RFID and Sensors
RFID is an abbreviation for Radio Frequency Identification, and the concept is based on fixing small radio tags to the objects one wants to identify. The purpose of existing RFID solutions is normally to provide automatic and reliable identification of various objects, such as people, animals or cars. Some RFID tags also have the ability to store data, and can thus be used as small (both with regard to size and capacity) wireless data storages.
Today, RFID technology is mainly used within the areas of logistics, ticketing and access control. However, in the future we expect an increasing number of usage areas, particularly within the transport and health sector. An important feature in these areas would be the ability to monitor the environment of the transported goods and how the transported units are treated. In these cases RFID tags with integrated sensors (e.g. temperature, humidity, acceleration or shock) could prove increasingly useful.
There already exist combined sensor and RFID tags, but these consist of a rather high number of semi-conductor components: temperature and shock sensors, AD converters, RFID front end, memory and antenna. Even though the interest for such RFID sensors is high, the sensors are at present too expensive for mass production. In addition, such multi-component RFID sensors will tend to be too large for many practical applications.
SINTEF ICT addresses several aspects that are relevant for the development of RFID tags and RFID sensors. The following departments are involved in this work:
Contact: Bård Myhre (Beskyttet adresse)
