Reader Arquitecture Characterization for Chipless Wireless Sensors Applications.

Abstract

The main goal of this project is to design, implement and characterize a portable chipless reader for resonator chipless tags by comparing it with a non-portable chipless reader. In laboratory settings, test equipment such as Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs), Signal Analyzers and Digital Storage Oscilloscopes (DSO) are used. However, it is not economical to use these expensive and heavy laboratory pieces of equipment for the real-world applications of chipless RFID systems. Therefore, apart from reducing the cost by using chipless technologies, it is essential to develop a low-cost reader device that makes the system even more inexpensive. This is basically done by replacing the large and bulky equipment with some commercial components that make the device light and portable. Concretely, the design of the reader presented in this document, implements a Wideband Synthesizer with Integrated VCO in order to replace the Signal Generator. The most challenging task is the correct synchronization of the new device with the rest of the elements of the reader. This is achieved by a new computer software specifically programmed to control the whole reader, which is based on a previous version. The system’s performance is tested with several chipless tags; resonators with different resonance frequencies. The obtained results are compared to the measurements taken with a VNA and with a previous version of the reader composed by laboratory instruments. The measurements are made with a gain/phase detector that sends its data to an Arduino. Moreover, the information is processed by a Visual Studio project written in C Language that also contains the software with the user interface to control the synthesizer from the computer and all the data processing and visualization algorithms. The aim of the project is to describe the characterization of a reader based on frequency domain detection techniques and obtain the most accurate and effective performance of it to improve the previous version of the system and approach to an applicable device.