A Dual-Band HF /UHF Antenna for RFID Tags

Conventional RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) systems operating at one single carrier frequency can hardly handle the great variety of shapes and materials that occur in products and packaging. In this paper, a dual-band antenna is presented that allows operation in the 13.56MHz band as well as in the 868MHz band. This provides two options to establish a data link to each object equipped with a dual-band RFID tag. The credit-card sized antenna consists of a very thin copper-plated polyimide substrate that is flexible and can be integrated into packaging.