RFID Tag Antenna Coupled by Shorted Microstrip Line for Metallic Surfaces

This letter presents the design of a small and low-profile RFID tag antenna in the UHF band that can be mounted on metallic objects. The designed tag antenna, which uses a ceramic material as a substrate, consists of a radiating patch and a microstrip line with two shorting pins for a proximity-coupled feeding structure. Using this structure, impedance matching can be simply obtained between the antenna and tag chip without a matching network. The fractional impedance bandwidth for $S_{11}$ <3 dB and radiation efficiency are about 1.4% and 56% at 911 MHz, respectively. The read range is approximately from 5 m to 6 m when the tag antenna is mounted on a metallic surface.