Conductive inkjet-printed wireless sensor nodes on flexible low-cost paper-based substrates

Abstract

In this paper, inkjet-printed flexible antennas fabricated on paper substrates are introduced as a system-level solution for ultra-low-cost mass production of UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tags and Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSN) in an approach that could be easily extended to other microwave and wireless applications. A compact inkjet-printed UHF "passive-RFID" antenna using the classic T-match approach and designed to match IC's complex impedance, is presented as a demonstrating prototype for this technology. In addition, the authors briefly touch up the state-of-the-art area of fully-integrated wireless sensor modules on paper and show the first ever 2D sensor integration with an RFID tag module on paper, as well as the possibility of a 3D multilayer paper-based RF/microwave structures. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.