Read range investigation of RFID tag on human chest

Abstract

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for automatic identification, tracking, and monitoring of human is in great demand by the healthcare industry. The existence of passive tag with proximity to human body in general, represents an intrinsic challenge because of the high losses of body tissues A commercial passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID tag with 860 MHz-960 MHz operating frequency range is modelled to study and analyze the effect on the read range parameter by placing the RFID tag in proximity to human body model (the chest) with respect to the placement of pocket position of any shirt The body model of the chest is consisting of three layers which are skin, fat and muscle. The commercial RFID tag that has been used for this study was INLAY-9662. The measurement is done on the commercial tag prior to modelling and simulation in the CST. Furthermore, the simulation was carried on two conditions: (1) in free-space, and (2) in proximity to human body. In addition, 1 mm, 3 mm and 10 mm have been set as the gap between the modelled tag and the chest model to examine the impacted read range at different distances. The results obtained have shown some variations when the distances are varied from the human chest. The read range were achieved at 0.5 m, 1.3 m and 2.4 m for 1 mm, 3 mm and 10 mm respectively. This study has shown the capabilities of human body to reduce the efficiency of the read range whenever RFID tags are placed in proximity to human body.