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I. Introduction
2010 IEEE
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and retransmitted by the tag antenna. The response signal is then detected and decoded by the reader. In SAW
tags, a surface acoustic wave is used to read a sub-micron
barcode of properly arranged reflectors. In real reader
systems, the described pulse signals are rarely used and
more simple frequency domain reading methods are used,
in which S11(f) of the tags is measured and then Fouriertransformed to the time domain, enabling cheaper reader
designs.
IV. Milestones of SAW Tag History
A. SAW Tags Based on IDTs
Passive reflective tags with similar functionalities like
current SAW tags, which achieve the necessary delay of
about 1 microsecond by using an electromagnetic delay
line were described first in 1966 [4]. SAW tags were proposed first in the 1970s [5][8] and included the multi-IDT
and in [5] also reflector structures in one or a few acoustic
channels. Fig. 3 schematically demonstrates the idea of
multi-IDT tags.
Transducer-based SAW tags usually consist of one
large and strong transducer, the input transducers in Fig.
3, and several coding transducers, called output IDTs in
Fig. 3. Both the input and all output IDTs are electrically
wired in parallel. When an electrical signal is applied to
this common electrical port, SAWs will be generated by
all transducers. Because the forward and reverse transfer
function is equal in SAW devices, the insertion attenuation of a signal generated by the input IDT and picked up
by one output IDT will be the same as the signal generated by this output IDT and picked up by the input IDT.
Thus, in the time domain we first get spurious signals
which originate by a transfer from one code transducer to
another. If the initial delay of the tag, before the first code
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has to be spent on the impedance matching of the coding IDTs and between them and the input IDT. Because
omitting an IDT would destroy this sensitive balance, an
amplitude shift keying (ASK) coding seems not to be possible, but a pulse position coding or a phase coding seems
feasible.
B. Reflector-Based Tags
X-Cyte tags [8] have 16 reflectors distributed in 4
acoustic tracks. The multi-track design included separate
transducers in each acoustic channel and 2 reflectors on
both sides, each with up to 3 preceding phase shifting
elements (see Fig. 5). The SAW thus has to pass the bus
bars twice.
Reflector-based tags with folded propagation path of
SAWs allow a 2 times reduction in size, whereas a multitrack geometry causes the chip area to increase. A multitrack design with only 2 reflectors per track, as shown in
Fig. 5, leads to increased losses which cannot be compensated.
X-Cyte tags were designed for the American 900-MHz
ISM band and used a 4 PSK (phase shift keying) coding
scheme, where 2 bits are coded by one symbol (reflector),
which led to a further reduction of the number of reflectors and thus chip size and, in principle, also insertion
loss. The first 8 symbols were generated in the left side
of the chip shown in Fig. 5 and the last 8 symbols on the
right side. For coding, the appropriate number of phase
shifting elements per reflector were etched away in a second step. The phase shifting elements were built up as
metalized area, which leads to an additional phase shift of
45 in phase for the passing SAW when compared with the
free surface. Because the SAW passes each phase shifting
element twice, the removal of such an element would shift
the phase of the corresponding reflected signal by 90.
The X-Cyte tags suffered 2 major drawbacks which
hindered them from becoming a commercial success.
First, they had no strategy for testing the ready fabricated chips on the wafer before coding and packaging.
The amplitudes of the reflected signals could be measured
using wafer probers and network analyzers. To extract the
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n = f0 max.
Typical SAW tags incorporate 5000 to 10000 acoustic
wavelengths, depending on the number of symbols, the
relative bandwidth which determines the minimum separation of the symbols, and the minimum initial delay. If
we demand that the phase must be within 10 at the
exact phase, we end up to an accuracy of about 1:360000,
or 3ppm. The SAW phase velocity, therefore must be
constant to a level of 3 ppm over the whole chip, shown
in Fig. 5 to allow a safe extraction of the code.
Both authors tested a phase coding technique in the
past. Plessky studied this topology in 1994 [10] for 2.4GHz tags (Fig. 6). Although the device had very reasonable amplitude performance, the phase coding was impossible to achieve at that time with a 2.4 GHz frequency.
The device had no reference reflector.
Reindl [11] generated a 4 PSK coding at both frequencies, 2.45 GHz and 433 MHz, by a small shift of the reflectors of 1 or 2 times an eighth of an acoustic wavelength around the fixed periodic sampling. Because of the
strong temperature dependence of the acoustic velocity on
LiNbO3-YZ of 94 ppm/C, the correct recovery of the
phase information needs a careful elimination of the temperature shift of the phase. Although it was impossible
to eliminate these temperature shifts manually, a small
computer program could easily recover the correct phase
information by using the first and last symbol for reference (see Fig. 7).
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Fig. 9. Layout of a mounted SAW RFID tag using an ASK coding in the
2.45-GHz band with 33 reflectors in 4 tracks. The outside dimensions
are 16 9mm.
Fig. 10. Photo of the mounted SAW RFID tag shown in Fig. 9.
Fig. 11. Two measurement curves of 2 SAW RFID tags as shown in Figs.
9 and 10.
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Fig. 14. Schematic layout of a SAW RFID tag with 33 100% reflectors
distributed in 33 tracks on both sides of the centered input IDT.
Fig. 15. Schematic layout of a SAW RFID tag for operation in the small
European 433-MHz ISM band.
put IDT, all reflectors lay within the near field of the IDT
and only track losses occur. Because of reciprocity, this
holds also for the way back. However, with 33 reflectors,
the aperture of the central input IDT became too wide
and electrical long line effects destroyed the uniformity of
the impulse response.
For the European 433-MHz ISM band, SAW RFID tags
were designed which lowered the chip size by applying a
multi-strip coupler for track changing [13], [14] (see Fig.
15). The design used a unidirectional SPUDT as IDT (labeled 2), a track changing element (labeled 4), and coding
reflectors (labeled 3). The track of the SAW is labeled 5.
Contact was made by an inductive coupling (labeled 6) to
the antenna.
The introduction of pulse position coding by Plessky
[10] was very fruitful, and allowed higher-order coding but
overcoming the problems associated with phase coding
(see Fig. 16).
Most SAW RFID tag activities at Siemens stopped after all SAW-related activities were transferred to Epcos.
The train identification and related applications, however,
remained within Siemens and are still active.
E. BaumerIdent Tags
These tags were developed first in small Swiss company
TAGIX by R. Stierlin, later transferred to BaumerIdent
Company[15].
The device operated in the 2.4-GHz ISM band with a
split finger IDT, using a 3rd harmonic (see Fig. 17). In
one track there are 5 open-circuit /2 wide reflectors situated on both sides of the IDT. Time position coding was
used, providing 10000 different codes. The design included
a few innovations:
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Fig. 19. Test of a SAW RFID tag system for automation of car assembly
lines.
One track must be used with a unidirectional transducer (SPUDT) to avoid bi-directionality loss
Open finger reflectors with variable duty factor yield
low loss; diffraction compensation can be used
Time position coding; 4 slots per group is close to optimal for achieving a maximal number of codes, using
given total delay. In Global tag, proposed by C. Hartmann, the number of positions is much higher and a
group of slots may include a few pulses.
An initial delay of about 1 microsecond remains necessary
Two or 3 calibration reflectors (with fixed position)
must be used.
Error correction and other auxiliary functions may
require the use of several reflectors which cannot be
used for coding but occupy space.
C. Time Position Encoding
SAW RFID tags can be encoded in several ways. Current SAW tag products use time position encoding [10],
[16], [17], which represents the most straightforward way
of data encoding in SAW tags. This is the main method
currently used in commercial SAW tags [15],[30].
In this encoding scheme, the total time delay is divided
into slots of certain duration.
The slot width hereby is not limited by the separation of 2 signals by the radar system given by the time
width of the pulses, which is t = 1/B, where B is the
frequency band of the overall system (actually determined
by the band of signals radiated by the reader). In fact,
the slot width is limited by the resolution with which the
reader system can measure the time differences between
2 symbols. This resolution is given by the Cramer-Rao
bond, which depends on the bandwidth, number of sampling points, and the signal-to-noise ratio [31]. Therefore,
16 time slots seem to be feasible, giving 4 bits per symbol.
To avoid overlapping of the symbols, a guard interval is
needed between 2 symbols according to the separation of
the system.
In Fig. 20, the slots form groups of 5 slots. For such a
tag, one of the first 4 slots of each group is occupied by
a reflector and the fifth one, the guard slot, is always left
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Amplitudes of response signals are adjusted by gradually increasing the reflectivity of code reflectors, by adding
electrodes to reflectors, and by increasing their width. This
is done to compensate for the losses caused by propagation on the substrate surface, and by reflections and bulk
wave conversion from preceding code reflectors. A formula
for the proper choice of the amplitude of the responses,
and criteria to determine whether more tracks are advantageous, are given in [9].
As mentioned previously, a SAW tag must provide certain time delay to separate the response signal from the
read-out signal. The reflected signals must be received by
the reader only after a delay sufficient for the environmental echoes (reflections from walls or other nearby objects)
to die away. An adequate initial delay is typically about
1s and is facilitated by leaving about 2mm of empty
space on the substrate between the IDT and the code
reflectors. The free-surface SAW velocity on LiNbO3 is
about 4000m/s.
B. Loss Reduction in SAW Tags
A standard IDT, as depicted in Figs. 2 and 3, consists
of electrodes with alternating polarities. As it transforms
the electrical signal into an acoustic form, it generates surface acoustic wave propagation equally in both directions.
When such a bidirectional IDT is used in SAW tags, half
of the signal energy is already lost in transduction and the
same amount in the transduction back.
This problem can be overcome by using a unidirectional
IDT that only generates wave propagation in one direction. For a similar reason, SAW tags with several parallel
acoustic channels will have a higher loss level than a device where all reflectors are situated in the same channel.
However, typical unidirectional transducers (more specifically, single-phase unidirectional transducers, SPUDTs)
include electrodes with a width of /8, where is the
wavelength of SAW on the piezoelectric substrate. At
2.45 GHz, /8 is about 0.2m. This means SPUDT-type
transducers cant be produced using the photolithography
technology currently used in the SAW industry.
Recently, however, a SPUDT especially designed for
SAW tag applications was proposed by Hartmann &
Plessky [23] exploiting the fact that, on 128-LiNbO3, the
reflectivity of short-circuited electrodes can be close to
zero at some metal thickness and electrode widths. The
proposed transducer uses /4-wide (and wider) electrodes
and can be manufactured using current commercially
available optical photolithography.
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Fig. 26. Read out process for an ultra-wideband SAW tag. (a) An upchirp linear frequency-modulated signal is used for the request. (b) The
signal is compressed by the chirp transducer, reflected by code reflectors,
and expanded by the transducer. The output signal has a dispersion opposite to the signal. (c) Reflections from surrounding objects have the
same dispersion as the request signal.
2.5GHz with a band of 500MHz would satisfy this criterion. The UWB band being much wider than the 2.45-GHz
ISM band, a certain value of BT product, determining the
data capacity of a tag, can now be achieved with a significantly shorter coding delay, which enables a considerable
reduction of tag size. For example, with B = 500 MHz, a
BT of 200 only requires a coding time of 400ns instead
of the 2s typical for 2.45-GHz SAW tags. The total chip
size can then be smaller than 0.5 1.0 mm. A shorter
coding time also implies lower losses. A propagation time
of 400ns corresponds to only about 3dB propagation
loss.
Another interesting possibility is to have signal processing partly performed within a SAW tag using, for example, a chirp transducer [39][41] as illustrated in Fig.
26. This will allow for a matched-to-signal processing of
the tag response, which, after being modified within the
tag, will be different from the environmental echoes of
the request signal also received by the reader. This makes
the system more resistant to environmental interference,
because the reader is now able to distinguish between the
signal reflected by the SAW tag and that reflected by objects outside the tag. Because the principle of the ultrawideband technology is to reuse an already occupied frequency spectrum, but with very low power, an UWB SAW
tag system will also have the additional advantage of very
low transmitted power levels.
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VII. Discussion
The market demands small size, low cost, and environmentally compatible RFID tags. That excludes devices
consuming power from batteries. Both semiconductorbased tags and SAW tags can be read remotely, and both
are small in size. They do not require maintenance and
their life-time is limited only by the usual product time of
the circuitry. However, SAW RFID tags and passive semiconductor RFID tags are based on fundamentally different
physical principles. In this section, we compare in detail
these 2 approaches.
A. Power Issues in SAW Tags and in IC Tags
The main feature of SAW RFID tags is that they do
not use any autonomous power supply such as batteries. Moreover, they do not include any such circuitry that
would need to be powered. SAW tags are passive devices
that merely reflect the request signal. This results in a
linear operation at any signal level, even at a very low one.
The signal energy of the SAW tag response must of course
be sufficiently high for the reader to be able to receive it,
which is determined by the signal-to- noise level. However,
using multiple readings and matched-to-signal detection,
tag signals with power below the noise level can be read.
The total power radiated by the reader is typically on
the order of 10mW. For high-speed long-read-range applications, only a fraction of a microwatt is needed at the
tag position [3]. This is the typical power level to which
human beings will be exposed when in proximity of SAW
tag systems. It is about a hundred times lower than the
radiation exposure generated by mobile phones.
RFID systems based on semiconductor chips use an
IC to receive and detect the signal sent by the reader, as
well as to subsequently decode the signal and generate
the response. The functional blocks of a typical IC tag
include power accumulation, computation, and communication. The main feature of IC semiconductor tags is that
they must include a proper DC power source for correct
operation. The so-called passive IC RFID tags that do
not carry a battery are obliged to take this power from
the RF request signal. The main part of the signal sent
by the reader is used to power the IC and only a small
modulation of this signal is used for transmission of data.
Rectifier circuitry is used to extract sufficient power from
the radio signal. The rectifier converts the signal into DC
for storage in a capacitor and, ultimately, for powering
the chip. The reading of the tag is performed using a
predetermined protocol and is only possible if the necessary DC power level is maintained throughout the entire request cycle. Therefore, a minimum critical power of
about 100W must be received continuously by the tag
antenna during the entire decoding period of the tags
signal[2]. Below this signal threshold, rectification is not
possible. This power restriction is imposed by the physics of semiconductors and thus is fundamental. For SAW
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