Product category:
Analysis, simulation and mathematical software
News Release from: Flomerics | Subject: MicroStripes electromagnetic simulation software
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 02 August 2007
Simulation reduces RFID label
development time
By simulating radio frequency identification labels with electromagnetic simulation software a company has reduced the time to develop RFID labels from 7-10 days to 2-3 days.
By simulating the labels with Flomerics' MicroStripes electromagnetic simulation software, Sentronik has reduced the time required to develop radio frequency identification (RFID) labels from 7-10 days to 2-3 days, reports Flomerics Sentronik has also been able to improve the read rate on labels to between 99% and 100% by optimising their design in the simulation domain
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 10 Jan 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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"Simulation greatly improves the design process by enabling our engineers to evaluate the performance of many possible designs without having to build physical prototypes," said Georg Siegel, chief executive officer of Sentronik.
Sentronik is a leading supplier of RFID labels for a wide range of applications in the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries.
The company specializes in building custom labels that provide high read rates in tough applications where conventional labels fail.
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Design of RFID labels is challenging because of the difficulty of sorting out the many factors that can affect performance, such as the material to which the tags are attached, the orientation of the tags, power constraints, operating frequency variations, and other factors.
In the past, Sentronik engineers relied upon calculations with spreadsheets and math calculation programs.
These calculations were only rough approximations because they did not take the geometry of the labels and environment into account.
"MicroStripes has substantially improved our design process by providing an environment that enables to us to define the geometry of a new design and predict its performance," Siegel said.
"We originally selected MicroStripes software because it is easier to use than other electromagnetic simulation software that we looked at.
We also modeled several of our existing designs in the software and checked the results against physical tests and saw that they provided a very good match".
Sentronik engineers begin simulation by importing a DWG file containing the geometry of the initial concept design into MicroStripes.
They assign material properties to the different components of the label.
They typically begin by exciting the label in free space with a wire feed and calculate the return and radiation pattern of the antenna.
Engineers often evaluate many different designs until they are happy with the performance.
The next step is simulating the performance of the label in a more realistic environment.
Then they re-tune the antenna to resonate at the desired frequency in its installed environment.
"MicroStripes makes it possible to validate and optimize the performance of our designs before we even build the first prototype," Siegel said.
"This saves time and avoids wasting money building prototypes that don't work.
We can predict the return loss and radiation pattern of RFID tags under a wide range of real-world operating conditions in order to ensure high read rates. Request a free brochure from Flomerics ...
Electromagnetic simulation gives us a significant competitive advantage by helping us to design labels that provide better performance than those of our competitors.".
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