Non-Volatile CBRAM/MIM Switching Technology for Electronically Reconfigurable Passive Microwave Devices

3Solid-State Rewritable Chipless RFID Tags: Electronically Rewritable RF Barcodes

3.1. Introduction: chipless RFID technology

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that has been around for several decades. Inspired by radio detection and ranging (RADAR) techniques, RFID is the later successor of Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) technology used during Word War II. RFID is a very mature and diverse field in its current state (Finkenzeller 2010; Perret 2014). In general, the RFID scheme consists of an RF identifier in the form of a tag. The tag can either be active or passive. In the former case, the tag generates a specific modulated digital sequence that would be identified by a dedicated reader equipped with an antenna. In the latter case, the tag is just a scatterer, without any onboard power source, which would re-modulate and backscatter an interrogation energy sequence originating from a reader antenna.

In this study, we focus more on the passive RFID tag technology. The passive tags can be further categorized as chip-based and chipless tags. In the first type, the tag is composed of an identifier Integrated Circuit (IC) Circuit, which is generally a high-level semiconductor chip, which is impedance matched to an antenna. The reader illuminates the tag with an RF energy sequence (say a plane wave). The IC on the tag, upon the reception of this energy via antenna, scavenges a small part of it for power supply needs. The rest of the energy is remodulated with ...