address the challenges imposed by commercial grade tags and reader systems. This encourages the researchers for new techniques and approaches in this field.

The book is divided into two main parts. Part I of the book, “EM Image-Based Chipless RFID System,” introduces the novel EM imaging concept for data extraction from a 60-GHz chipless RFID tag. Part II “Advanced Tag Detection Techniques for Chipless RFID Systems” presents smart tag detection techniques for existing chipless RFID systems and an innovative MIMO-based tag detection technique for high content capacity and zero guard-band tag detection. These approaches have been fully developed and tested in Monash Microwave, Antenna RFID and Sensor Research Group (MMARS) at Monash University.

In Part I of the book, the fundamental of EM imaging at millimeter-wave band 60 GHz for data extraction is introduced followed by the EM imaging through synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique. It is shown that the millimeter-wave EM imaging has significant potentials for commercialization of chipless RFID. The EM imaging technique exploits advantages of RFID systems including their flexible non-line-of-sight (NLoS) operation and high data capacity benefit. Moreover, the proposed EM imaging technique inherits low-cost advantages and fully printable features of the barcodes on low-grade packaging materials. The downside of the conventional SAR-based EM imaging technique, requirement for physical movement of the reader antenna, is addressed by the new idea of MIMO-SAR technique. With the proposed MIMO-based EM imaging, no relative movement of the reader and tag is required hence very fast tag imaging is achievable. Finally, the MIMO approach is optimized through global genetic approach for minimum hardware complexity and to introduce a complete solution for chipless RFID system. In this pursuit, the system elements and technical requirements are discussed in details. The proposed approach to the EM imaging technique enhances the content capacity of the chipless systems to a commercial level, for example, EPC Global Class 1 Generation 2 with 64 data bits.

The main emphasis for Part II of the book is to introduce a few new smart tag detection techniques for chipless RFID systems. Researchers were mainly focusing on improving the RFID reader architecture [1, 2] and the chipless tag design in conventional approaches [3] and paying less attention to signal processing. As a result, most signal processing techniques being used in chipless RFID systems are primitive and should further be investigated. The first part of Part II focuses on advanced signal processing techniques that significantly improve the tag detection rate and tag reading range for the existing reader architecture [1] and tag design [4]. In addition, the proposed techniques allow removing the guard band presented in frequency-domain tags allowing the spectral efficiency to be improved. As a result, data capacity of the frequency-domain tags can be improved. Maximum-likelihood (ML)-based detection techniques have shown improved performances in communication systems compared to reported techniques such as threshold-based detection techniques [5]. The motivation for this work is to apply the ML detection techniques for chipless RFID tag detection so that the existing RFID system would perform better. One limitation of likelihood-based techniques is its exponential increase in computation complexity with higher number of data bits. Two computationally feasible tag detection techniques have been introduced to overcome this challenge. With these new tag detection techniques, computation complexity only increases linearly with the number of data bits. The second part of Part II presents a novel MIMO-based chipless RFID system and required tag detection techniques that can be used to improve the spectral efficiency, hence increasing data bit capacity.

We hope that the book will contribute significantly to the field of chipless RFID removing many practical barriers for commercialization of the technology.

Nemai Chandra Karmakar
Mohammad Zomorrodi
Chamath Divarathne
Melbourne
November 2015

REFERENCES

  1. 1. N.C. Karmakar, R. Koswatta, P. Kalansuriya and R. E-Azim, Chipless RFID Reader Architecture, Artech House Publishing, 2013.
  2. 2. R.V. Koswatta and N.C. Karmakar, “A Novel Reader Architecture Based on UWB Chirp Signal Interrogation for Multiresonator-Based Chipless RFID Tag Reading,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 60, no. 9, pp. 2925–2933, 2012.
  3. 3. R. Rezaiesarlak, and M. Manteghi, Chipless RFID, Design Procedure and Detection Techniques, Springer, USA, 2015.
  4. 4. S. Preradovic and N.C. Karmakar, Multi-Resonator-Based Chipless RFID, Springer, USA, 2012.
  5. 5. R. Koswatta and N.C. Karmakar, “Moving Average Filtering Technique for Signal Processing in Digital Section of UWB Chipless RFID Reader,” Proc. 2010 Asia Pacific Microwave Conference, Yokohama, Japan, December 7–10, 2010.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The book is the outcome of two PhD level thesis works under the supervision of the first author. The PhD scholarship was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant DP110105606: Electronically Controlled Phased Array Antenna for Universal UHF RFID Applications. Therefore, the support from ARC is highly acknowledged. The editor-in-chief of Wiley Mr. Brett Kurzman, Editor, Global Research, Professional Practice and Learning, Wiley and Mr. Alex Castro, Senior Editorial Assistant of Wiley were very supportive from the inception of the book project to the end of production. Their support is highly acknowledged. The two student authors were cosupervised by Professors Jeff Walker and Jamie Evans of Monash University. Their valuable suggestions and technical assistance are also acknowledged. During the course of the research work, the team members of the authors' research group, Monash Microwave, Antenna, RFID, and Sensor (MMARS) Laboratory of Monash University, were very supportive to the PhD projects. The supports from the electronics and mechanical workshops of ECSE department of Monash University were instrumental for the research outcomes that are produced in the book.

The family members of the Authors had to endeavor their absence during this research. Their support and companionship are gratefully acknowledged.

Nemai Karmakar
Mohammad Zomorrodi
Chamath Divarathne
Melbourne
November 2015

PART I
EM IMAGE-BASED CHIPLESS RFID SYSTEM