Accepted Manuscript

Title: Design of a Slotted Chipless RFID Humidity Sensor Tag

Authors: Fangming Deng, Yigang He, Bing Li, Yang Song,

Xiang Wu

PII: S0925-4005(18)30432-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2018.02.153
Reference: SNB 24248

To appear in: Sensors and Actuators B

Received date: 11-11-2017

Revised date: 19-2-2018
Accepted date: 20-2-2018

Please cite this article as: Fangming Deng, Yigang He, Bing Li, Yang Song, Xiang Wu,
Design of a Slotted Chipless RFID Humidity Sensor Tag, Sensors and Actuators B:
Chemical https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2018.02.153

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Design of a Slotted Chipless RFID Humidity Sensor Tag

Fangming Denga,b, Yigang Heb,*, Bing Lib,*, Yang Songb, Xiang Wua

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a
School of Electrical and Automation Engineering, East China Jiaotong University, Nanchang 330013, PR China

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b
School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, PR China

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* Corresponding Author: [email protected] (Y. He); [email protected] (B. Ling)

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Highlights
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 This paper proposes a chipless RFID humdity sensor tag, which advantages are
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shown as follows:
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 The proposed sensor tag does not need any silicon chip and can be fabricated in

printing technology, which resulting in its low cost.

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 The proposed sensor tag can work on passive mode, resulting it is suitable for
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long-term monitoring application.

 The proposed sensor tag shows good sensitivity and consistency performances.
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Abstract
This paper proposes a chipless Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) sensor tag for low-cost and
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long-term humidity monitoring. The slotted scatterer structure are fabricated on FR4 substrate by
grooving etching. The encoding unit stores the ID information by the combination of the different
length slots. Si nanowires are deposited on the surface of the slots to form the sensing unit. Based on
the principle of radar electromagnetic backscattering, the test system measures the transmission
coefficient curve to obtain the ID and humidity information of the tag. The test results show that the
proposed chipless sensor tag achieves good hysteresis and consistence performances and the
maximum error is not exceed 10%.

Keywords: RFID; Humidity sensor; Chipless; Si Nanowires

1. Introduction

Humidity measurement plays a vital role in many fields including industry control, meteorology,
medical instruments and environment monitoring [1]. Today, due to their easy arrangements, numerous

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kinds of wireless sensors have been extensively applied in many fields. The current wireless

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technologies mainly contain ZigBee [2], Bluetooth [3] and wireless local area networks [4]. However,
those wireless communication technologies are generally used to constitute sensor networks for

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real-time monitoring and diagnostics. They exhibit the characteristics of high operating complexity

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and high power consumption, resulting that they should be power supplied by batteries or DC power
source [5]. Besides the cost increase, these wireless sensors with auxillary power source are

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unsuitable for long-term monitoring because of the limited battery lifespan.
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Recently the wireless sensors based on Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology
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aroused great interest. Because the RFID sensor technology adopts zero-powered backscattering
modulation, it shows the advantages of simpler architecture, lower power dissipation and lower cost
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compared with these technologies discussed above [6]. Current RFID sensors are usually classified
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into two categories, chip-based group and chipless group. The chip-based RFID sensors incorporate
RFID tag chip with sensors by adding the sensors data into tag’s ID information [7,8] or modulating
backscattering signal of tag’s antenna [9,10]. These chip-based RFID sensors shows high coding and
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data processing capacity and high convenience for constituting wireless sensor networks. However,
the costly chip means the chip-based RFID sensors are not suitable for low-cost applications such as
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warehouse goods management [11]. Therefore this reason urges researchers to develop chipless
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RFID tag or chipless RFID sensors.

Chipless sensor technology explores a new area in the wireless sensing field. Chipless RFID
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sensor tag shows not only low cost, but also high reliability even if it can work in hash environment.
According to working principle, chipless RFID sensor tags can be divided into two types, surface
acoustic wave (SAW) sensor [12,13] and RFID chipless sensor. SAW RFID sensors make use of
micro-acoustic wave to encode and sense environment, however SAW RFID sensor shows high
fabricating cost and poor repeatability due to its complex sensing unit. It has been reported on
chipless RFID sensors with various sensing abilities [14-17]. There already have some reports about
the chipless RFID sensor tags based on transmission [17-20]. These sensors make use of delay time
of antenna to encode and phase/amplitude change of transmission line for sensing function.
However, this kind of chipless sensor tag shows low coding capacity [21]. In order to add sensor
function to RFID tag, integrating some sensitive materials such as Si Nanowire (SiNWs), NiO–SnO2
nanofibers and nickel–cobalt ferrite [22-24] is essential. As for chipless humidity sensor tag, Si
Nanowire (SiNWs) have been proved to be excellent choice for humidity sensing [22], however there

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still have no any reports to illustrate the design of chipless RFID sensor tag based on SiNWs

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comprehensively.

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This paper presents a chipless RFID humidity sensor tag for low-cost and long-term application.

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The proposed sensor tag consists of coding unit and sensing unit. The unique identifier (ID) of the
tag depends on the number and length of I-type slots of the coding unit. The scatterer can acquire

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sensing ability by covering the SiNW deposited layer on its surface. The rest of this work is
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organized as follows: section 2 firstly introduces the test theory and system of chipless sensor tag,
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then the coding unit and sensing unit of the tag are analysed in detail in section 3 and section 4
respectively; The measurement results are presented and discussed in section 5. Finally, some
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conclusions are drawn in Section 6.

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2. System Description

The feasibility is proved to convey the tag information by using Radar Cross Section (RCS)
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[25,26].The electromagnetic scattering model is divided into three regions in the frequency domain:
Rayleigh region, resonance region and optical region. Since it contains the physical shape, size and
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other physical information of the target, the resonance region shows the electromagnetic
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characteristics for target recognition. The proposed chipless RFID sensor tag is the scatter working at
the resonance zone. The RCS test setup and the corresponding test principle are shown in Fig. 1. The
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RCS area σ can be defined as :

p   4 3  R 4  p
 r  2
 k r (1)
pt  Gt  Gr    pt

where Pt (Pr) is the transmitting (receiving) power of the antenna, Gt (Gr) is the transmitting
(receiving) gain of the antenna, R is the distance between the tag and the antenna, λ is the signal
wavelength. In this measurement, Gt (Gr) and R are kept unchanged, resulting the k is constant.
Therefore the σ of the target radar can be deduced as long as Pr/Pt is measured. The transmitting
antenna and the receiving antenna are respectively connected to the port 1 and the port 2 of the
vector network analyzer (VNA), resulting the Pr/Pt measurement is equivalent to the measurement of
the transmission coefficient S21. Therefore the measurement of S21 can be used to obtain the ID and
sensing information of the tag .

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3. Tag Coding Unit Design

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This paper presents a chipless RFID sensor tag based on I-type slot structure. The coding

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information of the proposed tag is determined by its slot structure and the backscattering signals of

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different scatterers show different spectrum characteristics. The slotted technique can integrate
multiple slot resonators on the same patch, which is beneficial to the miniaturization of tag. Fig. 2

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shows the structure of I-slot chipless tag which slots are etched on the dielectric substrate. Different
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lengths of the slots can generate different resonant frequencies and the effective coding can be
achieved according to the presence or absence of the slot. Three different length slots, named as A, B
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and C, work as encoding unit to store ID information of the tag. Another three slots with same
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length, named as D, are used as sensing units. The humidity changes can be detected by the covered
humidity sensitive material on the sensing unit. For a slot resonator with length Ls, its resonant
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frequency f can be described as:

c 2
f 
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(2)
2 Ls r 1

where c is the light speed, εr is the relative dielectric constant of the substrate. The substrate adopts
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FR4 material with a dielectric constant of 4.5 and it covers 40×40 mm2 with a thickness of 1.6 mm.
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The width of the slots is 0.5 mm. The slot gap distance d1 is chosen as 2 mm to prevent gap parasitic
interference and the gap distance d2 is chosen as 4 mm to reduce the influence between sensing unit
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and coding unit. Based on HFSS simulation, Table 1 shows the corresponding frequency and
encoding data of different slot lengths.
Taking slot A as an example, the length changes of LA make the resonant frequency of slot A
within one of the three 200 MHz frequency bands, which center frequencies are 5.766 GHz, 6.011
GHz and 6.256 GHz respectively. If the resonant frequency lies in these three bands, the
corresponding coding data is 00, 10 and 11 respectively. If not, it means the slot A is absent and the
corresponding coding data is 00. Because the encoding unit uses three different slots to encode at the
same time, the complete ID information of the tag can be represented by a 6-bit binary code.

4. Tag Sensing Unit Design

A. Humidity Sensing Material

The main difference between the chipless tag and chipless sensor tag is the resonant frequency

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of the chipless sensor tag can change with environment, but the chipless tag only contains encoding

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unit and its resonant frequency always remains constant. Different materials such as barium

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hexaferrite, hydroxyapatite material, Mg0.5Cu0.5Fe2O4, barium–tungsten ferrite, copper-zinc-tungsten

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spinel ferrite，Si Nanowire (SiNWs) were proposed for the candidates of the humidity sensitive
material [27-31]. Among these materials, SiNWs shows the excellent performances on sensitivity,

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response time, selectivity and repeatability, therefore it is a better choice for the design of chipless
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RFID humidity sensor tag. The SiNWs depositing layer can be obtained as following: firstly paste
the polyester tape on which the tag does not need coating, and then drops 2 ml ethanol solution of
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SiNWs on the high-speed rotating center of sensing unit of the tag. After 30 s spin coating (the spin
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speed is 2 kR/s), we can achieve the uniform distributing layer with the same thickness on the tag
surface. Due to the volatilization of ethanol, the SiNWs layer does not need any post processing.
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When the ambient humidity changes, SiNWs capture water molecules, which change its effective
dielectric constant and conductivity and then results in the changes in frequency characteristics
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obviously. Fig. 3 shows the scanning electron microscope photographs of SiNWs deposited layer.
The dielectric constant of SiNWs can be gained through the capacitance measuring of the
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corresponding interdigital electrode. The interdigital electrode was obtained by etching on the same
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substrate with a uniform spin coating as discussed above. Fig. 4 shows the schematic diagram of the
capacitance measuring system which consists of three parts. The standard humidity generating
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container uses different saturated water solution to achieve controlled humidity environment at
different temperatures in closed glass container; The resonator oscillator converts the capacitance C
of interdigital electrodes to a corresponding frequency f, which is then real-time collected by the data
recording part. The relationship between f and C can be expressed as the following equation [32]:
f   ln 2  RC 
1
(3)

where R is the equivalent resistance of the oscillator.

The structure of the proposed interdigital capacitance is shown in Fig. 5. According to Gerwen
Model [32], the capacitance of interdigital electrode can be described as:
N  Lh N  L
C  (4)
W 2
where N is the number of interdigitated electrodes, ε is the complex dielectric constant of water

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absorbing layer, L is the length of interdigital electrode, h is the thickness of interdigital electrode

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and W is the gap distance between interdigital electrodes. The parameters are chosen as N=40, L=15

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mm, W=2 mm, h=20 μm. Fig. 6 shows the capacitance of the interdigital electrodes with respect to

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RH. Combined with Equtaion 3 and 4, we can obtain the change range of dielectric constant is
3.5-15. The conductivity of the SiNW was measured as 1.6 and 3.1 when the relative humidity was
11.3% and 93% respectively at 25℃.
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B. Tag Sensing Unit Design
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For RF sensing units, we should design scatterers with high quality factor (Q value) to increase
their sensitivity to the changes of dielectric constants of materials. Compared with the general
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scattering structure, I-type structure shows higher Q value, so the change of dielectric constant of
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these material will be easier to change the spectrum characteristics. As shown in Fig. 2, this work
adopts 3 parallel resonant slots as sensing units, which benefits to increase the amplitude of
backscattered signals and read tag information. Since the SiNW material is covered on the surface of
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the slots, the dielectric constant of the slots turns to be a composite dielectric constant of the
substrate and the SiNWs deposited layer.
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Based on HFSS model of the deposited layer, we can easily change the dielectric constant εr and
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conductivity cond of the deposited layer. The thickness of the deposited layer depends on the particle
size of SiNWs, which diameter ranges from 10-100 nm and length can be up to several mm. In order
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to save simulation time, a copper layer with a thickness of 20 μm is employed to approximate the
deposited layer. During the simulation, the εr and cond of the layer change at the same time to
simulate the effect of relative humidity on the frequency characteristics of the sensing unit. Table 2
shows the simulation results of the resonant frequency of the sensing unit when the slot length Ls is
32 mm. Because the dielectric constant of the deposited layer increases with the humidity, the
condition of εr=2 and cond=0.2 s/m means RH is low and the corresponding resonance frequency is
3.611 GHz under this condition. In order to simulate the situation when RH is increased, both εr and
cond increase until they reach the condition of εr=25 and cond=4 s/m. The resonant frequency peak of
RCS curve moves to the lower frequencies.

5. Measurment Results and Discussions

In this work, by using the same etching process and SiNWs deposition process, we fabricated 3

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chipless humidity sensor tags with the different encoding units and the same sensing unit. One of the

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three tags, named as sample 1, is shown in Fig. 7. The slots lengths of the sample 1 from A to D are

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14, 18, 24 and 32 mm respectively and its ID coding is 111111. Because the coding of tag ID uses

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frequency band coding method and each frequency band has 200 MHz fault-tolerant space, the noise
removal and consistency experiments only work for the sensing unit.

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As shown in Fig. 8, all the measurements of coding unit were carried out in anechoic chamber.
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Two cross polarized horn antennas are employed, one as the transmitting antenna and the other as the
receiving antenna. The bandwidth of the antenna is from 3-7 GHz, the distance between the two
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antennas is 35 cm, and the distance between the antenna and the sample is set to 50 cm. The
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transmitting and receiving antenna are respectively connected with the two port vector network
analyzer. We can get the parameters of S21 transmission coefficient through above steps. In order to
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remove the ambient reflection noise of electromagnetic wave and the propagation path loss, we
should firstly measure the S21 parameter under the condition without the sample tag, which were then
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subtracted from measured data of the sample tag [33].

We can tell from the left column in Fig. 9 that the resonant frequency error of sample 1 is 1.9%
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after repeating testing it for 10 times. The right column in Fig. 9 shows the average value of the
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resonant frequency of three sample tags and the frequency error is 2.4%. The measured resonant
frequencies illustrate good consistency, indicating that the influence of different ID coding units on
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sensing units can be ignored.

The sensor performances of the tag were measured in a temperature and humidity chamber
(Votsch VCL4003). Considering the material’s properties is sensitive to temperature variation, both
the lab temperature and the inside temperature of the chamber were set as 25℃ and the RH of the
chamber ranged from 30% to 90% with a 5% step. For each test, the tag had been placed in the
temperature and humidity chamber for 10 minutes to make the SiNWs absorb or release the water
enough, and then remove the tag fastly back in anechoic chamber to measure its backscattering
performances. During the whole measurement, the temperature variation of the lab does not exceed
1℃ and the position of tag and antenna remained unchanged. Therefore, all the changes of the
transmission coefficient curve can be considered caused by the electrical parameters changes of the
humidity-sensitive SiNWs deposited layer.
Fig. 10(a) shows the measured S21 of sample 1 within the band from 3-7 GHz under three

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different RH conditions. It can be observed that the resonant frequency of slot A, B and C hardly

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changes with humidity. The measured results and the simulation results of the tag are consistent.

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Because the tag ID encode within 200 MHz band, the ID information of tags can be obtained

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accurately under different humidity. Fig. 10(b) is the measured S21 curve of the sensor unit in the 3-4
GHz frequency band. The results show that the higher the humidity, the lower the resonance

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frequency of the sensing unit. The resonant frequencies at 30% RH and 90% RH are 3.725 GHz and
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3.512 GHz respectively, resulting in a frequency shift of 215 MHz.
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The solid line curve in Fig. 11 illustrates the resonant frequency of the sample 1 with respect to
the humidity. The 30% RH point is corresponding to the resonance frequency f0, the 35% RH point is
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corresponding to f1 and so on. Taking f0=3.725 GHz as the reference frequency, Δf represents the
change of the resonance frequency relative to the reference frequency under different RH, Δfi=fi－
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fi+1 represents the resonant frequency shift of the corresponding step size, then the sensitivity of the
sensor tag S can be derived from:
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fi 1
Si = (5)
f 0 RH
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It can be observed that within low humidity range (30% to 70%), the resonant frequency shifts
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linearly with RH. We can calculate that the 1% RH variation corresponds to the frequency shift of
2.9 MHz, that is S=2.9 MHz/%RH. Within higher humidity range (70% to 90%), the resonant
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frequency shift increases obviously and we can obtain S=4.8 MHz/%RH, which is almost twice as
the sensitivity in low humidity range. This fact is due to the better water absorbing ability of SiNWs
in high humidity environment.
The dashed line in Fig. 11 shows the hysteresis curve of the tag. Due to the difference between
the water capture and release ability of SiNWs, there is a certain error between the moisture
absorption and desorption curves. The maximum error of these two curves is 21 MHz at the point of
70% RH. In the process of estimating relative humidity by resonant frequency shift, there are two
different humidity values RH and RH' in moisture absorption and desorption for a certain resonance
frequency shift Δf, the corresponding RH error δ can be derived by:


 RH  RH  (6)
2  RH  RH  

when Δf of two curves is 63 MHz, the corresponding RH values of two curves are 56% and 61%

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respectively, where two curves obtains the maximum error δmax of 8.3%. The average error δave of

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two curves is 5.5%.

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Fig. 12(a) compares the frequency shift characteristics of the sensing unit of the three sample

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tags. The frequency shift characteristics of different tags are obviously consistent. It is can be
calculated that the maximum RH error δmax and the average RH error δave at the same frequency is

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7.6% and 4.9% respectively. Fig. 12(b) shows the frequency shift characteristics of the tag 1 within
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three days by using the same test setup. It can be obtained that the δmax and δave are 6.1% and 3.9%
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respectively.
Combined with frequency shift data of different tags, it can deduce the fitting formula of RH as:
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RH  8.1623 104 f 2  0.4434f  31.18 (7)

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The RH of the environment can be obtained by measuring the frequency shift of the resonance
frequency relative to the reference frequency f0 (at RH=30%). Compared with the real value, the
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maximum error and average error of the measured RH values are 7.5% and 4.2% respectively.

6. Conclusion
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Humidity measurement plays a vital role in industrial control and environment monitoring. This
paper presents a chipless humidity sensor integrated with RFID. The tag consists of coding unit and
sensing unit and we focus on the influence of electric parameters of scatter structure on
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electromagnetic wave transmission coefficient S21. The humidity sensor unit adopts I-type slot
structure and uses SiNWs deposited layer as the sensing material. The proposed chipless RFID
sensor tag work on passive mode and fabricate without any post processing. The measurement
results show the proposed sensor tag achieves excellent hysteresis and consistency performances, It
is especially suitable for low-cost long term humidity monitoring application.

Acknowledgments:
This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (51577046,
51767006), State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (51637004),
National Key Research and Development Plan "Important Scientific Instruments and Equipment
Development" (2016YFF0102200), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province

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(20171BAB206045), Science and Technology Project of Education Department of Jiangxi Province

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(GJJ160491, GJJ170378)

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Author biography

Fangming Deng received B.Sc. degree in Microelectronics technology in 2002 and M.Sc.
degree in 2005 both from HeFei University of Technology (HFUT). He joined School of Electrical
and Automation Engineering, East China Jiaotong University from 2006 and worked as a lecturer
since 2008. He is also a Ph.D. candidate of HFUT. His research interests include
analog&mixed-signal circuit, CMOS sensor technology, sensor processing and RFID technology.
Yigang He received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Hunan University in 1992

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and Ph.D. degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1996. He is currently a professor and the head of

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School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Hefei University of Technology. He is one of

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winners of National Distinguished Young Scientists Foundation. His research interests are in the

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areas of circuit theory and its applications, testing and fault diagnosis of analog and mixed-signal
circuits, smart grid, radio frequency identification technology, and intelligent signal processing.

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Bing Li received the B.E. degree in automobile engineering from Chongqing Science and
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Technology University, Chongqing, China, in 1995, and the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from Hunan University, Changsha, China, in 2006 and 2011, respectively. He has been a
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Post-Doctoral Researcher and Visiting Scholar with the College of Electrical and Information
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Engineering, Hunan University, since 2011. He is a associate professor in School of Electrical and
Automation Engineering, Hefei University, Hefei, China, since 2013. His current research interests
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include radio frequency identification technology, wireless sensor networks, and signal processing.
Yang Song received B.E. degree in 2014 in electrical engineering from HeFei University of
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Technology (HFUT) and now he is persuing M.Sc. degree in HFUT. His current research interests in
RFID sensor tag design.
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Xiang Wu received B.E. degree in 1996 in electronics engineering from Nanchang University,
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Nanchang, China and received M.E. degree in 2009 in electrical engineering from East China
Jiaotong University, Nanchang, China. He joined School of Electrical and Automation Engineering,
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East China Jiaotong University from 2004 and worked as a lecturer since 2007. His research interests
include CMOS sensor technology, mix-signal circuit design and signal processing.
(a)

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Fig.1 Test system (a) system setup (b) system theory.
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Fig. 2 Structure of the proposed chipless RFID sensor tag.

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Fig.3 Microscopic image of SiNWs deposited layer.

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Fig.4 Capacitance test system.

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Fig.5 Structure of interdigital electrode.

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Fig.6 Capacitance-RH response curve of interdigital electrode at 25℃.

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Fig. 7 Photo of the proposed Chipless RFID tag.

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Fig.8 Measurement environment.

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Fig.9 The measured value of the resonant frequency of the sensing unit.

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(b)
Fig. 10 Transmission coefficient at different humidity (a) Transmission coefficient of the tag; (b)
Transmission coefficient of sensor unit at 25℃.
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Fig.11 Hysteresis performance of tag at 25℃.

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(a)
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(b)
 Fig.12 Consistency performances testing at 25℃ (a) consistency performances of different
sample tags; (b) consistence performances of tag 1.

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Table 1 Frequency shifting technique for data encoding
Slot Length Length Frequency Encoding
Number Number (mm) （GHz） Data
14 6.256±0.1 11

A LA 15 6.011±0.1 10

16.5 5.766±0.1 01

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18 5.518±0.1 11

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B LB 20 5.231±0.1 10

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22 4.956±0.1 01

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24 4.711±0.1 11

C LC 26 4.375±0.1 10

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4.136±0.1 01
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Table 2 Influence of Dielectric Parameters on Resonant Frequency
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εr cond (S/m) f (GHz)

2 0..2 3.611
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5 0.4 3.575
10 1 3.510
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15 2 3.432
20 3 3.397
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25 4 3.384
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