Reliability Testing on Wearable Textile-Based UHF RFID Tags
Kazmi, Aitzaz Haider (2017)
Kazmi, Aitzaz Haider
2017
Information Technology
Tieto- ja sähkötekniikan tiedekunta - Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2017-08-16
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201708241718
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201708241718
Tiivistelmä
Due to their huge future potential in identification, monitoring, and sensor applications, textile-integrated radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags have been an active topic of research during the recent years. A passive, battery-free RFID tag is composed of an antenna and an integrated circuit (IC) and, when integrated into a textile material, offers a cheap, unobtrusive, and completely maintenance-free wireless platform for versatile body-centric systems. One of the key challenges to be addressed, before the large-scale deployment of these textile RFID components, is their ability to withstand continuous washing, which has been found to be a major reliability issue and is currently actively studied.
This thesis presents a washing reliability study of passive UHF RFID textile tags with three different coating materials. The tag antennas were fabricated by brush-painting silver ink on a 100 % cotton fabric. After attaching the ICs, the ready RFID tags were fully coated with three different protective coating materials: regular textile glue, white epoxy coating, and silicone rubber. The coated tags were washed 15 times in a household washing machine and tested wirelessly after each washing cycle for the total of 15 washing cycles.
Before washing, all tags exhibited good performance and attainable read ranges of about 10 meters, under the European RFID emission regulation. Based on the reliability test and the done measurements, all three protective coating materials can successfully protect the RFID tags from the effects of washing and especially the textile glue was found to be suitable coating for the brush-painted tags. Silicon rubber also can be said as a suitable coating. White epoxy glue coating does make the tags water resistant but it is constantly losing its ability of protection after each washing cycle and, in the long run, it can be said that it does not make the tags washable.
This thesis presents a washing reliability study of passive UHF RFID textile tags with three different coating materials. The tag antennas were fabricated by brush-painting silver ink on a 100 % cotton fabric. After attaching the ICs, the ready RFID tags were fully coated with three different protective coating materials: regular textile glue, white epoxy coating, and silicone rubber. The coated tags were washed 15 times in a household washing machine and tested wirelessly after each washing cycle for the total of 15 washing cycles.
Before washing, all tags exhibited good performance and attainable read ranges of about 10 meters, under the European RFID emission regulation. Based on the reliability test and the done measurements, all three protective coating materials can successfully protect the RFID tags from the effects of washing and especially the textile glue was found to be suitable coating for the brush-painted tags. Silicon rubber also can be said as a suitable coating. White epoxy glue coating does make the tags water resistant but it is constantly losing its ability of protection after each washing cycle and, in the long run, it can be said that it does not make the tags washable.