On the use of passive UHF RFID tags in the pharmaceutical supply chain: a novel enhanced tag versus high-performance commercial tags

Item-level RFID-based tracing systems are of growing interest both from industrial and scientific standpoints. In such a context, the choice of the most adequate RFID tag, in terms of shape, frequency, size and reading range, is crucial. The potential presence of items containing materials hostile to the electromagnetic propagation exacerbates the problem. In addition, the peculiarities of the different RFID-based checkpoints make the requirements for the tag even more stringent. In this work, the performance of several commercial UHF RFID tags in each step of the pharmaceutical supply chain has been evaluated, confirming the foreseen criticality. On such basis, a guideline for the electromagnetic design of new high-performance tags capable of overcoming such criticalities has been defined. Finally, driven by such guidelines, a new enhanced tag has been designed, realised and tested, demonstrating that high performance item-level tracing systems can actually be implemented also in critical operating conditions. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF READING PASSIVE UHF TAGS IN A MULTI-TAG ENVIRONMENT

Recently, the Internet of things (IoT) has emerged as a promising solution for several industrial applications. One of the key components in IoT is passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags which do not require a power source for operations. Specifically, ultra-high frequency (UHF) tags are studied in this paper. However, due to factors such as tag-to-tag interference and inaccurate localization, RFID tags that are closely spaced together are difficult to detect and program accurately with unique identifiers. This thesis investigates several factors that affect the ability to encode a specific tag with unique information in the presence of other tags, such as reader power level, tag-to-antenna distance, tag-to-tag distance and tag orientation. ANOVA results report reader power level and tag spacing, along with effect interactions power level*tag spacing and tag spacing*tag orientation to be significant at the levels investigated. Results further suggest a preliminary minimum tag-to-tag spacing which enables the maximum number of tags to be uniquely encoded without interference. This finding can significantly speed up the process of field programming in item-level tagging