Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a wireless communication technology which allows an object to be identified automatically. RFID has many applications, which include inventory checking, access control, transport payment, and secure automobile keys. When a sensor is added to an RFID tag, it opens many other possibilities in commercial applications. For example, the use of temperature sensor and RFID tag can facilitate patient monitoring in hospitals and healthcare facilities. In this strategic research project, we will develop advanced RFID systems with sensing capabilities. The long-term goal of this project is the development of a new framework for commercially viable RFID-based sensor systems. The research team consists of researchers from the University of British Columbia, who have complementary expertise in circuit design, signal processing, communications, cryptography, and network protocols design. We propose to work towards the following inter-related objectives: (a) Design of energy-efficient RFID circuit blocks in order to minimize the overall power consumption and the size of tags; (b) Develop multiple-input multiple-output RFID systems that can increase the read range and reliability; (c) Develop novel data fusion algorithms that can improve the tag detection reliability and the operating range; (d) Design tracking and localization algorithms for mobile tags in order to improve the accuracy; (e) Develop efficient medium access control and cooperation protocols that can increase the success rate of detecting all the co-located tags; (f) Develop security and privacy mechanisms which have low computation complexity for tags. For proof-of-concept and technology transfer, we implement our proposed techniques in a testbed. The industrial partners include four Canadian companies from British Columbia: Guard RFID Solutions Inc., Kintama Research Corp., SST Wireless Inc., and Wireless 2000 Inc. Results are intended to find practical solutions and applications for the benefit of Canadian and the global telecommunication and microelectronic industries. The project will prepare a large number of highly qualified personnel to serve the needs of the fast evolving field of RFID-based sensor systems.