The recent widespread diusion of radio-frequency identification (RFID) applications operating in the UHF
band has been supported by both the request for greater interrogation ranges and greater and faster
data exchange. UHF-RFID systems, exploiting a physical interaction based on Electromagnetic
propagation, introduce many problems that have not been fully explored for the previous generations of
RFID systems (e.g. HF). Therefore, the availability of reliable tools for modeling and evaluating the
radio-communication between Reader and Tag within an RFID radio-link are needed. The first part of the
thesis discuss the impact of real environment on system performance. In particular an analytical closed
form formulation for the back-scattered field from the Tag antenna and the formulation for the lower
bound of the BER achievable at the Reader side will be presented, considering different possible
electromagnetic impairments. By means of the previous formulations, of the analysis of the RFID link
operating in near led conditions and of some electromagnetic/system-level co-simulations, an in-depth
study of the dimensioning parameters and the actual performance of the systems will be discussed and
analyzed, showing some relevant properties and trade-os in transponder and reader design. Moreover a
new low cost approach to extend the read range of the RFID UHF passive systems will be discussed.
Within the scope to check the reliability of the analysis approaches and of innovative proposals, some
reference transponder antennas have been designed and extensive measurement campaign has been
carried out with satisfactory results. Finally, some commercial ad-hoc transponder for industrial
application have been designed within the cooperation with Datalogic s.p.a., some guidelines and results
will be brie.y presented.