A Dual Resonant Microstrip Antenna for UHF RFID in the Cold Chain Using Corrugated Fiberboard as a Substrate

Each year, about 76 million people contract a food borne illness in the United States; about 325,000 require hospitalization; and about 5,000 die. Tracking goods throughout the food supply chain increases the efficiency of recall of tainted goods and thus will help reducing food borne illness. Passive UHF RFID has been widely accepted to be a technology capable of increasing supply chain efficiency. Passive UHF RFID tags designed for supply chain application are tuned to work well on corrugated fiberboard boxes that are ubiquitous in the supply chain. Commercially available passive UHF RFID tags are either sensitive to the content/environmental conditions of the corrugated fiberboard box or economically unfeasible. In this thesis we propose a novel dual-resonant planar UHF RFID microstrip antenna designed to be both insensitive to the content/environmental conditions of the corrugated fiberboard box and economically feasible. We provide simulated performances and experimental validations to show that the proposed microstrip antenna design is a viable and technically superior solution compared to conventional stripline dipole antennas widely used in commodity tags. iv Acknowledgement I thank my advisor Dr. Daniel Deavours for his guidance and encouragement that has helped me to successfully complete my thesis and my graduate study at The University of Kansas. I also thank him for giving me the opportunity to work with him at the RFID Alliance Lab. He has been a wonderful teacher and a tremendous inspiration. I thank Dr. Kenneth Demarest and Dr. James Stiles for being in my thesis committee. I sincerely believe that their suggestions and feedback will add a lot of value to my thesis. I also thank them for every thing they have thought me in the class room. University of Kansas for giving me this wonderful opportunity to learn and master my skills as an Electrical Engineer. I thank all the graduate students who worked with me in the RFID Alliance Lab for their help and support. v To my family and friends vi Table of Contents