Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Food safety is of paramount importance to Canadians for health as well as for economical reasons. Animal traceability from farms to food tables is one important mean to ensure such safety by limiting the spread of disease among livestock and by quickly containing the spread of any contaminated meat products that may find their way into the food chain. RadioFrequency IDentification (RFID) technology is extensively used to track livestock from birth to the slaughterhouse. However, while this technology makes tracking easy, its use in tracking cattle during transport in large metallic trailers lacks the robustness and reliability required. Indeed, during the phases of embarking and disembarking of cattle, the animals cause the trailers to vibrate which in turn causes the RFID reader to malfunction and miss reading the animal's tag. Because government traceability regulations require a 100% success rate in reading all tags, this problem must be addressed and a solution must be found before this technology can be deployed on a wide scale. The goal of the present project is to work with our industrial partners, Argi-Traçablité Intenrational and Epsilia, to isolate the mechanisms that cause RFID reader failure, to understand their underlining physics and to develop proper solutions that will guarantee 100% read success rate. A hybrid approach combining electromagnetic simulation, signal processing and experimental vibration testing is proposed to meet the stated objective.