Performance analysis of pure paraffin Wax as RFID tag substrate

The article presents an investigation of the performance of the Paraplast, a kind of pure paraffin wax, used as a substrate of RFID tag antennas operating at UHF RFID band. To achieve this purpose, two similar RFID tag antennas with same dimensions have been simulated, fabricated and tested. These include a simple dipole tag on a Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 substrate and on pure paraffin substrate. Because of the relatively close dielectric constant values, paraffin substrate is compared with Duroid RT5880. Paraffin wax can be considered as a low cost and low loss substrate. The main purpose in the future will be using paraffin as a passive temperature sensor, by exploiting the changes in molecular structure, volume and dielectric properties with temperature, especially near its melting point