A Pragmatic Approach to Electronically Rewritable ‘RF-Barcodes’ Based on Non-Volatile CBRAM/MIM Switching Technology

Abstract

In this article we present the concept of a practical approach to realization of a fully passive electronically rewritable chipless RFID tag. Integrated non-volatile and solid state Conductive Bridging Random Access Memory (CBRAM) based Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) switches are used to realize the rewritable functionality. A solution to the primary challenge of requirement of obtaining very low ON states resistances $(\sim \lt 10 \Omega)$ in case of an RF switch, for efficient operating conditions is addressed in this paper. Here we propose a reconfigurable resonator design with a ground plane, which could operate efficiently for higher ON state resistances $(\sim \gt 100 \Omega)$ of a CBRAM/MIM RF switch. A technique of data encoding in electronically rewritable dipole resonators, by effectively modulating the impedance states of integrated CBRAM/MIM switches is presented herewith in detail. This example is presented through a model design of a 3bit rewritable chipless RFID tag.