The aim of this paper is to examine the potential of inkjet printing technology for the fabrication of Near Field Communication (NFC) coil antennas. As inkjet printing technology enables deposition of a different number of layers, an accurate adjustment of the printed conductive tracks thickness is possible. As a consequence, input resistance andQfactor can be finely tuned as long as skin depth is not surpassed while keeping the same inductance levels. This allows the removal of the typical damping resistance present in current NFC inductors. A general methodology including design, simulation, fabrication, and measurement is presented for rectangular, planar-spiral inductors working at 13.56 MHz. Analytical formulas, computed numerical models, and measured results for antenna input impedance are compared. Reflection coefficient is designated as a figure of merit to analyze the correlation among them, which is found to be below −10 dB. The obtained results demonstrate the suitability of this technology in the fabrication of low cost, environmentally friendly NFC coils on flexible substrates.

In this work, we describe a complete step-by-step workflow to apply machine-learning (ML) classification for chipless radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag identification, covering: 1) the tag implementation criteria for circular ring resonator (CRR) and square ring resonator (SRR) arrays for ML interoperability; 2) the data collection procedure to get a sufficiently representative dataset of real measurements; 3) the ML techniques to visualize the data and reduce its dimensionality; 4) the evaluation of the ML classifier to ensure high-accuracy predictions on new measurements; and 5) a thresholding scheme to increase the certainty of the predictions. The differences in the tags’ frequency responses are maximized by optimizing the Hamming distance between the tag identifiers (IDs) and by controlling each resonator array’s radar cross section (RCS) level. We show that the proposed workflow achieves perfect accuracy for the identification of four tags at a fixed distance of 160 cm. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed workflow to identify up to 16 tags within a flexible range (up to 140 cm), showcasing the tradeoff between the number of tags that can be correctly classified based on the reading range.

This paper presents a model that anticipates the emissions from eddy current brakes (ECBs) installed in high-speed trains. The emissions are computed in the 10 KHz-1.3 MHz range, where trackside signaling devices operate and issues related to electromagnetic compatibility have arisen, hindering ECB's promise of full deployment. The electromagnetic model provides a transfer function in the frequency domain between the nondesired harmonic currents produced by the train power supply and the subsequent radiated emissions by the ECBs at the trackside. The model includes the influence of the on-board ECB system's electric circuitry on the three-dimensional field computation of the electromagnets by a cosimulation approach (circuit and electromagnetic cross talk). After the data are post-processed, the simulated results are compared with the results of an extensive measurement campaign on board a high-speed ICE 3 train equipped with ECBs. The high correlation makes it possible to anticipate ECB emissions in order to save costly on-track test runs, to suggest ECB design strategies and to provide safe limits when the worst cases occur.

This study presents a comparison between two dipoles acting as representatives of ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (RFID) circularly polarised (CP) and linearly polarised (LP) tag antennas, respectively. As the CP dipole is derived from the LP dipole, they have equivalent reflection coefficient and radiation efficiency values, allowing the comparison to be focused on polarisation and radiation pattern. Then, a comparison of RFID angular and read range is investigated. This is conducted by combining the interrogation of CP and LP tags emulators by CP and LP readers with regulated power. The emulators are made up of the CP and LP dipoles embedded onto RFID tags with analog front-ends. A methodology is described for measuring the maximum angular and read ranges, involving maximum power allowed by European regulation. A 17.9% extra range is achieved by the CP tag and the CP reader compared to the LP tag with any kind of reader. Furthermore, null cancellation is observed in the former case in the region of interest.