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Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 February 2021) | Viewed by 26744

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Renato Ferrero

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
Interests: ubiquitous computing; wireless sensor networks; RFID systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Petar Šolić

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department for Information and Communication Systems, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Naval Architecture (FESB), University of Split, 21000 Split, Croatia
Interests: information systems development; localization and RFID technology; communication protocols in RFID; RFID application; energy harvesting; software-defined radio development
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Javier Vales Alonso

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Technologies and Communications, Technical University of Cartagena, Murcia, Spain
Interests: RFID, Machine Learning, Stochastic Modelling and Optimization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), the objects of the physical word become smart and recognizable by being connected with each other and exchanging information. By monitoring and measuring physical phenomena, such as temperature, light, sound, pressure, etc., wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide an extraordinary source of data for IoT. The variety of available sensors motivate the large adoption of WSNs in many application fields, such as healthcare, home automation, industry, automotive, military applications, disaster monitoring, etc. WSNs are a key technology in populating and enriching the digital world envisaged by IoT by creating a map of the physical word. However, one important feature is still missing: the electronic identity of the objects in the digital world. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems can fill this gap, as RFID readers are able to recognize and retrieve information stored on tags by transmitting electromagnetic waves. Combining the information collected by WSNs and the automatic identification provided by the RFID technology, the IoT objects can cooperate in a smart way in order to implement sophisticated applications. New opportunities arise in the development of IoT applications, but at the same time specific issues should be addressed to ensure application requirements.

This Special Issue aims to collect original and high-quality papers, both from academic and from industrial players, about new trends, solutions, and challenges in the adoption of the RFID technology for the development of IoT applications. Additionally, selected papers from the 7th international EURASIP workshop on RFID technology (EURASIP RFID 2019 Workshop, http://www.eurasip-rfid.org/) with appropriate extensions will be included in the Special Issue.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • RFID-based devices for the Internet of Things
  • Ambient intelligence based on RFID labeling
  • Applications of RFID for smart cities
  • Standards and communication protocols
  • Implementation issues of IoT applications
  • Smart and programmable tags
  • Sensor networks with RFID
  • Applications and industrial experience
  • Security and privacy

Dr. Renato Ferrero
Dr. Petar Šolić
Dr. Javier Vales Alonso
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • RFID
  • Internet of things
  • WSN
  • Ambient intelligence
  • Smart cities
  • Security

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2226 KiB  
Article
Analysis of FDM and DLP 3D-Printing Technologies to Prototype Electromagnetic Devices for RFID Applications
by Riccardo Colella, Francesco Paolo Chietera and Luca Catarinucci
Sensors 2021, 21(3), 897; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21030897 - 29 Jan 2021
Cited by 37 | Viewed by 4844
Abstract
In this work, the application in Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) of different additive manufacturing (AM) 3D-printing technologies is discussed. In particular, the well-known Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology is compared with the promising Digital Light Processing (DLP), which is based on the photopolymerization of [...] Read more.
In this work, the application in Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) of different additive manufacturing (AM) 3D-printing technologies is discussed. In particular, the well-known Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology is compared with the promising Digital Light Processing (DLP), which is based on the photopolymerization of liquid resins. Based on the research activity of the authors on this topic, a brief introduction to the fundamentals of 3D-printing in electromagnetics as well as to the different applications of both FDM and DLP in realizing Radio Frequency (RF) devices, is firstly given. Then, a comparison of the two technologies is deeply faced. Finally, after evaluated the rugosity of substrates produced with both techniques to verify the potential impact on the design of electromagnetic structures, the two techniques are both exploited for the realization of the dielectric parts of a tunable RFID tag with unconventional shape. It consists of two elements interlinked one each other. The movement between them enables tuning of the resonance frequency as well as the impedance of the antenna. Despite the differences in terms of losses, rugosity, resolution, and dielectric constant, both techniques guaranteed satisfactory values of tag sensitivity, maximum reading range, and tunability. Nevertheless, the careful analysis of the results proposed at the end of the paper suggests how the selection of one technique over the other must be taken considering the specific application constraints. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things)
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17 pages, 583 KiB  
Article
Dynamic Frame Update Policy for UHF RFID Sensor Tag Collisions
by Laura Arjona, Hugo Landaluce, Asier Perallos and Enrique Onieva
Sensors 2020, 20(9), 2696; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092696 - 9 May 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3099
Abstract
The current growing demand for low-cost edge devices to bridge the physical–digital divide has triggered the growing scope of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology research. Besides object identification, researchers have also examined the possibility of using RFID tags for low-power wireless sensing, localisation [...] Read more.
The current growing demand for low-cost edge devices to bridge the physical–digital divide has triggered the growing scope of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology research. Besides object identification, researchers have also examined the possibility of using RFID tags for low-power wireless sensing, localisation and activity inference. This paper focuses on passive UHF RFID sensing. An RFID system consists of a reader and various numbers of tags, which can incorporate different kinds of sensors. These sensor tags require fast anti-collision protocols to minimise the number of collisions with the other tags sharing the reader’s interrogation zone. Therefore, RFID application developers must be mindful of anti-collision protocols. Dynamic Frame Slotted Aloha (DFSA) anti-collision protocols have been used extensively in the literature because EPCglobal Class 1 Generation 2 (EPC C1G2), which is the current communication protocol standard in RFID, employs this strategy. Protocols under this category are distinguished by their policy for updating the transmission frame size. This paper analyses the frame size update policy of DFSA strategies to survey and classify the main state-of-the-art of DFSA protocols according to their policy. Consequently, this paper proposes a novel policy to lower the time to read one sensor data packet compared to existing strategies. Next, the novel anti-collision protocol Fuzzy Frame Slotted Aloha (FFSA) is presented, which applies this novel DFSA policy. The results of our simulation confirm that FFSA significantly decreases the sensor tag read time for a wide range of tag populations when compared to earlier DFSA protocols thanks to the proposed frame size update policy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things)
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20 pages, 1410 KiB  
Article
LBTM: Listen-before-Talk Protocol for Multiclass UHF RFID Networks
by Pablo López-Matencio, Javier Vales-Alonso and Juan J. Alcaraz
Sensors 2020, 20(8), 2313; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20082313 - 18 Apr 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4480
Abstract
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is considered one of the pioneering technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT). It allows to bind physical environments to information processing systems, adding new capabilities like automatic inventorying, location, or sensing with batteryless tags. Indeed, many data flows [...] Read more.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is considered one of the pioneering technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT). It allows to bind physical environments to information processing systems, adding new capabilities like automatic inventorying, location, or sensing with batteryless tags. Indeed, many data flows of physical objects can be tracked using this technology, and it is common to find heterogeneous traffics present in the same facility, each managed by different sets of readers. For example, in a grocery store, typically we have two kinds of readers: those carrying out a continuous inventory, whose goal is knowing the contents of the shelves as accurately as possible; and a set of checking-out readers at exit gates for the billing process that has to minimize the waiting time of customers. Another example of multiclass traffic is a hospital, where new families of sensing tags allow staff to wirelessly monitor patients—which obviously must be done as a priority—and coexist with other readers aimed at precisely knowing the location of equipment or drugs. Even with the same goal, there could be readers requiring different setups, for example in the hospital case, readers located at doors for inventorying purposes have a short time available to identify passing-by objects or people, and thus they have to work with a higher priority than regular readers performing inventorying tasks. In this work, we investigate a modification of the standard listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol for RFID networks which can support this kind of multipriority environment, by offering different qualities of service to each traffic. Results demonstrate that by tuning the protocol setup, it is possible to establish a trade-off between the performance of each traffic. This is shown for the two cited examples, the grocery shop and the hospital, using a simulation tool allowing us to implement a full-scale RFID model. In addition, we present a greedy mechanism for online reader setup. Instead of selecting offline a hard priority level, this greedy algorithm is able to adapt the priority to achieve the required quality-of-service (QoS) level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things)
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20 pages, 4559 KiB  
Article
Analysis of Passive RFID Applicability in a Retail Store: What Can We Expect?
by Maja Škiljo, Petar Šolić, Zoran Blažević and Toni Perković
Sensors 2020, 20(7), 2038; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20072038 - 5 Apr 2020
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4458
Abstract
The Internet of Things (IoT) has a lot to offer and contribute to the retail industry, from the innovations in retail store experience to the increased efficiency in the store management and supply chain optimization. On its way to real-world applications, Radio Frequency [...] Read more.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has a lot to offer and contribute to the retail industry, from the innovations in retail store experience to the increased efficiency in the store management and supply chain optimization. On its way to real-world applications, Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) became the main enabler for the final IoT deployment. However, to improve the technology performance even further, it is important to overcome the fundamental limitations of its physical layer and, consequently, to better understand how to use the technology in an optimal way. The analysis provided in this paper employs the simulation/measurement study on RFID technology advancement and the influence of radio propagation in a realistic model of the retail environment. The results are provided for different types of the retail layouts and materials that influence tag responsiveness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things)
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13 pages, 5276 KiB  
Article
LC-DFSA: Low Complexity Dynamic Frame Slotted Aloha Anti-Collision Algorithm for RFID System
by Zhaozhe Jiang, Bo Li, Mao Yang and Zhongjiang Yan
Sensors 2020, 20(1), 228; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20010228 - 31 Dec 2019
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 3354
Abstract
With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the radio frequency identification (RFID) system becomes increasingly important. Tag identification is a basic problem of the RFID system, whose purpose is to inventory tags. However, in recent years, it requires a very [...] Read more.
With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the radio frequency identification (RFID) system becomes increasingly important. Tag identification is a basic problem of the RFID system, whose purpose is to inventory tags. However, in recent years, it requires a very short time for massive tag identification, which brings serious challenges. The traditional Aloha based anti-collision algorithms have disadvantages of either low efficiency or high complexity. Therefore, this article proposes a low complexity dynamic frame slotted Aloha (DFSA) anti-collision algorithm, named LC-DFSA. The reader can estimate the range of tag numbers according to the last frame size, the number of successful slots and the ratio of idle slots. Then the optimal frame size can be calculated. Complexity analysis is deployed in this article, and we validate the correctness of the analysis. Through our simulations, LC-DFSA outperforms other schemes in both the average access efficiency and the algorithm complexity. It also can be conveniently applied to engineering implementations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things)
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20 pages, 7711 KiB  
Article
ANTspin: Efficient Absolute Localization Method of RFID Tags via Spinning Antenna
by Leixian Shen, Qingyun Zhang, Jiayi Pang, He Xu, Peng Li and Donghui Xue
Sensors 2019, 19(9), 2194; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19092194 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 5002
Abstract
The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been widely applied in outdoor positioning, but it cannot meet the accuracy requirements of indoor positioning. Comprising an important part of the Internet of Things perception layer, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) plays an important role in indoor [...] Read more.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been widely applied in outdoor positioning, but it cannot meet the accuracy requirements of indoor positioning. Comprising an important part of the Internet of Things perception layer, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) plays an important role in indoor positioning. We propose a novel localization scheme aiming at the defects of existing RFID localization technology in localization accuracy and deployment cost, called ANTspin: Efficient Absolute Localization Method of RFID Tags via Spinning Antenna, which introduces a rotary table in the experiment. The reader antenna is fixed on the rotary table to continuously collect dynamic data. When compared with static acquisition, there is more information for localization. After that, the relative incident angle and distance between tags and the antenna can be analyzed for localization with characteristics of Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) data. We implement ANTspin using COTS RFID devices and the experimental results show that it achieves a mean accuracy of 9.34 cm in 2D and mean accuracy of 13.01 cm in three-dimensions (3D) with high efficiency and low deployment cost. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Applications and Challenges of RFID for the Internet of Things)
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