Robust Chipless RFID Detection Using Complex Natural Frequency Along With the k-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm

This paper proposes a detection technique for the chipless RFID system. In the proposed technique, the experiments for measuring the scattering responses of all possible tags were conducted first in a free-space anechoic chamber in order to avoid the effect of unwanted signals due to the environment. The responses of all possible tags were exploited in order to extract poles, including natural frequencies and damping factors, by using the short-time matrix pencil method. All extracted poles successively chosen from the late-time portions were exploited to create the decision boundary by using the k-nearest neighbor algorithm. In order to validate the robustness of the proposed detection technique, experiments with the chipless RFID system with tags attached to containers, i.e. parcel and plastic boxes, were conducted. Poles extracted from the response of the tag attached to a container were fed to the decision boundary for ID detection. The poles that had fallen into the region labeled as logic "1'' were detected as logic "1,'' and vice versa. The experiment results showed that the attachment of the tags to the containers caused a change in the poles. The conventional technique using only natural frequencies has exhibited poor performance regarding tag ID detection. On the other hand, the proposed detection technique achieved a 100% detection rate, although the extracted poles used to detect the bit logic were disturbed by the container. The experimental results confirm the superiority of the proposed system over conventional chipless RFID detection. Moreover, the proposed technique can be considered a robust detection technique.