Solar and wireless energy harvesting semi-active UHF RFID tag design and prototyping

In this paper we describe the main phases of an ideation, hardware design, development, prototyping and testing of UHF RFID high memory capacity TAG supported with two external independent power sources. There were used current best practices to design and build a proof of concept with two energy sources: Solar and Wireless which made the TAG battery free and semi-active. Harvested energy should help to support RFID semi-active tag whenever radio signal or light is available. Based on the parallel experience, existing research of similar projects and requirements there was decided to create our own PCB layout for tag board carrying two modules. First source is Solar panel; second one is a Wireless power receiver at frequency of 915MHz. Concerning the RFID circuit Monza Dura family chip as the main microprocessor for RFID transponder was used and a printed PCB antenna as per vendor specification to allow it to interact with remote RFID transmitter. All the system is printed on a FR4 substrate. The main goal was RFID tag reading distance extension. Than it was prototyped and tested the potential of an external power supply for the specific RFID tag based on globally available, harvesting ready RFID chip. In addition to this goal it was validated how does it influence the reading distance and if there will be a positive impact to amplification for more efficient backscatter effect to be able to improve overall Quality of Service. There is a perspective to continue with development and to add other complementary power sources, optimize their switching and management of tag functionalities as well as to fulfill extensive energy requirements for future applications.