Innovative Physics-based Modeling Tool for Application to Passive Radio Frequency Identification System on Rotorcraft

We propose development of a software capability which, based on use of MathSysaccurate and efficient exact-physics computational electromagnetics (CEM) solvers, will enable modeling and optimization of the properties of on-platform pRFID tag/reader antenna systems. Passive Radio Frequency Identification devices (pRFID) mounted on complex rotorcrafts pose challenging modeling problems: since pRFID power outputs are often at least three orders of magnitude below the reader's signal power, modeling of such setups requires use of solvers that can produce numerical solutions with several digits of accuracy. And, for RFID operating at frequencies at of 2.5 GHz or higher, for example, the electrical size of the platform on which the RFID tag-reader system is mounted can be hundreds of wavelengths in size. Such modeling requirements and constraints exceed the capabilities of all currently available software modeling and simulation tools. While computationally inexpensive, ray-tracing based methods can, at best, serve as an ``informed guess'' and are unable to provide sufficient accuracy in complex multipath scattering environments. The proposed extension of MathSys solvers will enable effective simulation the highly challenging pRFID-in-rotorcraft configurations throughout the relevant range of the electromagnetic spectrum.