Paper Based Chipless RFID Leaf Wetness Detector for Plant Health Monitoring

This paper presents the design and analysis of a paper-based chipless RFID sensor for wetness content measurement in plant leaves. The sensor is designed using a passive microwave resonator to measure the ambient physical parameter. The resonator is designed with a rectangular loop inductively coupled with an interdigital capacitor. The experimental analysis of the designed sensor is illustrated here to prove its efficacy. The resonator provides adequate backscattered signal for wireless measurement in the microwave frequency band. When interrogated with a couple of UWB antennas and a VNA, it yields accurate leaf wetness response of the plant. The commercial competence of this sensing device is validated through its experimental analysis on three different types of leaf samples. This sensor is suitable for plant health monitoring in any small-scale gardening applications such as nurseries and greenhouses.