Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06K—GRAPHICAL DATA READING; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS
  • G06K19/00—Record carriers for use with machines and with at least a part designed to carry digital markings
  • G06K19/06—Record carriers for use with machines and with at least a part designed to carry digital markings characterised by the kind of the digital marking, e.g. shape, nature, code
  • G06K19/067—Record carriers with conductive marks, printed circuits or semiconductor circuit elements, e.g. credit or identity cards also with resonating or responding marks without active components
  • G06K19/0672—Record carriers with conductive marks, printed circuits or semiconductor circuit elements, e.g. credit or identity cards also with resonating or responding marks without active components with resonating marks

Definitions

• the present invention relates to barcodes, to the methods and materials to fabricate such barcodes, as well as to the methods of how to write and read the information represented by barcodes.
• the invention relates to barcodes that are composed of dielectric materials.
• Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags store and transmit identification information that is similar to the information stored in barcodes.
• a RFID system consists of an interrogation device that broadcasts a radio signal and a RFID tag which receives said radio signal. With a passive RFID tag, the radio signal power itself is used to power-up a small microchip within the tag, which then transmits its unique identification code back to the interrogation device.
• the radio waves used to interrogate RFID tags for can pass through many materials, therefore solving the "line-of-sight" issue present in optically read barcodes.
• RFID technology does, however, have its own problems.
• RFID tags can be divided into two major categories: active and passive. Active RFID tags contain their own power source which increases the distance in which it can provide identification information. Problems with this type of tag include cost of production due to the complexity of such a device as well as maintenance issues, physical size and weight constraints, and power consumption. Passive tags overcome cost and complexity issues, but in turn have greatly restricted operability and flexibility. Because a microchip is embedded in an RFID tag, along with radio frequency receivers, front ends, and transmitters, the device complexity and associated cost is much higher than that of optical barcodes. Because of economic issues industry has been tentative in its adoption of RFID.
• EP '623 Patent describes a microwave readable barcode that consists of conductive bars made from a conductive ink or conductive foil. Barcode information can be encoded using conductive bars of different lengths, different angles, or different positions.
• a complete microwave readable barcode system includes conductive barcodes, a transmitter that radiates a microwave signal onto the barcode, and a detector that senses the microwave signal reflected from the conductive bars. Barcode systems can use multiple microwave signals that differ in one or more respects, such as polarization or wavelength.
• the disclosed microwave readable barcodes have limitations and problems.
• the complexity of a device consisting of either conductive bars of conductive foil causes economic hurdles in the production of the precursor material and in the fabrication of the conductive barcode. Therefore, embedding of a conductive barcode in an object is difficult and costly.
• the oxidation/corrosion processes limit the reliability of the conductive barcode. High cost of biocompatible metals makes conductive barcodes non-feasible for animal labeling. Also, it is impossible to make an invisible conductive barcode.
• Missing from the art is a barcode system that has increased commercial application with increased data representation, and overcomes the problems of data separation, "line- of-sight" issues, and production problems.
• the present invention can satisfy one or more of these and other needs.
• the present invention relates to a dielectric barcode which is a pattern fabricated from a dielectric material, and a system for interrogating the dielectric barcode.
• a dielectric barcode which is a pattern fabricated from a dielectric material, and a system for interrogating the dielectric barcode.
• a plurality of dielectric bars are arranged on or within a substrate.
• the dielectric bars are arranged in a spatial manner to encode information.
• a barcode interrogation system comprises a dielectric barcode formed from a plurality of dielectric bars arranged on or within a substrate in a spatial manner to encode information, a signal transmitter connected to a first antenna so as to radiate an interrogation signal on the dielectric barcode, a signal receiver connected to an antenna so as to receive a return signal from the dielectric barcode, and a processor connected to the receive signal and operable to decode the encoded information.
• the interrogation system is operable to scan the interrogation signal through space to read the dielectric barcode.
• the system is capable to scan the signal by rotating the transmitting antenna, frequency shifting or phase shifting of the transmitted signal.
• Fig. 1 illustrates a schematic rendition of a dielectric barcode system embodying the present invention
• Figs. 2a-2e illustrate several classes of microwave readable dielectric elements
• Figs. 3a-3c illustrate time variant reading of dielectric elements.
• a dielectric barcode which is a pattern fabricated from a dielectric material.
• the dielectric barcode is readable by a microwave device.
• a dielectric barcode formed from any dielectric material in any form is within the contemplation of this invention.
• the dielectric barcode material can be in the form of an ink, a powder, or a solid material.
• An interrogating microwave signal propagates through the surrounding media where it is effectively reflected and/or absorbed by the dielectric barcode. Similar to an x-ray "shadow image" the pattern made from the dielectric material barcode can be visualized by the transmitted or reflected microwave radiation.
• the dielectric barcode is formed from a dielectric material with a suspension of a ferroelectric material, having a high dielectric permittivity, within the dielectric material.
• the high dielectric permittivity of the ferroelectric material creates a strong microwave contrast with the media surrounding the ferroelectric barcode at particular operating frequencies.
• the dielectric barcode is formed from a dielectric material provided with a fine powder suspension synthesized by chemical methods, and dispersed in suitable fluidic system to obtain a dielectric ink.
• a pattern is made from the dielectric ink by inkjet printing, injection, spraying, drawing or any other technique. Injection can be done by an impetus injection mechanism where the dielectric material with the fine powder suspension is deposited beneath a device's plastic subsurface or beneath the skin layer of an animal to form a dielectric barcode.
• a non-inclusive list of suitable materials for suspension within the dielectric material to form the dielectric inks includes, but is not limited to, heavy metals, heavy metal salts, piezo-electric ceramics, barium titanate (BaTiO 3 ), sodium potassium niobate (NaKNbO 3 ), and lead zirconium titanate (PbZrTiO 3 aka "PZT”).
• Metallic nano-particles e.g., titanium nano-particles
• a dielectric material that is transparent at one operating band may become very lossy at another operating band.
• the suspension of particles within the dielectric material forming the dielectric barcodes optimizes performance at the particular operating band of interest.
• the density of these suspensions are enough to sufficiently alter the refractive and reflection properties of the dielectric material, but not dense enough to render the dielectric material conductive in the operating band.
• dielectric permittivity Due to dielectric permittivity ( ⁇ ), the electromagnetic length in a dielectric material is V ⁇ shorter than in a vacuum. This phenomenon allows for the dielectric barcodes to be significantly miniaturized. For example, a resonant barcode composed of dielectric material with the dielectric permittivity ⁇ — 1000 for 10 GHz (3 cm wavelength) operation will be only a millimeter in size. Dielectric barcodes can be transparent/translucent in the visible light spectrum, though highly contrasting for microwaves. In one embodiment to be used, as an example, for animal labeling, a biocompatible Na x Ki -x Nb ⁇ 3 ceramic could be the candidate material from which to make dielectric barcodes.
• Biocompatible ferroelectric ceramics can be injected under the skin remaining there as a non-degradable tattoo for the entire life of the animal.
• U.S. Patent No. 6,526,984 to Nilsoon et al. issued March 4, 2003, and titled "Biocompatible Material for Implants” discloses the biocompatible ceramic Na x Ku x NbO 3 , and is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
• FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic rendition of one embodiment of a dielectric barcode system 10.
• the system 10 includes a microwave transmitter 11 which emits a signal 12 that radiates outwards and towards a substance 15 having a readable dielectric element 16.
• the microwave signal 12 has a wavelength 13 and is polarized such that the E-field is in the vertical direction 14.
• the wavelength and field polarization are not limited to any one value or orientation, as would be understood by a person of ordinary skill in the art.
• the frequencies of interest range from around 100 kHz to over 100 GHz, and further up to and including the TeraHertz (10 12 Hz) frequency band.
• the readable element 16 is a ferroelectric bar formed from the biocompatible ceramic Na x Ki -x Nb ⁇ 3 . So as to make the barcode resonance and polarization sensitive to the interrogating electromagnetic wave of signal 12, the readable element 16 has a length that is one-half the wave-length 13, and an axis that is parallel to the direction
• wavelength the speed of light over frequency
• ⁇ c/v
• Eq. 1 ⁇ wavelength (microns)
• v frequency (Hertz)
• c 3*10 ⁇ 14 ⁇ m /sec (speed of light).
• the required wavelength necessary to read a dielectric barcode element of a specific size can be calculated.
• a frequency of 1.0 THz has a wavelength of 300 ⁇ m, requiring a readable element 16 to have a length of 150 ⁇ m.
• the readable elements would be spaced apart one-half the wavelength. From this information it is possible to calculate the overall width of this embodiment of a microwave readable barcode from the following equation:
• W is the barcode width in microns
• a time variant reading of the microwave readable barcode is illustrated.
• a spatial relationship e.g., an interstitial gap
• a single microwave source' can scan the tag area relative to the time constant to achieve a 2-D "image" of the tag, which can then be processed to extract the information therein.
• an image of the barcode can be reconstructed and its information extracted.
• an antenna (not shown) connected to the microwave transmitter 11 can be physically rotated in at least one degree of freedom (e.g. , azimuth, vertical, roll, pitch and yaw) to move the peak of the transmitted signal 12 across a group of dielectric elements 16 which form a barcode.
• the phase or the frequency of the transmitted signal 12 can be varied to cause the beam collimation to move in spatial relation to the location of the dielectric elements.
• the antenna can be composed of an array of elements, where the inter-element phasing is controlled to adjust the beam's spatial location.
• sensor 20 itself can be the same antenna connected to the transmitter 11 , or a different sensor implementing the same or different technology as the antenna.
• the sensor further includes a processor capable of decoding the encoded information present in the dielectric barcode.
• sensor 20 can be implemented by separate components of an antenna, a processor, and an output interface.
• the senor 20 determines that a dielectric readable element exists. In that case the sensor 20 produces a predetermined output signal. In a binary information system, the predetermined output signal indicates the presence of a readable element and could be a one or a zero.
• Figure 1 also shows a dielectric bar 17 that is much thinner than the readable element 16. The dielectric bar 17 would only slightly scatter the signal 12. The sensor 20 would then produce another output signal, say a zero, based upon a missing (low scattered) signal. Of course, the dielectric bar 17 might be missing altogether. While the foregoing discusses the use of binary information (zeros and ones), the present invention is not limited to only one type of encoding scheme.
• a first ferroelectric bar of one length and/or orientation can represent any member of a set (such as a letter or a number).
• a second dielectric bar of another length and/or orientation can represent another member of the set, and a third and other dielectric bars of other lengths and/or orientations might represent other members, and so on.
• InkJet printing technique can be applied to deposit dielectric layers and structures consisting of nano-sized dielectric particles. These dielectric particles can be synthesized by chemical methods and suspended in a suitable fluidic system. The rheological parameters of the fluids can be adjusted for inkjet printing. The resulting micron-scale patterns can be obtained with a high reproducibility and structure control. The dielectric local structure of the patterns can be studied by using a local dielectric probe technique as well as at nano-scale atomic force microscopy with a local capacitance probe can be employed. The deposited structures will have a chain-like self-alignment of the dielectric particles. Potential applications of this fast and versatile process are the production of low- and medium density dielectric mass storage patterns on almost any kind of substrate and for dielectric character recognition purposes.
• Dielectric barcodes solve the readability problem through utilizing microwaves as the method of extracting information from the tag.
• a dielectric barcode also solves the problem of data redundancy associated with the use of optical barcodes in conjunction with RFID technology.
• Dielectric barcodes can be constructed to utilize not only optical reading systems, but also quasi-optical systems (i.e., systems operating at millimeter wavelength bands) similar to that of RFID technology to be remotely identified as well. Dielectric barcodes overcome the problem of data separation as well.
• dielectric barcodes can be directly embedded or printed on an object in a similar fashion to optical barcodes instead of embodied in a tag which is affixed to an object, the identification information comes directly from the object itself instead of from a tag placed on the object.

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• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Radar Systems Or Details Thereof (AREA)
• Details Of Aerials (AREA)
• Ink Jet Recording Methods And Recording Media Thereof (AREA)
• Geophysics And Detection Of Objects (AREA)

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• 2005
  • 2005-12-08 BR BRPI0518879-2A patent/BRPI0518879A2/pt not_active Application Discontinuation
  • 2005-12-08 AU AU2005330315A patent/AU2005330315A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2005-12-08 WO PCT/US2005/044675 patent/WO2006107352A2/en active Application Filing
  • 2005-12-08 EP EP05853559A patent/EP1820033A4/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2005-12-08 CA CA002589946A patent/CA2589946A1/en not_active Abandoned

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