Supply Chain Integrity Tilt Sensing RFID Tag

A tilt sensing tag is presented with a passive wireless RFID communications link. The tag is designed to reduce its read range when tilted in order to signal and memorize mishandling during transit or storage. The novelty of this design is the incorporation of mechanically altered ground plane separation from the antenna to achieve 2 states of input match, and also the introduction of a pair of sensing pads connected directly to the antenna port to facilitate the tilt detection and the retention of that information. The significance is for supply chain integrity with the realization of low cost wireless sensing tags that can be deployed widely in the monitoring of objects using standard RFID transponder chips, without the need of continuous energy harvesting, on-tag batteries or super capacitors. The results show that, when mounted on a variety of platforms, the tags are able to detect and retain tilt events by signalling states through backscattered power levels. The mechanical structure of the tag is proposed for manufacture by new additive printing techniques.