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Has anyone done any applications with long range capable 13.56 MHz HF RFID antennas/readers? I’m looking for possible recommendations as my googling has turned up relatively few candidates.

I have a requirement to read ISO tags embedded in products of various sizes as they move at speeds of up to 300 mm/s, and we currently have ifm ANT600’s that can do 400-600 mm read distance. These antennas like the tag to be parallel with the reader and at 2W power have a seemingly small “sweet spot” that the signal radiates around. This particular application can have the RFID tags in any position rotationally, and thus the antenna must in a worst case scenario penetrate the product to get to the underlying tag. This also causes not every tag to be parallel with the antenna like it is best suited for. Because of these factors, we have to put the antenna very close to the product to get any reads, and depending on the product it can be pretty hit or miss.

Welcome! Is it possible to use several antennas, oriented differently?

jwax wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:23 pm Welcome! Is it possible to use several antennas, oriented differently?

Hi! IFM Electronic https://eltra-trade.com/catalog/ifm-electronic produces a lot of RFID sensors and spare parts of them. Maybe you can find something here for your purpose.

Try searching "High Sensitivity RFID"

here are some interesting presentations that help to illuminate some of the problems and solutions:

https://www.gs1.org/sites/default/files ... _final.pdf

https://rainrfid.org/wp-content/uploads ... esting.pdf

https://www.atlasrfidstore.com/rfid-ins ... fid-again/

I'm not expert enough to solve this but it seems like you can use more power in the initial RF burst to turn the tag on then a more sensitive receiver to pick it up from further away. The problem is, you might start picking up other tags. its inherently short range by design and the proximity of other tags is to be considered in your conveyor belt application.