Performance of Chipless Sensor for Frozen Food Monitoring in Proximity to Meat Products

This paper presents a study on the impact of meat product phantom to the performance of chipless RF sensor operating in the 700 - 900 MHz band. Due to its suitable material properties, the forearm phantom from SPEAG is chosen to mimic the meat, which would be included in the same packaging with the sensor. The study includes modeling, simulation of the chipless RF sensor with the forearm phantom as well as measuring the sensor's performance in a realistic environment. Two placements of the forearm phantom are considered: parallel (Case 1) and perpendicular (Case 2) to the aperture of the interrogator antenna. It is concluded that the phantom will have little effect on the sensor performance as long as the distance is greater than 5 mm.