TITLE:
Wideband Multiresonance Chipless RFID System for Dielectric Crack Detection and Characterization in Structural Health Monitoring Applications
AUTHORS:
Muzammil Zubair, Fahad Zareen Khan, Muhammad Khurram Shahzad, Arslan Gul Abbassi
KEYWORDS:
Wideband Chipless RFID, Multiresonance Sensor, Crack Defect Estimation, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), Dielectric Materials, LV-Shaped Resonator, Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna, Quantitative Crack Characterization, Passive Wireless Sensing
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation,
Vol.14 No.2,
June
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: Structural degradation in dielectric materials, particularly cracks and micro-defects, significantly affects the reliability of engineering systems. Conventional non-destructive testing techniques are often limited by cost, intermittent operation, and lack of suitability for continuous monitoring. This paper presents a simulation-based wideband multiresonance chipless RFID sensing framework for quantitative crack estimation in dielectric structures for structural health monitoring applications. The proposed approach introduces a compact LV-shaped resonant tag designed to deliberately engineer multiple stable resonant modes within a wide frequency band, enabling multi-dimensional spectral encoding of structural variations. Unlike conventional single-resonance chipless RFID sensors that primarily support binary detection, the proposed multiresonant configuration enables simultaneous sensitivity to crack width and orientation via independent resonance shifts, thereby enabling quantitative defect characterization. A wideband antipodal Vivaldi antenna is employed as the interrogation unit to ensure efficient excitation and reliable spectral retrieval. Full-wave electromagnetic simulations demonstrate consistent, distinguishable resonance shifts that correspond to variations in crack geometry. The results confirm that the proposed multiresonance chipless RFID system provides a passive, scalable, and simulation-validated framework for multi-parameter crack characterization, enhancing the potential of chipless RFID-based structural health monitoring systems.