The Antenna Guy

As I mentioned on my previous post, today’s post will be about the good old microstrip patch antenna. There are two implementations for the microstrip patch antenna typically used for UHF RFID ‘Reader’ antennas, one with an air core and other with ceramic core. The advantage of the former is that it has a wider bandwidth (can usually accommodate the ETSI and FCC bands), better efficiency and therefore higher radiation gain and usually has a better polarization purity. The advantage of the later is that it is smaller. That’s it, on ceramic core microstrip antennas, you sacrifice all performance parameters for size. In some applications which are very restraining in terms of available space, it is essential to have the possibility to reach a compromise between the size of the antenna and its performance. Now, as I already mentioned, I’m not going to dwell on the theory of microstrip patch antennas, how they come to be and h...

This is the first official entry to the blog! So the other day I was watching  this video  and I thought "Hey I can actually do that!" (Design UHF RFID antenna tags). So I decided the first entries to this blog would be dedicated to UHF RFID antennas (I don't even feel qualified to qualify that idea...).  I always found RFID technology very interesting. It's a shame that it is really obscured, especially the UHF. One can find some applications here and there, and many times don't even realize it's RFID. Still, I always get the feeling that it is a highly underrated technology, I mean, it has the potential to offer so much, but somehow, it's not so ubiquitous as it should have been. Think about it, it's a wireless communication system, where the mobile parts actually work without the need for batteries, but they can send dat...