Measurement System with a RFID Tag Antenna Mounted on Structural Members for Infrastructure Health Monitoring

In this paper, a radio frequency identification (RFID)-based wireless system for infrastructure health monitoring is studied. Ultra high frequency (UHF) RFID section with two different patch antennas is designed and investigated with the tag antenna mounted on concrete and metal structural members. The tag antenna is designed to be compatible with a new generation RFID chip and to be used to develop a sensor integrated RFID tag. Changes of the electromagnetic performance of the tag antenna are observed with an analysis of achievable read ranges with selected RFID hardware. The optimized tag antenna has shown satisfactory tolerance in the studied cases where the antenna system have the potential to be used in the development of the proposed RFID-based wireless infrastructure health monitoring system.