Passive UHF RFID Tag as a Sensor for Crack Depths

Abstract

The use of UHF RFID passive tags for defect detection is a promising application in structural health monitoring. However, it's a challenging task while most related information to tag antenna design is not available as well it suffers from the interference effect on wireless measurements. In this article, we investigated and developed a new technique for crack depth sensing by using a passive UHF RFID tag as a sensor which interrogated by thingmagic M6e platform. Wireless power transfer WPT level and the frequency sweeping are used to match between tag impedance and metal induction effect. The distance between the tag and reader is adjusted at 30cm which can achieve high quality factor. As a result, the tag backscatter signal become rich with maximum peak components. The proposed technique called power peaks feature extraction (PPFE) which is used to detect the artificial crack depth on the surface of the stainless steel and ferromagnetic samples. Skewness is applied on PPFE to offer a direct approximation procedure for the crack depth. A linear relationship of skewness achieves high accuracy result with a maximum estimation error of 0.1 mm for stainless steel sample, the technique is validated and compared with the frequency domain result, and it achieves all most the same accuracy for the stainless steel sample. Technology of China. His main research interests include electromagnetic sensors, sensor array and sensor network, electromagnetic non-destructive evaluation, advanced signal processing and integrative systems and applications. He has coordinated several research projects from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Royal Academy of Engineering and FP7. Also, he has good collaboration with leading industrial companies such as Airbus, Rolls Royce, BP, nPower, Network Rail and TWI among others.

A Concise State-of-the-Art Review of Crack Monitoring Enabled by RFID Technology

“…The results demonstrated the potential of utilizing RFID sensing in fiberglass composite laminates. Omer et al [21] developed a new crack depth detection technology based on the ThingMagic M6e platform passive UHF RFID tag (as shown in Figures 8 and 9). Wireless power transfer levels and sweep frequencies are used to match tag impedance and metal sensing effects.…”

A Review of Radio Frequency Identification Sensing Systems for Structural Health Monitoring

“…For example, a pseudocode of the reader used to read the crack sensor tag is shown in Table 8 . A set of queries [ 59 ] is required for one resonance frequency point, which leads to the low sampling rate of RFID sensing data.…”

Machine Learning-Based Structural Health Monitoring Using RFID for Harsh Environmental Conditions

“…The results in [32] show that the RFID sensors are able to detect crack widths of as low as 0.0650 mm. An investigation was conducted in [34,35] for the crack depth over stainless steel and ferromagnetic materials by combining RFID sensors with the ThingMagic platform. A UHF RFID tag is proposed in [33] to monitor the tyre's health, where a modified end loaded meander line dipole antenna is used to compensate for the decreased read range.…”

“…A UHF RFID tag is proposed in [33] to monitor the tyre's health, where a modified end loaded meander line dipole antenna is used to compensate for the decreased read range. However, the existing studies of RFID-based sensors in the literature such as [32][33][34][35] do not consider the significant prediction outcomes when combined with the ML algorithms.…”