Metallic Crack Detection Using Chipless RFID Single-bit Sensor Tag

This article yields a low-cost compact metallic crack detector RFID tag for wireless and sensing applications. The proposed chipless RFID (CRFID) tag has capability to detect cracks on metallic surfaces using pure-chip-free battery-free tag with no integrated/imbedded patch antennas. The vision is to deploy a low-cost, highly durable passive chip-free RFID tag. The tag has been analyzed for varying crack widths from 0.1mm to 3mm with metallic sheets of 30mm x 30mm and 60mm x 60mm. The tag resonates at 5.6GHz ultrahigh frequency (UHF) with a compact radius. Metallic Aluminum is deployed as a sample to be tested. Being passive in nature, the sensor tag mitigates additional battery source. The tag is a suitable choice for wireless and sensing applications in Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSN).