Active Radio Frequency Identification Research Articles

Evaluation of RFID Tags to Permanently Mark Trees in Natural Populations.

Long-term ecological and genetic studies in natural populations of tree species require marking techniques so that individuals can be re-visited over time, even in difficult terrain. Both GPS coordinates and physical labels have disadvantages that can make re-finding trees difficult. We tested passive and semi-active radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers as a means to relocate individual trees. Passive RFID tags do not provide a good solution because of low transmission power of hand-held readers and strong directionality. Semi-active RFID tags provide detection over longer distances, but also suffer from strong directionality. Active RFID tags promise an improvement over semi-passive tags, and could be evaluated in a future study. We conclude that RFID technology has the potential to improve the ability of researchers to locate individual trees repeatedly under natural conditions, and can be used in conjunction with other marking techniques such as physical tags and GPS coordinates.

Miniaturized Blood Pressure Telemetry System with RFID Interface

This work deals with the development and characterization of a potentially implantable blood pressure telemetry system, based on an active Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tag, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15693 compliant. This approach aims to continuously measure the average, systolic and diastolic blood pressure of the small/medium animals. The measured pressure wave undergoes embedded processing and results are stored onboard in a non-volatile memory, providing the data under interrogation by an external RFID reader. In order to extend battery lifetime, RFID energy harvesting has been investigated. The paper presents the experimental characterization in a laboratory and preliminary in-vivo tests. The device is a prototype mainly intended, in a future engineered version, for monitoring freely moving test animals for pharmaceutical research and drug safety assessment purposes, but it could have multiple uses in environmental and industrial applications.

Using an active Radio Frequency Identification Real-Time Location System to remotely monitor animal movement in zoos

Radio and satellite telemetry collars have been used across taxa, including with elephants, in situ for decades to collect data used for various analyses. To quantify the movement patterns of African elephants, Loxodonta africana, in a zoo, we modified a Real-Time Location System using active Radio Frequency Identification tags originally developed for inventory and asset tracking in warehouses. This is the first phase of a multi-phase project that we have termed the Real-Time Observer of Animal Movement. It allows for the continuous data collection and data analytics of elephant movement and space use in a mixed-species African savanna habitat at the Dallas Zoo. This system could prove to be a useful remote welfare tool for a variety of animal species at multiple facilities. We determined that a Real-Time Location System using Radio Frequency Identification tags could be used to continuously monitor elephant movement, social relationships, and exhibit use remotely over several acres in a zoo with a volume of data not otherwise possible to achieve. Real-time visual outputs include current location in the habitat, paths taken around the habitat, habitat preferences, social relationships between the elephants, and data tables with average rate of travel and distance traveled. The pilot system at the Dallas Zoo is the first-ever use of active Radio Frequency Identification technology to observe zoo animal behavior patterns and monitor welfare. It has proven to be an effective tool for efficiently collecting data continuously and remotely throughout the day and night. It represents the first phase of a multifaceted project that will add capabilities and functionality for additional species and other zoos to form a network for sharing data to inform captive animal management strategies.

An Active RFID Tag-Enabled Locating Approach With Multipath Effect Elimination in AGV

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) have been largely used in manufacturing and supply chain management. With the development of Auto-ID technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID), AGVs’ positioning could be enhanced. This paper demonstrates using magnetic field lines in the AGVs for precise coverage locating based on the errors’ suppression positioning method. Dolph-Chebyshev antenna array is used to enable AGVs with more precise location implementation. It is observed that the far-field active RFID system positioning accuracy is higher, the movement is more stable, and the fluctuating rate is smaller.

Advanced boundary virtual reference algorithm for an indoor system using an active RFID interrogator and transponder

Localization of persons and objects has become a necessity in many industrial services. In indoor circumstances, radio frequency identification (RFID) has superior performance. However, radio signals within indoor environments are generally weak, and the tags have very restricted abilities. In addition, the multipath propagation, total cost, and signal interference increase with increasing number of reference tags over a certain limit. Therefore, to improve the performance of indoor positioning for real-time localization, a new active acquisition method for an active RFID system that works at 2.4 GHz has been proposed; it is called the boundary virtual reference (BVIRE) algorithm. It depends on boundary virtual reference tags rather than increasing the number of real reference tags, which in turn reduces the total cost while maintaining the location accuracy. We have implemented a linear regression method to further enhance the positioning accuracy while eliminating the unnecessary tags from the estimation method using event filtering, in which only a few neighbouring reference tags are helpful in deciding the location of the object tag. The experimental results show that our BVIRE algorithm considerably reduces the error estimation compared with previous algorithms. The system has enhanced the positioning accuracy and lowered the total costs. In addition, the localization precision of the proposed approach has been significantly increased to approximately 90.25 % compared with PinPoint algorithm with no additional reference tags or radio frequency interference; this represents a significant improvement over other algorithms.

High-Data-Rate Single-Chip Battery-Free Active Millimeter-Wave Identification Tag in 65-nm CMOS Technology

In this paper, a class of high-data-rate battery-free yet active miniature radio-frequency identification tag without any external components (except antenna) operating at millimeter (mm)-wave frequencies is proposed and demonstrated. This fully embedded tag consists of a recently proposed CMOS-based zero-intermediate-frequency self-oscillating mixer, a high power conversion efficiency mm-wave-to-dc rectifier, and an ultralow-power voltage regulator on a single chip, integrated with ceramic-based antennas. Interconnection between the CMOS die and the antenna is realized using a wire-bonding technique, which is compensated and optimized to match the antenna input impedance and also to minimize the wire-bond associated losses at mm frequencies. The $10 \times 10$ mm2 tag wirelessly harvests its energy from an incoming signal at 24 GHz, receives, and recovers the data sent by reader on an amplitude modulation (AM)-modulated 40-GHz carrier, and transmits its data back to the reader on a 40-GHz carrier, using AM modulation as well. The tag exhibits a bit rate of about 500 kb/s during the reader-to-tag communication and 10 Mb/s during the tag-to-reader communication, solely relying on the rectified energy for powering its operation. To the best of our knowledge, such an mm-wave identification tag at mm-wave frequencies has never been reported in the literature.

IMPLEMENTATION OF WIRELESS MOBILE RFID READER IN REAL WORLD INDUSTRY ENVIRONMENT

WIBRED is a new embedded system of Wireless Mobile Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Reader is provide an approach of solving the complex tracking system of material flow in manufacturing industry. This new architecture is embedded with active RFID and passive RFID through wireless mesh network (WMN) platform and smart data processing adopted through web based tracking. RFID smart label solutions for cost effective to monitor and control the material flow in real time manner. The proposed architecture will be attached to smart phone with Android operating system using IOIO-OTG for monitoring and controlling warehouse management. WIBRED will scan the multiple of tags on WMN through 2.4GHz Zigbee technology with beyond 200m range on wireless mesh network platform for receive/transmit data indoor from reader to PC wirelessly. In relation to this traceability and accuracy system will become the solutions of a company to considerably decreased picking errors, reduced rework, reduced business risk and control assets and also lower correction costs. It will make the enterprise warehouse management becomes transparent and efficient work.

Smartstones: A small 9-axis sensor implanted in stones to track their movements

The movement of stones is important in a variety of disciplines such as geomorphology or hydraulic engineering. Plenty of different sensors, visual, active or passive tracers exist to capture movements in various ways. However, none of them is sufficiently small to be implanted in pebbles with a longest axis of approx. 60mm.In this article, a sufficiently small probe is introduced: the Smartstone probe. It consists of a metal cylinder (diameter 8mm, length 55mm) with a flexible antenna and contains a Bosch BMX055 sensor composed of a triaxial accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope, respectively. Additional components inside the probe are memory to store data, active RFID (Radio-frequency identification) technique to transmit data and two button cells as power supply.Mounted into a pebble, the applicability of this probe was tested in laboratory flume experiments by determining the pebble movement using the Smartstone measurements and comparing them to the movement pattern captured by a high-speed camera. The derived orientations and positions in these test experiments resulted in deviations of 32.4% compared to the visual footage. The different reasons for deviations are noise, quantization error, integration error, orientation error and clipping. The error sources were divided with supplementary experiments resulting in mean absolute deviation (MAE) of 3.3% due to noise, quantization, and integration errors; orientation errors result in an increased MAE of 13.7% in natural environment and 21.7% in laboratory. The MAE of all experiments containing clipping was 63.2%.These deviations will be reduced in future by application of methods like Kalman filtering or Markov models, which are established in other disciplines like computer science, robotics or (pedestrian) navigation.

Contacts between health care workers and patients in a short-stay geriatric unit during the peak of a seasonal influenza epidemic compared with a nonepidemic period

Patterns of contacts between health care workers and patients during seasonal epidemics are unknown. Our study objective was to compare the number and duration of contacts between health care workers and patients during a nonepidemic period versus a community influenza epidemic, and to identify supercontactors. Our observational study was conducted in a short-stay geriatric unit of a university hospital. Contacts between individuals were recorded by active radio frequency identification devices. Contact patterns were compared between 2 periods according to contact number and duration. Each care period lasted 5 days in the nonepidemic and influenza epidemic periods. The study included 21 medical doctors, 43 nurses, and 56 patients. In total, 3,200 contacts (61.4%; 152,700 seconds) were recorded during the nonepidemic period, with 2,013 contacts (38.6%; 92,740 seconds) in the epidemic period (P = .007). More cumulative contacts occurred during the nonepidemic period between nurses and patients (n = 2,638 [82%] vs n = 1,599 [79%]), but not between patients (n = 56 [18%] vs n = 414 [21%]). Contact duration between nurses and patients lasted longer during the nonepidemic period (P = .04). During the epidemic period, 6 nurses (15%) considered to be supercontactors accounted for 44.3% of the total number of contacts with patients. The pattern of contacts between individuals differed according to the presence or not of the community influenza peak that might have influenced the risk of nosocomial influenza.

Energy-Efficient Monitor Deployment in Collaborative Distributed Setting

Monitoring large supply networks can be efficiently performed by employing active radio-frequency identification (a-RFID) sensors. Relay nodes collect and process workflow information from the sensors. The knowledge derived from the collected information is periodically communicated to monitors using onboard energy sources. Energy can be saved by communicating with closer monitors. In this setup, multiple decision makers with their own deployment budget collaborate to deploy monitors for minimizing energy consumption of the relay nodes. The contribution of this paper is threefold. It elaborates a mathematical model for distributed monitor deployment in budget-constrained supply-chain networks, it proposes a heuristic technique to find near-optimal allocation of monitors in tractable manner, and it illustrates a collaborative procedure to jointly minimize energy consumption along with a fair sharing of total deployment cost among multiple decision makers. The approach is presented through a case study. In addition, benchmark results are provided for a number of problem instances.

Performance Analysis of ALOHA Framework under Limited Access of Data Transmission for Active RFID System

The data collision of multiple tags to access the channel is one of the most problems in active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The technique of random tag is based on William Feller equation by considering the successful probability (Psuc) may affect to increase the data collision if the tag is not limited the privilege. This paper proposes the modification of William Feller equation by dividing the privilege of tags into several groups. The results show that our scheme can provide the better performances as comparing with William Feller equation in term of successful probability. The maximum average of successful probability is more than 0.97.

Compact Single-Feed Dual-Mode Antenna for Active RFID Tag Application

This communication proposes a compact single-feed dual-mode antenna for active radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag application. The proposed antenna consists of a slotted patch on an FR4 substrate, a feeding microstrip line, and a foam spacer with a volume of only $60\;\text{mm} \times 50.3\;\text{mm} \times 6\;\text{mm}$ ( $0.48{{\lambda}_0} \times 0.40{{\lambda}_0} \times 0.048{{\lambda}_0}$ , where ${{\lambda}_0}$ is the wavelength at the center frequency). It operates as a dipole in free space and as a patch when placed on a metallic surface. A prototype that can provide an impedance bandwidth of 390 MHz (2.28–2.67 GHz) in free space and 470 MHz (2.32–2.79 GHz) on a metallic surface is built and measured. The measured radiation patterns, peak gains, and radiation efficiencies in these two scenarios are provided.

Interference Issuses of Radio Frequency Identification Devices in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Systems and Computed Tomography Scan

We evaluated certain issues related to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) coupled with the use of active 2.5 GHz radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for patient identification using low field (0.3 T) MRI and computed tomography (CT) scans. We also investigated the performance of the RFID reader located outside the MRI room by considering several factors. A total of ten active RFID tags were exposed to several MRI sequences and X-rays of CT scan. We found that only card type active RFID tags are suitable for patient identification purpose in MRI environment and both wristbands as well as card tags were suitable for the same in CT environment. Severe artifacts were found in the captured MRI and CT images when the area of the imaging was in proximity to the tags. No external factors affected the performance of active RFID reader stationed outside the MRI scan room.

Hybrid Autonomous Sensor-Based Recognition Fuzzy Mobile Robot System Designs

The autonomous stratagem combines the concepts of traveling salesman problems (TSP), radio frequency identification (RFID), E-compass wireless networks sensors and the evolutional particle swarm optimization (PSO) to identify the optimal routing paths in the dynamic indoor space. A desired the setting lot as soon as possible. Four active RFID tags amounted in the rectangle type environments and indication of E-compass are proposed to identify the robot position. The routing concept of the TSP is developed by the evolutionary PSO learning scheme to approach the valid routing-path of the mobile robot. The developed mobile robot system, with the proper number of fuzzy membership functions, simultaneously achieves the multiple objectives of avoiding obstacles by the selected shortest routing path.

Flexible binder-free silicon/silica/carbon nanofiber composites as anode for lithium–ion batteries

High-capacity flexible electrode materials for high-energy lithium–ion batteries become critically important with technological improvements on portable and bendable electronic equipment such as rollup displays, implantable medical devices, active radio-frequency identification tags, and wearable devices. Although different types of bendable electrode materials have been introduced, it is very important to fabricate highly-flexible electrode materials with reasonable fabrication technique and high electrochemical performance similar to those of conventional high-capacity electrode materials. Herein, we introduced high-capacity, flexible Si/SiO2/C nanofiber composite anode materials by simple electrospinning and subsequent heat treatment processes. To further improve the long-term cycling performance, additional nanoscale carbon coating of flexible Si/SiO2/C nanofibers was performed by CVD technique. Electrochemical performance results showed that CVD carbon-coated flexible Si/SiO2/C nanofiber composites exhibited high capacity retention of 86.7% and high coulombic efficiency of 96.7% at the 50th cycle. It is, therefore, demonstrated that CVD carbon-coated flexible Si/SiO2/C nanofiber composites are promising anode material candidate for next-generation flexible and high-energy lithium–ion batteries.

Enhancing Cluster-based RFID Tag Localization using artificial neural networks and virtual reference tags

Abstract Construction sites are changing every day, which brings some difficulties for different contractors to do their tasks properly. One of the key points for all entities who work on the same site is the location of resources including materials, tools, and equipment. Therefore, the lack of an integrated localization system leads to an increase in the time wasted on searching for resources. In this research, a localization method based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems which does not need infrastructure is proposed to overcome this problem. This paper investigates the usage of active RFID technology for the localization of movable objects (e.g. components, equipment, and tools) equipped with RFID tags using handheld readers by extending a Cluster-based Movable Tag Localization (CMTL) technique which uses a k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) algorithm. CMTL uses a multidimensional clustering technique that considers signal pattern similarity between target and reference tags together with spatial distribution of reference tags for detecting the region where the target tag is located. The paper proposes applying an irregular bilinear interpolation method to form a grid of virtual reference tags within the selected cluster of real reference tags. Moreover, the proposed method uses artificial neural networks (ANNs) for positioning the target tag, as opposed to empirical weighted averaging formulas used in similar k-NN based methods. Comparative analysis is performed to quantify the improvement of the proposed method over similar k-NN-based methods using a simulation environment. A case study is performed to analyze the performance of the proposed method.

Management of Sensor-Related Data Based on Virtual TEDS in Sensing RFID System

Integration of multiple sensors into active radio frequency identification (RFID) system is a technology trend. Currently, sensing RFID (SRFID) systems face a number of challenges including description of characteristics of nonsmart sensors, management of sensor-related data, and operational mechanism of sensor sampling. Based on transducer electronic data sheet (TEDS), this paper presents a virtual description method of nonsmart sensors integrated into the active RFID tag. The objective is to improve interoperability and compatibility of the sensing RFID system with off-the-shelf active RFID readers or novel sensing RFID open-loop systems in the future. This paper also proposes a data table storage mode for management of sensor-related data, in the system based on virtual TEDS. The paper analyses the operational mechanism and procedure of the sensor-sampling system that is equipped with these two proposed techniques. Several experiments were carried out with a newly developed container supply chain monitoring application system based on SRFID to examine the performance of the system.

Real-Time RFID Indoor Positioning System Based on Kalman-Filter Drift Removal and Heron-Bilateration Location Estimation

This paper proposes Kalman-filter drift removal (DR) and Heron-bilateration location estimation (LE) to significantly reduce the received signal strength index (RSSI) drift, localization error, computational complexity, and deployment cost of conventional radio frequency identification (RFID) indoor positioning systems without any sacrifice of localization granularity and accuracy. By means of only one portable RFID reader as the targeted device and only one pair of active RFID tags as the border-deployed landmarks, this paper develops a real-time portable RFID indoor positioning device and cost-effective scalable RFID indoor positioning infrastructure, based on Kalman-filter DR, Heron-bilateration LE, and four novel preprocessing/postprocessing techniques. Experimental results reveal that the proposed Kalman-filter DR method is faster and better to converge the distance measurement (DM) error than conventional probability/statistics in terms of various relative distances under certain RSSI drift effect condition, and the proposed Heron-bilateration LE method is also faster and better to converge the LE error than conventional proximity pattern matching and trilateration in terms of three or more landmarks under certain DM error condition. On the other hand, a portable RFID indoor positioning device is smoothly implemented on an Android smartphone platform attached with a portable Bluetooth-based RFID reader.

A compact transmit/receive switch for 2.4 GHz reader-less active RFID tag transceiver

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a ubiquitous identification technology nowadays. An on-chip high-performance transmit/receive (T/R) switch is designed and simulated in 0.13-μm CMOS technology for reader-less RFID tag. The switch utilizes only the transistor width and length (W/L) optimization, proper gate bias resistor and resistive body floating technique and therefore, exhibits 1 dB insertion loss, 31.5 dB isolation and 29.2 dBm 1-dB compression point (P1dB). Moreover, the switch dissipates only 786.7 nW power for 1.8/0 V control voltages and is capable of switching in 794 fs. Above all, as there is no inductor or capacitor used in the circuit, the size of the switch is 0.00208 mm2 only. This switch will be appropriate for reader-less RFID tag transceiver front-end as well as other wireless transceivers operated at 2.4 GHz band.

Dosimetry of electromagnetic field exposure of an active armlet and its electromagnetic interference to the cardiac pacemakers using adult, child and infant models

ABSTRACTWearable devices have been popularly used with people from different age groups. As a consequence, the concerns of their electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure to the human body and their electromagnetic interference (EMI) to the implanted medical devices have attracted many studies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the human exposure to the EMF of an active radiofrequency identification (RFID) armlet as well as its EMI to the cardiac pacemaker (CP). Different human models from various age groups were applied to assess the result variability. The scalar potential finite element method was utilized in the simulation. Local EMF exposure and the exposure to the central nerve system tissues were evaluated using different metrics. EMI to the CP was assessed in terms of the conducted voltage to the CP. The results from all the models revealed that the studied RFID armlet would not produce the EMF exposure exceeding the safety limits. The calculated interference voltage was highly dependent on the distance between the RFID armlet and the CP (i.e. the physical dimension of the individual model). The results proposed to evaluate the appropriateness of the current EMI measurement protocol for this kind of devices used by the infants.