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vol. 57, no. 3,

March

2010

Review on SAW RFID Tags

Victor P. Plessky, Senior Member, IEEE, and Leonhard M. Reindl, Member, IEEE
(Invited Paper)
AbstractSAW tags were invented more than 30 years ago,
but only today are the conditions united for mass application
of this technology. The devices in the 2.4-GHz ISM band can
be routinely produced with optical lithography, high-resolution
radar systems can be built up using highly sophisticated, but
low-cost RF-chips, and the Internet is available for global access to the tag databases. The Internet of Things, or I-o-T,
will demand trillions of cheap tags and sensors. The SAW tags
can overcome semiconductor-based analogs in many aspects:
they can be read at a distance of a few meters with readers
radiating power levels 2 to 3 orders lower, they are cheap,
and they can operate in robust environments. Passive SAW
tags are easily combined with sensors. Even the anti-collision
problem (i.e., the simultaneous reading of many nearby tags)
has adequate solutions for many practical applications.
In this paper, we discuss the state-of-theart in the development of SAW tags. The design approaches will be reviewed
and optimal tag designs, as well as encoding methods, will be
demonstrated. We discuss ways to reduce the size and cost of
these devices. A few practical examples of tags using a timeposition coding with 106 different codes will be demonstrated.
Phase-coded devices can additionally increase the number of
codes at the expense of a reduction of reading distance.
We also discuss new and exciting perspectives of using ultra
wide band (UWB) technology for SAW-tag systems. The wide
frequency band available for this standard provides a great
opportunity for SAW tags to be radically reduced in size to
about 1 1mm2 while keeping a practically infinite number of
possible different codes. Finally, the reader technology will be
discussed, as well as detailed comparison made between SAW
tags and IC-based semiconductor device.

I. Introduction

n this paper, we briefly review the current status of the

development of radio frequency identification (RFID)
tags based on SAW technology. We mainly discuss the tag
devices, omitting issues related to the reader design and
the corresponding signal processing issues.
The first RFID systems appeared already during World
War II for identification of airplanes. However, it is only
now that the technical conditions are right for widespread
use of RFID. The 2 key issues for RFID technology are the
number of different codes that can be stored on atag and
the possibility of transferring and communicating information. Because of the ongoing progress of semiconductor
technology, mass production of such devices at a low cost
has become possible. Micro- and nanometer lithographic
technology enables the fabrication of very small tags with
a chip size on the order of 1 mm and smaller, operat-

Manuscript received May 21, 2009; accepted November 23, 2009.

V. P. Plessky is with GVR Trade SA, Bevaix, Switzerland (e-mail:
victor.plessky@gmail.com).
L. M. Reindl is with the Institute for Microsystems Technology, University Freiburg, Germany.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TUFFC.2010.1462
08853010/$25.00

ing in the GHz-range, where sufficiently wide frequency

bands are available. These industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) frequency bands can be used without licensing
when using a limited radiated power.
The wide frequency bands finally allow for a practically
infinite number of different codes to be written and read
at microsecond time intervals. The omnipresent internet,
intranet, and similar communication networks enable the
processing of databases and development of smart systems
that use the information automatically read from RFID
tags. The dramatic development of mobile phones, which
only combine a transmitter with a receiver, both used in
radio communications for a century by now, was based on
exactly the same 2 reasons: first, the development of technology enabling the use of high and wide frequency bands
which support a large number of subscribers, and second,
computer databases with high-speed data links enabling
fast communication. The type of RFID tag introduced
in this paper, the surface acoustic wave (SAW) tag, is
similar to RF SAW filters that are widely used in mobile
phones. SAW tags and SAW filters use basically the same
technology.
RFID tags will be omnipresent. Below is a small list of
possible applications:
Traffic control of vehicles, wagons, ships, etc.
Identification of containers, pallets, bags in airports,
etc.
Individual goods control and inventory in stocks,
shops, etc.
Tracing of animals and products of animal origin
Tracking of wild animals, marking of trees in forests,
etc.
Access to buildings, parking, restricted areas, computers, etc.
Ambient assisted living for the disabled and the elderly
Identification of parts, equipment, machines, and cars
assembled on conveyer lines
Tracing of dangerous and explosive substances
Security and guard services
These applications will demand trillions of tags per
year, which may result in an industry larger than the SAW
industry of today. Mass application of tags was predicted
for the first time by C. Hartmann many years ago[1].
II. Active and Passive RFID Tags
Both semiconductor integrated circuit (IC)-based and
SAW-based RFID tags use no transceiver stage to gener-

2010 IEEE

plessky and reindl: review on SAW RFID tags

Fig. 1. Operating principle of RFID tags.

ate the response signal, which carries their identification

number, but send back a modulated version of the request
signal when requested by the reader (see Fig. 1). IC-based
tags use an AM backscatter modulation and SAW-based
tags a time modulation.
IC-based tags can be subdivided into 2 categories: passive and active labels. Whereas active tags usually have
an on-board battery, passive tags power their circuitry by
rectifying a part of the request signal energy transmitted
by an external reader. Incorporation of a battery increases
the cost of a device, limits its life-time, and, furthermore,
adds risk for environmental pollution. The minimum voltage for operating the rectifier stage for extracting the
supply power from the request signal, together with the
limited licensed radiation power for the read-out signal
restricts the reading distance of passive IC-based RFID
tags to a very limited range. The separation between the
strong request signal and the small response signal of the
tag is achieved by using the subcarrier frequency offset
between both signals.
SAW tags, on the other hand, are linear, time-invariant
systems which simply reflect the request signal in a coded
form that carries the identification information. SAW tags
achieve the necessary separation between the request and
the response signal by using a time division employing a
SAW delay line. The minimum signal-to-noise ratio for
decoding the information of the reflected signal in the
reader, together with the limited licensed radiation power
for the read-out signal allows a reading distance of several
meters for passive SAW-based RFID tags. SAW tags feature low losses, large delay times, and small dimensions. In
addition, they have a simple and robust structure.
As compared with the widely used barcode, IC-based and
SAW-based RFID tags both have the following advantages:
They can be read automatically, that is, without human presence. This allows for an unambiguous identification of objects, people, and animals.
They do not need to be in line-of-sight to the reader,
nor is any particular tag orientation required.
They can have a reading distance as large as 10m or
even larger, depending on the system used. For barcodes, reading distance is limited to about 30cm.
III. SAW RFID Tags
The main feature of SAW tags is the high quality factor, Q, of piezoelectric single crystals that allows a passive
storage of the request signal until all environmental echoes
have died out. Their operation is based on micro-acoustics
of piezoelectric crystals instead of semiconductor physics.

655

They do not require any DC power, because they totally

passively store, reflect, and re-emit the request signal, being a linear device. Moreover, the request signal can be
about 100 times smaller than for integrated circuit (IC)based tags.
Another attractive feature of SAW tags is their simple
structure. SAW tags are fabricated using single-metal-layer photolithographic technology although operation in the
microwave region requires submicron lithography (about
0.3-m-wide electrodes), which is a standard tool today
in IC fabrication. This enables the fabrication of devices
working in the 2.45-GHz frequency band reserved globally
for ISM applications. SAW tags utilize the unique feature
of piezoelectric materials which allows for a transformation of electromagnetic waves into 100000 times slower
surface acoustic waves. SAW tags can hence operate as
delay lines and provide a sufficient delay with a relatively
small substrate length for temporally separating the tag
response signal from the read-out signal.
A. SAW Tags Versus IC Tags
Compared with passive IC-based tags, SAW tags demonstrate the following advantages[2]:
SAW tags operate with low-level RF pulses of about
10mW. IC tags at the same distance require a continuous radiation of a few watts.
SAW tags operate in the 2.45-GHz ISM bandcompliant with RF emission regulations throughout the
world. The use of IC tags demands specific certification.
SAW tags can be attached on metal objects. SAW
tag systems achieve greater penetration into pallets
containing metal or liquid items[3].
Because of low radiated power, SAW tag readers have
a substantially higher interference resistance than IC
tag readers which radiate a few watts in the same
frequency as Bluetooth, WLAN, etc.
The reading process of SAW tags additionally permits
a direct and accurate measurement of the tag temperature. SAW tags thus show an inherent capability
for operating as sensors.
SAW tags are very robust and can be operated in
challenging environments (e.g., they can withstand
high temperatures). IC-based tags are more sensitive
to such harsh conditions.
Because IC tags contain a memory and a processor, any
information in these tags might be re-written if the proper
memory technology is used and the volume of information
written in a tag is relatively large. This is considered as
principle advantage of the IC tags, which are small in size
and relatively cheap. IC tags can also reach a reading distance of a few meters. However, the possibility to rewrite
a tags code will inevitably make readers easily available
and accessible. The tag information can be easily read,
modified, or even falsified without authorization.

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Fig. 2. Operation of a SAW tag system.

Because manufacturing of SAW tags only requires one

photolithographic step, they might become cheaper in
mass production than IC-based tags, which also need an
expensive antenna for harvesting EM power. To achieve a
reading distance comparable to that of SAW tag readers,
IC tag readers have to radiate 100 to 1000 times more RF
power, up to a few watts. Such a concentration of electromagnetic radiation may lead to health hazards and would
create strong interference with other communications systems using the same frequency range. SAW tags can also
easily incorporate sensor functions.
B. Principle of Operation
The operation of SAW devices is based on piezoelectricity, a coupling between a materials electrical and mechanical properties. In certain dielectric crystals, the application of mechanical stress produces an electric polarization
and, conversely, such a crystal undergoes a mechanical
distortion when anelectric field is applied. This property
is used in SAW devices and in many other applications to
produce a mechanical output from an electrical input or
vice versa. In SAW devices, the transduction between an
electrical signal and an acoustic wave is achieved by utilizing an interdigital transducer (IDT), consisting of 2 interlaced comb-like metal structures deposited on the surface
of a piezoelectric substrate. The principle of operation of
a reflector-based SAW tag is shown schematically in Fig.
2. Areader emits a request pulse, which is received by the
tag antenna, directly connected to anIDT.
The IDT transforms the electrical signal into a nanoscale surface acoustic wave, which is a mechanical wave
of particle displacements. The generated SAW pulse then
propagates along the surface of the substrate, which is
usually made of a material with strong piezoelectricity,
such as lithium niobate (LiNbO3). The SAW pulse is partially reflected and partially transmitted by each of the
code reflectors, placed at precisely determined positions
on the chip. These reflectors usually consist of one or a few
narrow aluminum strips. The reflected SAW pulse returning to the IDT carries a code based on the positions of the
reflectors. In other words, this encoding method is based
on the time delays of reflected pulses. It is known as time
position encoding or pulse position modulation (PPM)
and is described in further detail in Section III-3. When
the train of reflected SAW pulses returns to the IDT, the
acoustic signal is then reconverted into an electrical form

Fig. 3. Transducer-based SAW tags.

and retransmitted by the tag antenna. The response signal is then detected and decoded by the reader. In SAW
tags, a surface acoustic wave is used to read a sub-micron
barcode of properly arranged reflectors. In real reader
systems, the described pulse signals are rarely used and
more simple frequency domain reading methods are used,
in which S11(f) of the tags is measured and then Fouriertransformed to the time domain, enabling cheaper reader
designs.
IV. Milestones of SAW Tag History
A. SAW Tags Based on IDTs
Passive reflective tags with similar functionalities like
current SAW tags, which achieve the necessary delay of
about 1 microsecond by using an electromagnetic delay
line were described first in 1966 [4]. SAW tags were proposed first in the 1970s [5][8] and included the multi-IDT
and in [5] also reflector structures in one or a few acoustic
channels. Fig. 3 schematically demonstrates the idea of
multi-IDT tags.
Transducer-based SAW tags usually consist of one
large and strong transducer, the input transducers in Fig.
3, and several coding transducers, called output IDTs in
Fig. 3. Both the input and all output IDTs are electrically
wired in parallel. When an electrical signal is applied to
this common electrical port, SAWs will be generated by
all transducers. Because the forward and reverse transfer
function is equal in SAW devices, the insertion attenuation of a signal generated by the input IDT and picked up
by one output IDT will be the same as the signal generated by this output IDT and picked up by the input IDT.
Thus, in the time domain we first get spurious signals
which originate by a transfer from one code transducer to
another. If the initial delay of the tag, before the first code

plessky and reindl: review on SAW RFID tags

Fig. 4. Output summing network for 8 code IDTs in a transducer-based

SAW tag. The number of overlaps is growing from left to right to compensate the attenuation of the SAW by passing the IDTs before.

signal is expected, is chosen equal to or larger than the

largest time delay of these spurious signals between the
first coding IDT and the last one in a track, these spurious
signals do not influence the code signal. When neglecting propagation losses, it easily can be shown that best
amplitude uniformity of the code signal is achieved by an
equal distribution, and thus equal matching, of the input
signal to all code IDTs. Similarly it can be shown that an
equal distribution of the input signal to the input IDT
and to the summing network of the output IDTs leads to
minimum insertion attenuation of transducer-based SAW
tags.
A multi-IDT tag might show lower insertion loss when
compared with reflector tags. In the 1-track design [Fig.
3(a)] each coding structure is passed only once and thus
the associated losses show up only once. The conversion efficiency of an IDT can be adjusted very finely, resulting in
a good uniformity in amplitude of the delayed impulses.
Electrically loaded IDTs show a reflection of the acoustic wave, which might lead to further spurious signals
when picked up by other coding IDTs. When all code
signals have the same or similar time distant, all reflected
acoustic waves are picked up by the output IDT which
is situated one before. The time position of this spurious signal, which is growing with the number of output
IDTs lined up in a track, is identical with the next code
position and can cause the code confusion. In multi-track
case these multiple reflections are partly reduced, but the
width of device increased. If both, input and output IDTs
are built up as unidirectional transducer the losses are
reduced to propagation losses and track losses [9].
Special care must be taken on electrical longline effects.
All high coupling piezoelectric materials show a relatively
high dielectric constant between 50 and 100. Therefore,
the electric wavelength el on these materials is reduced
by a factor of approximately 10 when compared with the
vacuum wavelength. If the length of the connecting busbars become larger than 0.1 el, electric waveguide effects
become important. To achieve a uniform summation of
all signals from the individual output IDTs, a special RF
summation network has to be implemented, which resembles the summation and output network used for SAW
convolvers in the 1970s and 1980s, see Fig. 4. Further care

657

Fig. 5. X-Cyte tag.

has to be spent on the impedance matching of the coding IDTs and between them and the input IDT. Because
omitting an IDT would destroy this sensitive balance, an
amplitude shift keying (ASK) coding seems not to be possible, but a pulse position coding or a phase coding seems
feasible.
B. Reflector-Based Tags
X-Cyte tags [8] have 16 reflectors distributed in 4
acoustic tracks. The multi-track design included separate
transducers in each acoustic channel and 2 reflectors on
both sides, each with up to 3 preceding phase shifting
elements (see Fig. 5). The SAW thus has to pass the bus
bars twice.
Reflector-based tags with folded propagation path of
SAWs allow a 2 times reduction in size, whereas a multitrack geometry causes the chip area to increase. A multitrack design with only 2 reflectors per track, as shown in
Fig. 5, leads to increased losses which cannot be compensated.
X-Cyte tags were designed for the American 900-MHz
ISM band and used a 4 PSK (phase shift keying) coding
scheme, where 2 bits are coded by one symbol (reflector),
which led to a further reduction of the number of reflectors and thus chip size and, in principle, also insertion
loss. The first 8 symbols were generated in the left side
of the chip shown in Fig. 5 and the last 8 symbols on the
right side. For coding, the appropriate number of phase
shifting elements per reflector were etched away in a second step. The phase shifting elements were built up as
metalized area, which leads to an additional phase shift of
45 in phase for the passing SAW when compared with the
free surface. Because the SAW passes each phase shifting
element twice, the removal of such an element would shift
the phase of the corresponding reflected signal by 90.
The X-Cyte tags suffered 2 major drawbacks which
hindered them from becoming a commercial success.
First, they had no strategy for testing the ready fabricated chips on the wafer before coding and packaging.
The amplitudes of the reflected signals could be measured
using wafer probers and network analyzers. To extract the

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vol. 57, no. 3,

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2010

Fig. 7. Radio frequency response of a 4 PSK identification tag in the

434 MHz band.
Fig. 6. Measured response of phase coded SAW-tag device; arbitrary loss
reference level.

critical phase differences between the signals, the carrier

frequency must be demodulated in the complex time domain data, which a network analyzer usually does not do.
Thus, all chips were coded and assembled completely with
the packaging to tags and then tested. A low yield thus
leads to high fabrication cost. Second, because the reflectors are distributed all over the chip, any variation of the
SAW velocity over the chip is very critical for the phase
coding. The number n of acoustic wavelengths stored
in a SAW tag can be calculated with the center frequency
f0 and the maximum delay time max with

Fig. 8. Application of SAW RFID tags in the Norwegian highway toll

ring of Oslo.

n = f0 max.
Typical SAW tags incorporate 5000 to 10000 acoustic
wavelengths, depending on the number of symbols, the
relative bandwidth which determines the minimum separation of the symbols, and the minimum initial delay. If
we demand that the phase must be within 10 at the
exact phase, we end up to an accuracy of about 1:360000,
or 3ppm. The SAW phase velocity, therefore must be
constant to a level of 3 ppm over the whole chip, shown
in Fig. 5 to allow a safe extraction of the code.
Both authors tested a phase coding technique in the
past. Plessky studied this topology in 1994 [10] for 2.4GHz tags (Fig. 6). Although the device had very reasonable amplitude performance, the phase coding was impossible to achieve at that time with a 2.4 GHz frequency.
The device had no reference reflector.
Reindl [11] generated a 4 PSK coding at both frequencies, 2.45 GHz and 433 MHz, by a small shift of the reflectors of 1 or 2 times an eighth of an acoustic wavelength around the fixed periodic sampling. Because of the
strong temperature dependence of the acoustic velocity on
LiNbO3-YZ of 94 ppm/C, the correct recovery of the
phase information needs a careful elimination of the temperature shift of the phase. Although it was impossible
to eliminate these temperature shifts manually, a small
computer program could easily recover the correct phase
information by using the first and last symbol for reference (see Fig. 7).

C. Micro Design/Epcos Tags

One of the first commercial operations of SAW tags
RFID systems were installed in the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s by the Norwegian company Micro
Design AS (now Q-Free ASA), a spin-off of the Norway
Institute of Technology in Trondheim. The tags were produced by SAWTEK. The system was installed in the Oslo
highway toll ring and the airport feeder (see Fig. 8). The
cars could pass at a speed of 100km/h without any stop.
The reader replaced the manual tall collecting system, the
booth of which can be seen in Fig. 8. In the upper part of
the picture the antennas can be seen.
The system used an ASK coding scheme (signal at a
certain time slot = on; no signal = off) with 32 symbols
in a Norwegian 856-MHz ISM band. The readers were
fabricated by Micro Design. The tags were designed by B.
Fleischmann (at that time with Epcos) and fabricated by
Epcos. He used a programmable wafer stepper for direct
exposure of photoresist on the wafer for manufacturing of
the IDT and all reflectors. Each tag got an individual part
of the step program. The reflectors were placed in 2 tracks
situated on one side of the IDT. For a good uniformity in
amplitude of all bits, the increasing loss due to the preceding reflectors had to be compensated by choosing stronger
and stronger reflectors in the back. Because the ASK was
implemented by putting or omitting a reflector, a code

plessky and reindl: review on SAW RFID tags

659

Fig. 9. Layout of a mounted SAW RFID tag using an ASK coding in the
2.45-GHz band with 33 reflectors in 4 tracks. The outside dimensions
are 16 9mm.

dependence of the attenuation of the SAW at each of the

back reflector positions showed, which became more and
more severe by the last reflectors. B. Fleischmann tried to
compensate this code-dependent attenuation by choosing
code-dependent reflectors at the rear part. Nevertheless,
a code dependency of the symbol amplitudes in the rear
part remained, which lowered the yield. The code-dependent uniformity variation could be solved later by using
special structures at off-positions which led to the same
attenuation as a reflector, but showed a negligible acoustic
reflection. However, this improvement came too late for
the Norwegian tags.
More than 500000 tags were shipped and only one
single failure occurred during several years of operation,
caused by a wire bond break. At the end of the 1990s the
SAW tag system had to be replaced because of European
harmonization, as the 856 MHz band was no longer free.

Fig. 10. Photo of the mounted SAW RFID tag shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 11. Two measurement curves of 2 SAW RFID tags as shown in Figs.
9 and 10.

D. Siemens SAW Tags

To avoid such problems, Siemens developed SAW-tag
RFID systems and tags with 20- and 31-bit operation in
the international ISM band at 2.45GHz in the early 1990s
[11], [12]. The first generation used an ASK modulation
scheme with reflective and non-reflective structures. The
33 reflectors were distributed in 4 tracks on both sides of
the input transducer, always 8 reflectors in a line, according to the design rules reported in [9]. To compensate the
attenuation difference between the 4 groups caused by the
difference in initial delay, the groups were weighted with
different apertures. For equal distribution, the 1st and the
4th group were placed on one side of the input transducer
and the 2nd and 3rd on the other (see Figs. 9 and 10).
Thus only one group had to be carefully designed to compensate internal losses.
In the 32-bit design, the first 1.5 s were used as initial delay and the 33 reflectors were equidistantly distributed over the following 2 s. Fig. 11 shows 2 measurement
curves: (left) with a series of 8 on symbols, and followed
with 8 off symbols, (right) an alternating series of on
and off symbol. The tags were measured with a larger

Fig. 12. SAW ID tag mounted on the side of a railway vehicle.

bandwidth than the ISM band, including frequency bands

for which the tags operate only with a reduced efficiency.
To compensate different read-out distances and temperature effects, the first and last symbols are used as
reference.
The SAW RFID tags are used in Munich subway and
several local train systems (see Fig. 12). A 20-bit code
space was sufficient for most railway applications. The

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Fig. 14. Schematic layout of a SAW RFID tag with 33 100% reflectors
distributed in 33 tracks on both sides of the centered input IDT.

Fig. 13. Early prototype of pulse radar SAW ID tag reader.

SAW RFID tags are mounted to both sides of the railway

vehicles. The readers were located at selected points along
the net, near the rails, and linked to a central computer.
The tags can be read with a detection range of several
meters and up to a train velocity of 350km/h without any
failure. The system works up to an ambient temperature
of 400C. The system is still in use and several thousand
of the tags have been shipped.
The first reader generations implemented a pulse radar
systems, Fig. 13 shows the very first prototype. Later generations shifted to highly evolved, but much less expensive, frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) or
frequency stepped continuous wave (FSCW) systems.
The system suffered from the relatively high insertion
attenuation of the symbols caused by the many reflectors
needed by the ASK coding scheme, and due to the fact
that LiNbO3-YZ was used as piezoelectric material. LiNbO3-rot128 would have shown the same attenuation of the
SAW on free surface (about 6dB/s at 2.45GHz). The
attenuation of the SAW by the transmission of a reflector,
however, would be lowered on rot-128 LN, resulting in an
overall lower insertion loss. The coding was done using a
programmable wafer stepper whereby one reflector after
the other was exposed. Long processing time and, therefore, high cost resulted. Most problematic, however, was
the high cost for the reader device, which took more than
a decade to come down to a reasonable price.
Several attempts were made to improve the tag performance. To totally get rid of near spurious signals originating from multiple reflections within the coding reflectors,
designs were studied with only one, but 100% reflector per
track (see Fig. 14). Broadband 100% reflector could be
achieved using a reflecting multi-strip coupler [13]. The
compensation of the different insertion attenuation of the
tracks was compensated by different apertures of the reflectors. Thus, only the insertion losses on free surface and
the track losses remained. Because of the wide central in-

Fig. 15. Schematic layout of a SAW RFID tag for operation in the small
European 433-MHz ISM band.

put IDT, all reflectors lay within the near field of the IDT
and only track losses occur. Because of reciprocity, this
holds also for the way back. However, with 33 reflectors,
the aperture of the central input IDT became too wide
and electrical long line effects destroyed the uniformity of
the impulse response.
For the European 433-MHz ISM band, SAW RFID tags
were designed which lowered the chip size by applying a
multi-strip coupler for track changing [13], [14] (see Fig.
15). The design used a unidirectional SPUDT as IDT (labeled 2), a track changing element (labeled 4), and coding
reflectors (labeled 3). The track of the SAW is labeled 5.
Contact was made by an inductive coupling (labeled 6) to
the antenna.
The introduction of pulse position coding by Plessky
[10] was very fruitful, and allowed higher-order coding but
overcoming the problems associated with phase coding
(see Fig. 16).
Most SAW RFID tag activities at Siemens stopped after all SAW-related activities were transferred to Epcos.
The train identification and related applications, however,
remained within Siemens and are still active.
E. BaumerIdent Tags
These tags were developed first in small Swiss company
TAGIX by R. Stierlin, later transferred to BaumerIdent
Company[15].
The device operated in the 2.4-GHz ISM band with a
split finger IDT, using a 3rd harmonic (see Fig. 17). In
one track there are 5 open-circuit /2 wide reflectors situated on both sides of the IDT. Time position coding was
used, providing 10000 different codes. The design included
a few innovations:

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661

Fig. 18. Combined time position and phase coding.

onstrated [21]. Open-circuit reflectors with a diffraction

compensating shape were used. The anti-collision problem
of the simultaneous presence of a few tags was discussed
[24] and the ways to solve it proposed.
Fig. 16. Cut out of a pulse position coded SAW RFID tag operating in
the 868-MHz ISM band. On the left side of the chip, a SPUDT input
IDT is seen; on the right, 3 reflectors can be seen.

Fig. 17. SAW tag from BaumerIdent.

A calibration reflector was introduced to simplify

compensation for temperature and technology shifts
during reading and deciphering of the code (also included in the Micro Design and Siemens tags)
Time(pulse) position coding was implemented [16],
[17] allowing higher-order coding, and thus fewer reflectors and lower insertion loss, but overcoming the
problems associated with phase coding.
Reflectors were offset by a fraction of wavelength in
2 sub-channels to reduce parasitic multiple reflections
[18].
F. Hartmanns Global Tag
A significant step toward practically infinite numbers
of codes was made by C. Hartmann [3], [19][23]. In his
coding scheme, the time position is used, but time slots for
the position of the center of a pulse are radically reduced,
due to prescribing to each slot some phase which is systematically growing along the array of slots inside a given
group of slots, Fig. 18. Although the pulse width remains
much wider than one time slot, the pulse position can be
localized due to phase information. Code capacity up to
256 bits is predicted and devices with 128 bits were dem-

G. Other SAW-Tag Design Ideas

D. Malocha and coworkers recently developed Orthogonal Frequency Coding for SAW tags [25]. They use carefully designed narrowband reflectors arranged in a way
such that when one reflector has maximal reflectivity, the
reflectivity of the others is close to zero. Such a system
allows reduction of losses, because the reflectors can be
rather strong. This approach can be applied to sensors
and for identification of a limited number of sensors, but
it can hardly be used for ID tags with large numbers of
codes.
Potentially, a bank of SAW resonators with slightly
different frequencies can be used as an ID tag [26]. One
variant of such a tag, although based on FBARs, is described by A. Ronnekleive et al. [27]. High Q-factor SAW
resonators would allow use of lower frequency ISM bands
(434MHz and 868MHz), where the available frequency
band is too narrow for most reflector delay line tags described above. This approach requires a bank of independent high Q-factor resonators and its realization would be
difficult.
V. Design of SAW Tags
A. Frequency Bands and Data Capacity
Although the idea of SAW tags was already proposed
decades ago (by Davies et al. in 1975 [28]), its final commercial breakthrough has not yet occurred. To become a
commercially attractive product for mass applications, the
data capacity of SAW tags must be at least 20 to 32 bits,
corresponding to between approximately 1 million and 4
billion codes.
The number of different codes is determined by the
BT product (B is the frequency bandwidth and T is the
coding time), as suggested by Shannons formula [29]. Because a SAW tag must be small and cheap, we cannot use
more than 2 to 4s for coding delay. These delays correspond to propagation distances of 8 and 16mm. If a data
capacity of 32 bits (or, better, 64 or 128 bits) is desired,

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Fig. 20. Schematic of time position encoding in SAW tags.

Fig. 19. Test of a SAW RFID tag system for automation of car assembly
lines.

a frequency band of 16MHz (or 32MHz or 64MHz) is

needed. Such frequency bands are available only at relatively high frequencies. Effectively, the only suitable frequency range available globally is the ISM band from 2400
to 2483.5MHz. This band is now extensively used around
the world for local communication systems: Bluetooth,
WLAN, wireless keyboards, etc.
Achieving a sufficient number of codes in a SAW tag
therefore requires the use of the 2.45-GHz range. This
requires the use of submicron photolithographic tools because the narrowest linewidths needed at this frequency
range are on the order of 0.3 to 0.4m. It is to be noted
that this requirement is rather modest in comparison with
the state-of-the-art IC technology operating with a resolution down to 0.05m. SAW tag technology can therefore
reuse equipment from older generations of ICs, which decreases the fabrication cost.
An identification code can be written on the SAW tag
in time positions, amplitude, phase, or other suitable signal characteristics of the reflected pulses. The reflected
pulses represent the symbols of the tag response signal
and can contain codes for one or more bits each. The
first commercial SAW tags designed according to these
principles(from BaumerIdent), are currently used in demanding industrial environmentsspecifically, for automation of car assembly lines (see Fig. 19). The number of
unique codes commercially achievable at present is rather
limited, on the order of 10000. New ideas are currently
being developed aiming at a radical increase in the data
capacity of SAW tags to 64 or even 128 bits (Hartmann
[3], [19][23]).
B. Best SAW Tag Geometry
The following principles are recommended to design a
SAW tag with the best geometry:

One track must be used with a unidirectional transducer (SPUDT) to avoid bi-directionality loss
Open finger reflectors with variable duty factor yield
low loss; diffraction compensation can be used
Time position coding; 4 slots per group is close to optimal for achieving a maximal number of codes, using
given total delay. In Global tag, proposed by C. Hartmann, the number of positions is much higher and a
group of slots may include a few pulses.
An initial delay of about 1 microsecond remains necessary
Two or 3 calibration reflectors (with fixed position)
must be used.
Error correction and other auxiliary functions may
require the use of several reflectors which cannot be
used for coding but occupy space.
C. Time Position Encoding
SAW RFID tags can be encoded in several ways. Current SAW tag products use time position encoding [10],
[16], [17], which represents the most straightforward way
of data encoding in SAW tags. This is the main method
currently used in commercial SAW tags [15],[30].
In this encoding scheme, the total time delay is divided
into slots of certain duration.
The slot width hereby is not limited by the separation of 2 signals by the radar system given by the time
width of the pulses, which is t = 1/B, where B is the
frequency band of the overall system (actually determined
by the band of signals radiated by the reader). In fact,
the slot width is limited by the resolution with which the
reader system can measure the time differences between
2 symbols. This resolution is given by the Cramer-Rao
bond, which depends on the bandwidth, number of sampling points, and the signal-to-noise ratio [31]. Therefore,
16 time slots seem to be feasible, giving 4 bits per symbol.
To avoid overlapping of the symbols, a guard interval is
needed between 2 symbols according to the separation of
the system.
In Fig. 20, the slots form groups of 5 slots. For such a
tag, one of the first 4 slots of each group is occupied by
a reflector and the fifth one, the guard slot, is always left

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Fig. 21. Practical example of time position encoding [30].

empty (see Fig. 20). Each reflector thus has 4 possible

positions (equal to 2 bits of data) and the total number
of different realizable codes is 4n for a tag having n reflectors. Ten code reflectors will thus yield about 1 million
distinct codes. When all the reflectors are placed in-line
in one acoustic path, the chip space required by these 10
reflectors is about 2.5mm.
The advantage of this encoding method is that one always has the same number of reflectors, which makes it
easier to design a SAW tag with uniform amplitudes of
response signals. Also, for the reader, the problem then
simplifies to searching for a single response from a given
group of time slots.
To maximize the number of codes (for a given total
coding time) using the time position encoding scheme,
about 3 to 4 slots per group must be used. However, in
practical devices (BaumerIdent, CTR), as in that shown
in Fig. 21, decimal groups are also employed. In such a
scheme, a reflector can occupy one of 10 possible positions.
A reduced number of reflectors results in lower loss and
lower parasitic response level, although the total length of
the device slightly increases. Commercially available SAW
tags (BaumerIdent, CTR) have a data capacity of 10000
different codes, which in the decimal time position system
corresponds to 4 code reflectors.
To provide uniform amplitudes of responses (or any other desired variation of amplitudes with the pulse number),
the strength of reflectors must be carefully adjusted starting with the very last and most strong reflector. Sometimes it is impossible to keep the magnitudes of reflected
pulses uniform up to very first responsesthis would demand exceedingly week reflectors at the beginning of the
a reflector arrayconsequently higher amplitudes of the
first responses may be an option[21].
D. Phase Encoding
For time position encoding using time slots as large
as 25ns, which is far away from the Cramer-Rao bound
which would allow much coarser slot lengths, the exact
coordinate of a particular reflector is not so important. It
must only be within a 25-ns time slot, which corresponds
to about 60 wavelengths at 2.4GHz. The calibration reflectors help to account for inaccuracies in position caused
by temperature, technology variations, and other shifts.
A code reflector often consists of only one or a few electrodes. A single reflector electrode has a width of about
0.4 to 0.6m, which is significantly narrower than the slot
it occupies. The slot width of 25ns corresponds to about
50m of physical space.

Fig. 22. Schematic of phase encoding.

If the phases of the reflected pulses could be measured

accurately, the coding capacity would increase significantly. Phase encoding has been discussed for many years but
not yet implemented in commercial products. Such systems are being developed now by RFSAW [3], [19][23].
The idea of phase coding is simple: by displacing the reflectors slightly, phase shifts can be realized and phase
coding implemented. Fig. 22 illustrates the principle of
introducing phase shifts of 90 by shifting reflector positions by multiples of /8 [32]. In such a case, each reflector can have 4 phase positions, which adds 2 additional
bits to time position encoding. The previously described
SAW tag with 10 code reflectors will then have 240 variants of codes, 40 bits, or about 1012 different codes. This
is a large number: for every human being on Earth, there
will be about 150 tags available with different codes never
repeated.
Phase coding can be combined with time position encoding in a more clever way [3], [19][23]: instead of keeping time slots unchanged and introducing phase modulation of the reflectors, it is proposed to reduce the size of
the time slots and therefore increase the number of slots in
a group, keeping the duration of time for the whole group
unchanged. Each slot is assigned a definite phase of the reflector, if the reflector is placed there. In this modulation
scheme, the phase is used to determine the time position
of the reflected pulse. It is evident that the uncertainty of
phase measurement of the reflected responses depends on
the signal-to-noise ratio [31], [33], and [34]. The required
strength of the signal increases with increasing accuracy
of phase values used for encoding. Optimal methods for
phase encoding and decoding are under intensive investigation [34].
E. Encoding Technology
Whichever encoding scheme is employed, each SAW tag
produced has a unique physical appearance. Currently, for
the manufacture of only 10000 different codes, the images
of all these tags are placed on a large (but still reasonable)

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Fig. 24. Mask image of a reflector-based SAW RFID tag.

Fig. 23. Simulated SAW tag response.

number of photomasks. This technology will evidently be

too expensive for 106 codes and totally unrealizable for
1013 different codes.
One idea is to apply a double-stage photolithography
process, wherein the first stage all reflectors in all possible
positions are produced (or at least exposed) with high
accuracy, and subsequently all redundant reflectors are
deleted, say, with some fast and programmable tool or
conventional photomasking. This system was tested successfully; however, it has not yet been implemented on a
mass production scale. Programmable reflectors were proposed [35] at the expense of loosing tag passivity.
VI. Developments in SAW tags
The main goals of SAW tag design include a reduction
of device losses, a reduction of device size, and an enhancement of data capacity. A combination of time position encoding and phase encoding provides a means to increase
the information capacity, as described in previous section.
This section presents ideas for further solutions and shows
that a small SAW tag device size can be achieved simultaneously with a sufficiently large data capacity.
A. Examples of Recent SAW Tag Design
Fig. 23 shows a typical time response of a SAW tag. In
this case, FEM/BEM software1 has been used to simulate
the performance of a tag having 14 code reflectors.
As illustrated by the mask image in Fig. 24, ten of the
reflectors are used for encoding, the first and the last reflector are used for calibration and are typically designed
to have stronger responses than the others [36], and the
2 reflectors preceding the very last one are used to create
a checksum for error control. The reflector array is designed to produce uniform amplitudes for code reflections
to achieve a maximal read range.
1http://www.gvrtrade.com/img/FEMSAW%20Simulation%20Tool.pdf

Amplitudes of response signals are adjusted by gradually increasing the reflectivity of code reflectors, by adding
electrodes to reflectors, and by increasing their width. This
is done to compensate for the losses caused by propagation on the substrate surface, and by reflections and bulk
wave conversion from preceding code reflectors. A formula
for the proper choice of the amplitude of the responses,
and criteria to determine whether more tracks are advantageous, are given in [9].
As mentioned previously, a SAW tag must provide certain time delay to separate the response signal from the
read-out signal. The reflected signals must be received by
the reader only after a delay sufficient for the environmental echoes (reflections from walls or other nearby objects)
to die away. An adequate initial delay is typically about
1s and is facilitated by leaving about 2mm of empty
space on the substrate between the IDT and the code
reflectors. The free-surface SAW velocity on LiNbO3 is
about 4000m/s.
B. Loss Reduction in SAW Tags
A standard IDT, as depicted in Figs. 2 and 3, consists
of electrodes with alternating polarities. As it transforms
the electrical signal into an acoustic form, it generates surface acoustic wave propagation equally in both directions.
When such a bidirectional IDT is used in SAW tags, half
of the signal energy is already lost in transduction and the
same amount in the transduction back.
This problem can be overcome by using a unidirectional
IDT that only generates wave propagation in one direction. For a similar reason, SAW tags with several parallel
acoustic channels will have a higher loss level than a device where all reflectors are situated in the same channel.
However, typical unidirectional transducers (more specifically, single-phase unidirectional transducers, SPUDTs)
include electrodes with a width of /8, where is the
wavelength of SAW on the piezoelectric substrate. At
2.45 GHz, /8 is about 0.2m. This means SPUDT-type
transducers cant be produced using the photolithography
technology currently used in the SAW industry.
Recently, however, a SPUDT especially designed for
SAW tag applications was proposed by Hartmann &
Plessky [23] exploiting the fact that, on 128-LiNbO3, the
reflectivity of short-circuited electrodes can be close to
zero at some metal thickness and electrode widths. The
proposed transducer uses /4-wide (and wider) electrodes
and can be manufactured using current commercially
available optical photolithography.

plessky and reindl: review on SAW RFID tags

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Fig. 25. Z-path SAW tag geometry with 2 inclined reflectors.

Tags which are used today apply a bidirectional IDT

and result in a loss level on the order of 55dB for 10000
codes. This will be reduced to about 40dB for SAW tags
with a unidirectional IDT and 106 codes [37]. The unidirectional transducer may include 0.3-m-wide electrodes.
Also the reflectors must be rather narrow: for some cases,
reflector electrodes must have a width of 0.3 to 0.4m.
Therefore, reliable photolithography capable of producing the line widths of 0.3 m is needed. In addition to
reduced losses, the use of a SPUDT in SAW tags has the
advantage of a lower level of parasitic reflections, including reflections from the transducer itself.
C. Size Reduction of SAW Tags
Replacing the bidirectional IDT with a unidirectional
IDT also serves to reduce the chip size. SAW tags using
a bidirectional transducer are normally designed to have
their reflectors on both sides of the transducer. In this
case, space for the initial delay must also exist on both
sides, which results in an inefficient use of the substrate
area. When a unidirectional transducer is employed, all reflectors must be placed on the same side of the transducer
and only one initial delay is needed.
A further reduction of chip size can be achieved by folding the channel used for SAW propagation. A Z-path SAW
tag has been designed, fabricated and tested [37] that uses
2 inclined, strongly reflecting mirrors (each consisting of
an array of open-circuit metal strips), as shown in Fig.
25. Although such folding demands 2 additional reflectors
(and 4 reflections of the signal), which inevitably results in
additional losses on the order of 5 to 10dB, the reading distance is reduced not so strongly (less than 50%).
This can be an acceptable price to pay for a significant
reduction of size and cost of a SAW tag. The size of the
chip in SAW propagation direction 0X (horizontal in Fig.
25) was reduced from 6mm to about 3mm. Another possibility of folding the acoustic track might be the use of
track changers[13].
D. Ultra-Wideband SAW Tags
The currently emerging ultra-wideband (UWB) technology offers many attractive possibilities for the development of SAW RFID tags. According to the regulation
of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) [38], a UWB device is a device emitting signals with a fractional bandwidth greater than 20% or a
bandwidth of at least 500MHz. A SAW tag operating at

Fig. 26. Read out process for an ultra-wideband SAW tag. (a) An upchirp linear frequency-modulated signal is used for the request. (b) The
signal is compressed by the chirp transducer, reflected by code reflectors,
and expanded by the transducer. The output signal has a dispersion opposite to the signal. (c) Reflections from surrounding objects have the
same dispersion as the request signal.

2.5GHz with a band of 500MHz would satisfy this criterion. The UWB band being much wider than the 2.45-GHz
ISM band, a certain value of BT product, determining the
data capacity of a tag, can now be achieved with a significantly shorter coding delay, which enables a considerable
reduction of tag size. For example, with B = 500 MHz, a
BT of 200 only requires a coding time of 400ns instead
of the 2s typical for 2.45-GHz SAW tags. The total chip
size can then be smaller than 0.5 1.0 mm. A shorter
coding time also implies lower losses. A propagation time
of 400ns corresponds to only about 3dB propagation
loss.
Another interesting possibility is to have signal processing partly performed within a SAW tag using, for example, a chirp transducer [39][41] as illustrated in Fig.
26. This will allow for a matched-to-signal processing of
the tag response, which, after being modified within the
tag, will be different from the environmental echoes of
the request signal also received by the reader. This makes
the system more resistant to environmental interference,
because the reader is now able to distinguish between the
signal reflected by the SAW tag and that reflected by objects outside the tag. Because the principle of the ultrawideband technology is to reuse an already occupied frequency spectrum, but with very low power, an UWB SAW
tag system will also have the additional advantage of very
low transmitted power levels.

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VII. Discussion
The market demands small size, low cost, and environmentally compatible RFID tags. That excludes devices
consuming power from batteries. Both semiconductorbased tags and SAW tags can be read remotely, and both
are small in size. They do not require maintenance and
their life-time is limited only by the usual product time of
the circuitry. However, SAW RFID tags and passive semiconductor RFID tags are based on fundamentally different
physical principles. In this section, we compare in detail
these 2 approaches.
A. Power Issues in SAW Tags and in IC Tags
The main feature of SAW RFID tags is that they do
not use any autonomous power supply such as batteries. Moreover, they do not include any such circuitry that
would need to be powered. SAW tags are passive devices
that merely reflect the request signal. This results in a
linear operation at any signal level, even at a very low one.
The signal energy of the SAW tag response must of course
be sufficiently high for the reader to be able to receive it,
which is determined by the signal-to- noise level. However,
using multiple readings and matched-to-signal detection,
tag signals with power below the noise level can be read.
The total power radiated by the reader is typically on
the order of 10mW. For high-speed long-read-range applications, only a fraction of a microwatt is needed at the
tag position [3]. This is the typical power level to which
human beings will be exposed when in proximity of SAW
tag systems. It is about a hundred times lower than the
radiation exposure generated by mobile phones.
RFID systems based on semiconductor chips use an
IC to receive and detect the signal sent by the reader, as
well as to subsequently decode the signal and generate
the response. The functional blocks of a typical IC tag
include power accumulation, computation, and communication. The main feature of IC semiconductor tags is that
they must include a proper DC power source for correct
operation. The so-called passive IC RFID tags that do
not carry a battery are obliged to take this power from
the RF request signal. The main part of the signal sent
by the reader is used to power the IC and only a small
modulation of this signal is used for transmission of data.
Rectifier circuitry is used to extract sufficient power from
the radio signal. The rectifier converts the signal into DC
for storage in a capacitor and, ultimately, for powering
the chip. The reading of the tag is performed using a
predetermined protocol and is only possible if the necessary DC power level is maintained throughout the entire request cycle. Therefore, a minimum critical power of
about 100W must be received continuously by the tag
antenna during the entire decoding period of the tags
signal[2]. Below this signal threshold, rectification is not
possible. This power restriction is imposed by the physics of semiconductors and thus is fundamental. For SAW

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tags, on the other hand, no threshold exists because they

are linear passive devices. They generate a response at all
power levels, usually orders of magnitude lower than what
is required for IC tags.
VIII. Conclusions
In this short review, we argued that SAW tags have
clear advantages over IC semiconductor RFID devices in
many aspects:
SAW tags practically have an infinite number of codes
sufficient for all reasonable applications.
SAW tags have an incomparably larger reading distance with the same power radiated by the reader,
when compared with passive IC-chip-based tags.
SAW tags are small, robust, and can operate in harsh
environments where IC-based tags fail.
SAW tag readers using correlation techniques for signal processing can read several SAW tags simultaneously[20].
SAW tags can easily be used as temperature sensors
with ID function[42]
To sum up the above arguments, it is evident that the
necessary technological tools as well as the necessary infrastructure and prerequisites are available for the development of smart SAW-tag-based systems. Additionally,
the development of the internet offers conditions for efficient transfer of information to and from databases, which
in turn is another pre-condition for the efficient use of
RFID tags.
SAW tags offer an excellent technical solution. However, to convert this brilliant idea into a multi-billion dollar business, several scientific and technological challenges
must be solved, and the fabrication cost of reader devices
and tags must be decreased drastically.
Acknowledgment
V.P. thanks S. Hrm from HUT, Helsinki for fruitful
collaboration during last 5 years. Many of the results authored by Sanna are included in this review as well as in
her Ph.D. thesis [43]. Many thanks to also C. Hartmann
his brilliant ideas inspire development in this area. We also
thank W. Walker for reading and correcting the text.
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[42] F. Schmidt, O. Sczesny, L. Reindl, and V. Mgori, Remote sensing
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[42] S. Hrm, Surface Acoustic Wave RFID Tags: Ideas, Developments, and Experiments Ph.D. thesis, [Online] Available: http://
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[43] L. Reindl, G. Scholl, T. Ostertag, H. Scherr, U. Wolff, and F.
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vol. 45, pp. 12811292, 1998.

Victor Plessky was born in Gomel, Belarus, in

1952. He has worked for many years in the area
of surface acoustic wave (SAW) physics and devices. He theoretically predicted the surface
transverse waves (STW), a new type of waves
now widely used for design of high-Q resonators.
His theory of leaky wave propagation in periodic
grating (the so-called Plessky equation) is now
used for the design of low-loss filters. He has published more than 200 papers and authored about
30 patents. As a Visiting Professor, he collaborated for more than 12 years with the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, where one of the best groups in SAW area was created
with his leadership. He also was lecturing at Freiburg University, at the
Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, and
in the Angstrom Lab, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. He was
supervisor and consultant of 12 Ph.D. theses. Dr. Plessky holds the
title of Full Professor, granted to him by the Russian Government in
1995. He was a winner of a Lenin Komsomol award for young scientists
in the USSR in 1978, and received the Outstanding paper award from
the IEEE UFFC Society in 2001. Currently he works as Consultant in
micro/nano acoustics physics and devices at GVR Trade SA in Bevaix,
Switzerland.

668

IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control ,

Leonhard Reindl (M93) received the Dipl.

Phys. degree from the Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, in 1985 and the Dr. Sc.
Techn. degree from the University of Technology
Vienna, Austria, in 1997. From 1985 to 1999 he
was a member of the micro acoustics group of the
Siemens Corporate Technology Department, Munich, Germany, where he was engaged in research
and development on surface acoustic wave (SAW)
convolvers, dispersive and tapped delay lines, IDtags, and wireless passive SAW sensors. In winter
19981999 and in summer 2000 he was guest professor for spread spectrum technologies and sensor techniques at the University of Linz, Linz,
Austria. From 19992003 he was university lecturer for communication
and microwave techniques at the Institute of Electrical Information

vol. 57, no. 3,

March

2010

Technology, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal. In May 2003,

he accepted a full professor position at the laboratory for electrical instrumentation at the Institute for Micro System Technology (IMTEK),
Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg.
His research interests include wireless sensor and identification systems, SAW devices and materials as well as microwave communication
systems based on SAW devices. He holds 35 patents on SAW devices
and wireless passive sensor systems. He has authored/coauthored approximately 130 papers in this field. He is an AdCom member of the
IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society and a
member of the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. Since 2000 he
has been a member of the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE
Frequency Control Symposium. He also is engaged in technical committees of the German Electrical, Electronic, and Information Technologies
and Information Technology Society (VDE/ITG).