Antenna array in 3D to improve tracking of small HF RFID tag

International audienceThis paper presents an improvement of small RFID tags detection in HF near field, whatever their lateral and angular misalignments, using a complementary sub-coils reader antenna, enhanced by coplanar weakly-coupled resonators, and conformed on a 3D tube. The key ideas of detection improvement are: (i) modification of B -field vector distribution with the complementary coils above the common edge of consecutive loops; (ii) increase of B -field vector diversity and magnitude distribution by a 3D structure conformed on the tube, by realising 2 pairs of Identical Coaxial Loops (ICLs) with face-to-face sub-coils in forward current, and (iii) enhancement of B -field magnitude distribution by resonators included in the complementary sub-coils. Numerical simulations are carried out using High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS). The studied figure-of-merit is the mutual inductance between the tag and the reader coil. Results are reported for the 4 planar complementary sub-coils, the previous structure conformed on the tube and for the structure in which RCL resonators are added in the 3 planar complementary sub-coils. Experimental detection range measurements of each fabricated structure drives to the enhancement of the 3D complementary 4 × 3 sub-coils structure with weakly-coupled RLC resonators in each-sub-coil in terms of read-out distance and detection surface area