Reliability analysis of UHF RFID tags under long-term mechanical cycling

Radio Frequency Identification is becoming more and more popular although unit price of RFID tags is still higher than price of barcodes. Further decrease in cost of using RFID techniques can be possible to achieve by recycling of tags. However, their multiple use causes that RFID tags are placed repeatedly on a surface of identified object and then, peeled off. Thus, tags have to withstand even long-term mechanical exposure in order to guarantee reliable work in a long period of time. In this paper, reliability of UHF tags under long-term mechanical cycling is reported. Two different RFID tags were used to perform investigations which revealed that mechanical properties of tested RFID tags are mostly dependent on their stackup, i.e. additional top and internal foil or paper layers may introduce significant growth of mechanical durability of the tested RFID tag samples.