Individually fed multiloop antennas for electronic security systems

Claim 1

In an electronic security system for the detection of unauthorized removal of items containing a marker tag including a transmitter circuit, a receiver circuit, a transmitting antenna coupled to said transmitter circuit and a receiving antenna coupled to said receiver circuit and wherein said antennas are disposed in spaced parallel relationship with respect to each other and between which said items must pass for detection, the improvement wherein each of said antennas includes at least three coplanar loops lying successively along an antenna axis wherein each antenna includes two outer loops and at least one inner loop, each of said loops having a separate pair of lead wires extending to said transmitter circuit or said receiver circuit respectively, said circuits including a plurality of antenna transformer windings and each of said pairs of lead wires being connected to a different one of said windings, said loops being connected such that when said system is in operation, said outer loops of each antenna are of one phase and at least one inner loop is in phase opposition thereto.