A surface acoustic wave sensor or tag having multiple transducer/antenna pairs each having a different center frequency. The bandwidth of each transducer/antenna pair is inversely proportional to the number of transducer/antennas pairs used and the bandwidth is the sum of the bandwidth of the transducer/antenna pairs. Implementing a SAW sensor or tag with multiple transducer/antenna pairs significantly reduces device losses and improves the performance of the device since the individual transducer/antenna pair's fractional bandwidth is reduced by the ratio of the system bandwidth to the number of transducer antenna pairs used in the sensor.