RWS 2009
Workshop
WS TH1
Title: RFID – Circuit and System Design
Time: Thursday, January 22, 2008, 8:30 am-12:30 pm
Place: Gas Lamp
Organizers: Timothy Hancock and Gregory Lyons, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Speakers:
- M. C. O’Connor, RFID Journal (15 min)
- Daniel Dobkin, Enigmatic (50 min)
- Reza Rofougaran, Broadcom (40 min)
- Walter Fix, PolyIC (40 min)
- Daniel Deavours, U. Kansas (40 min)
- Faranak Nekoogar, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (30 min)
Abstract:
This half-day workshop begins with an overview of RFID applications, followed by a brief description of RFID’s place in microwave history. The technical description of state-of-the-art RFID technology begins with the key architectural choices and tradeoffs of active vs. passive tags, and LF, HF or UHF tag operating frequency. Examples of communications protocols, link budgets, and operating ranges will be described leading into radio architecture and antenna/chip design issues. The design and packaging of high-volume embedded RFID chips and readers using CMOS technology will be described as applied to electronic consumer products. Issues and challenges faced in designing and evaluating RFID antennas for various applications will be discussed. RFID antenna design is highly dependent on the range, frequency and environment in which the RFID is used. The emerging technology of printed organic electronics will be discussed, including the challenges of developing the necessary FETs and diodes for printing on rolls of plastic for high-volume applications. Finally, the emerging area of ultra-wideband (UWB) RFID will be discussed.
1. M. C. O’Connor, RFID Journal (15 min)
Five or six years ago, it was difficult to find anyone--outside of the science and technology communities--who knew what the acronym RFID meant. But that started to change in June of 2003, when Wal-Mart shared with its top suppliers its plan for migrating away from bar codes. Instead, they'd use labels with embedded radio frequency identification tags, which could be read without a direct line of sight and be encoded with richer data to track the movement of the consumer products in the supply chain. The retail world braced itself for a revolution. Today, while that revolution is still underway, RFID technology has been put to work in a plethora of other industries--and sometimes for applications that were not even dreamed up back in 2003. In this brief introduction, we'll look at how RFID technology is being used today, and get a glimpse of some new applications that are just beginning to emerge.
2. Daniel Dobkin, Enigmatic (50 min)
In this brief introduction to radio frequency identification, we will start with a short history of the technology, from its origins in wartime aircraft identification to the present day. We will examine the architectural choices that are available – inductive vs. radiative; LF, HF, UHF, microwave, and UWB frequency ranges; passive, semi-passive, and active tags; standardized vs. proprietary protocols – and the tradeoffs that result. We’ll see how the limited link budget available to passive tags impacts read range. Tags and readers will be introduced and a few words devoted to the peculiar requirements of passive systems. Finally, we’ll survey a few representative applications to see how particular architectures are chosen to satisfy specific sets of requirements. There will be a quiz at the end.
3. Reza Rofougaran, Broadcom (40 min)
An all CMOS RFID system solution will be presented for both near-field and far-field applications operating at 900MHz. The presentation will cover the design of both near field and far field RFID reader with integrated high efficient power amplifier as well as active blocker cancellation technique to enhance the dynamic range of the far-field RFID reader.
In addition, it presents a guideline for design of a CMOS RFID tag with an optimum on chip power harvester as well as on-chip antenna integration for near-field applications operating at short distances.
4. Matthias Klusmann, PolyIC (40 min)
It is expected that low-cost organic electronics will open a new mass market besides the already existing market for conventional and more expensive Si-based technology. We have fabricated different multi-bit RFID-Transponder based on polymer electronics. Polymer rectifiers working at 13.56 MHz and fast integrated organic circuits up to 0.6 MHz are demonstrated. A 64-bit transponder operating at a supply voltage of ~ 14V was realized based on poly-(3-hexylthiophene) as p-type semiconductor material with charge carrier mobility of µ ≈ 0.02 cm2/Vs. The polymeric devices are very stable and exhibit high electrical performance and lifetime. Since the polymeric materials used for our devices are all soluble, it is possible to fabricate our electronic circuits by a cost efficient roll to roll printing process. Thus, completely high speed printed and low cost polymer electronics can be realized.
5. Daniel Deavours, U. Kansas (40 min)
In this section of the tutorial, we will examine the issues and use of RFID tag antennas. We will cover the following topics:
- RFID Antenna Overview
- Variety of antennas used in RFID
- Foundations of antenna design and common techniques
- Challenges posed by the environment, especially metal, water, and glass.
- Strategies for addressing the environmental challenges, including:
- Anticipation of changes
- Microstrip antennas
- FAT tags
- Challenges and strategies for item-level tagging
- Summary
6. Faranak Nekoogar, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (30 min)
Although there is vast commercial industry working on the RFID systems, the vulnerabilities of commercial products are only beginning to emerge. Most of the commercially available RFID tags use narrowband technology to communicate with their readers. Therefore, they have difficulty in their use around metal containers and are prone to interferences, jamming, and can easily be tampered with. Moreover, the commercial passive tags have very short communications range (few inches), and the active tags that offer long ranges require large batteries and their lifetime is limited to the battery power. There are also some concerns with the introduction of strong radio narrowband frequency (RF) signals around radioactive and nuclear materials. Much of these problems can be solved through the use of ultra-wide band (UWB) technology in RFID tags. In this presentation we’ll discuss the advantages and challenges of using UWB for tag-reader communications in RFID systems for both detection and tracking applications. In addition we’ll cover a survey of UWB antennas and will discuss how on-chip impedance matching can be used for wideband operations in RFID systems.
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