Would a More Efficient Chip Increase a Tag’s Read Range?

TPE is a 13.56 MHz NFC spectrum payment terminal, and SumUp is a payment model I own. I would like to have a greater read range. Is an additional antenna possible? Can we add a more efficient chip?

—Florian

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Florian,

A more efficient chip would not increase the read range much for a 13.56 MHz RFID tag, because a high-frequency RFID tag forms an electromagnetic field between the coil of its antenna and the coil of the reader antenna. The tag changes this field to communicate with the reader. To visualize this, imagine you were holding one side of a balloon and another person was gripping the other side. As you squeezed out Morse code, the other person could understand what you were communicating—provided they knew Morse code, of course. Increasing the size of the coil of the reader antenna would increase the size of the electromagnetic field (in our analogy, this would create a larger balloon), which would increase the read range.

Mark Roberti
Founder and Editor
RFID Journal