PARIS - Position Aware RFID System

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology tremendously gained attention over the last few years. Especially RFID at ultra high frequencies (UHF) is very attractive for various applications in supply chain management, transport or logistics. The propagation characteristics and progress on transponder chip design enable communication along several meters of distance, thus permitting the readout of large pallets product per product. Passive transponders are preferred for those applications because they can be manufactured at extremely low cost. Such transponders, also referred as RFID tags, extract their energy from the electromagnetic field generated by an interrogator (reader). On the other hand, the high range of UHF-RFID poses the risk that items outside the intended volume (the readzone) respond to the interrogator. Todays storage systems have to make considerable efforts to maintain consistent databases in spite of unwanted reads. But not only commercial interests require trusted solutions that prevent false reads, also application scenarios are possible were such false responses could be fatal. Consider security applications (keyless entry systems, immobilizers), where RFID is used to grant access control, or hospital management to implement quality control for medications. The project aims at enhancing UHF RFID systems through adding positioning functionality. By eliminating unwanted reads, a major concern of UHF-RFID safety simply vanishes. Key research directions concern radio channel modeling, system modeling, and based on those fundamentals, digital signal processing advances.