rfid tag - technology and scenarios

1. RFID TAG THE WORLD OF OBJECTS Davide Del Monte www.diplod.it Complex Adaptive Systems 2008 Management Engineering unimore http://www.ingre.unimore.it/

What is RFID technology

Detection of interactions with RFID tagged Objects

Inferring activities from interaction: ADL (activities of daily living)

RFIG Lamps: Interacting with a self-describing world via photosensing wireless tags and projectors

Applications in the real world

Java experiments with Alien reader

RFID =R adioF requencyId entification

An RFID tag is an object that can be applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radiowaves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.

Antenna:for receiving and transmitting the signal

Integrated Chip

Plastic Inlay

Maybe sensor, battery, external memory

Passive : no battery, t he electrical current induced in the antenna by the incoming radio frequency signal provides just enough power in the tag to power up and transmit a response

Active :internal power source, which is used to power theintegrated circuitsand broadcast the signal to the reader

Semipassive :similar to active tags in that they have their own power source, but the battery only powers the microchip and does not broadcast a signal.

Is possible to attach a tag on many surfaces

Estimated production for 2008: 2-3 billion

No line-of-sight

Many informations and/or applications

Can be reprogrammed in the field to reflect current information

Cheap: 0,20 $

Now everything has a bar code

Requires line-of-sight

Only ID information

Data is fixed at the moment the label is printed

Cost free

BAR CODE

I sense a disturbance in the force: unobtrusive detection of interactions with RIFID-tagged objects

K.P. Fishkin, B. Jiang, M. Philippose, S. Roy

Intel research Seattle 2004

Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington

A novel method to infer interactions with passive RFID tagged objects is described. The method allows unobtrusive detection of human interactions with RFID tagged objects without requiring any modifications to existing communications protocols or RFID hardware. The object motion detection algorithm was integrated into a RFID monitoring system and tested in laboratoryand home environments.

Existing readers support a poll command, wherein the reader transmitsN pollcommands per second to tags and reports the number of received responses for each tag.

We therefore define aresponse rate as the ratio of responses to polls. C [0..1]

When 0, the tag cannot be seen at all. When 1, the tag is alwaysseen.

The response rate can be used to approximatethe RF signal strength

The algorithm detect interaction reliably, and as quickly as possible after the event has occurred

Left: The response rate at 4 different distances, with N=20.

Right: The relationship between mean and standard deviation of response rate (N=10)

Left:Response rate as a function of distance from the reader antenna

Right: Response rate as a function of angle between the reader and tag antenna

The first scenario represents a typical living-room interaction. Four items were tagged: a hardbound book, a magazine, a deck of cards, and a TV remote control.

A sequence of typical interactions with these objects were performed, 30 interactions in total: objects were picked up and/or put down 23 times, an object was motioned with while in the hand 3 times, and a hand was waved in front of each object, for a total of 4 interactions.

Two readers were used, bothwall-mounted, on perpendicular walls

A second experimentwas then performed with the same tagged objects but this time time using only a single wall-mounted reader. This time 9 pick up / put down events were performed and 3 interactions where one object was placed atop another

One dificult of measuring any RFID technique is that RFID signal streght is impacted by many variables:

Flooring

Distance between tag and reader

Number of tags and their placement on object

Number of readers and thier deployment topology

Number of nearby tags

Number of objects moved simultaneously

Tag orientation

Amount and direction of tag rotation

Tag type

Type of reader

As ubiquitous computer matures, it will be possibile to detect interaction thanks to increasingly unobtrusive sensor networks

M. Philipose, K.P. Fishkin, M. Perkovitz (Intel research center)

D.J. Patterson, D. Fox, H. Kautz (university of Washington)

D. Hhnel (university of Freiburg)

The idea is to infer activities from interactions with object, combining the RFID tag data with time and sequences of activities.

PROACT The system has three components: specialized sensors to detect object interactions, a probabilistic engine that infers activities given observations from sensors, and a model creator that lets us easily create probabilistic models of activities.

To sense tags,the user wears a prototype glove with an RFID-detecting antenna in thepalm

Activities are represented as linear sequences of activity stages

For example,we can model the making of tea as a three-stage activity: boil the water; steep the tea in the water; and flavor the tea with milk, sugar, or lemon

Is possible to convert activities in a probabilistic model.

Thesemodels are typically difficult to createwithout intensive hand tuning

Once we specify the objects involved in each stage, we must define the objectinvolvement probabilities

these describe the probability of using the object in that activity state ( what percentage of sandwiches involve ham?)

PROACTautomatically determines these probabilities

Authors postulatedthat if an activityA occurs on n1 Web pages (the best extant approximation of human discourse), andn2 pagescontain the activity and an objectT, thenthe involvement probability forT in Ais approximately equal ton2/n1.These numbers are obtained via theGoogleAPI

Tests are made by having 14 subject (3 male,11 female) perform ADLs, wearing the prototype glove. Each spent roughly 45 minutes in a house with RFID tagged object.

They went into the house and performed 12 tasks, in anyorder, without observation

When PROACT correctly claimed an activity occurred, it scored a true positive (TP); an incorrect claim scored a false positive (FP). If an activity occurred and PROACT didnt report it, PROACT scored a false negative (FN). The Table shows theresults for each ADL.

R. Raskar, P. Beardsley, J. Van Baar, Y. Wang, P. Dietz, J. Lee, D. Leigh, T. Willwacher (Mitsubischi Electric Research Labs, Cambridge)

Each tag is augmented with a photo sensor to significantly extend the functionality and support radio frequency identity and geometry (RFIG) discovery

At the mitsubishi lab they are working on handheld system to project information on tagged object and reproduce an augmented reality

On the objects there is a photo sensor that detects the light to allow programming on rfid tags

Applications and most common uses for RFID

Most common use of RFID tag is for antitheft systems

Implantable RFID chips designed for animal tagging are now being used in humans. Night clubs inBarcelona ,Spainand inRotterdamuse an implantable chip to identify their VIP customers, who in turn use it to pay for drinks.

RFID tags are being used inpassportsissued by many countries. The first RFID passports (" E-passport ") were issued byMalaysiain 1998. In addition to information also contained on the visual data page of the passport, Malaysian e-passports record the travel history (time, date, and place) of entries and exits from the country.

Italian passport have an RFID tag since 26 thOctober 2006

Throughout Europe, and in particular in Paris (system started in 1995 by theRATP ), Lyon and Marseille in France, Porto and Lisbon in Portugal, Milan, Turin, and Florence in Italy, and Brussels in Belgium, RFID passes conforming to theCalypso (RFID)international standard are used for public transport systems.

Inventory systems:in an academic study [19]performed at Wal-Mart, RFID reduced Out-of-Stocks by 30 percent for products selling between 0.1 and 15 units a day.

Product Tracking: integrated supply chain from warehouse to consumer. See the story How and why you will talk to your tomatoes

Domotic systems for findind object

Tag environments, question tags for environmental conditions ( ubiquity of RFID tags)

I bought a Nissan Micra on august 2003

I can open my car without inserting the key.. I have an intelligent key!

Why? TheTexas Instruments Digital Signature Transponder(DST) is a cryptographically-enabledradio-frequency identification(RFID) device used in a variety of wireless authentication applications. The largest deployments of the DST include theExxon-Mobil Speedpasspayment system (approximately 7 million transponders), as well as a variety of vehicle immobilizer systems used in many late model Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Toyota, and Nissan vehicles.

Lap scoring (racing)

Animal Identification

E-tickets

Hospital

Musea, libraries

schools and universities

Theprivacyis a real problem:a primary security concern surrounding technology is the illicit tracking of RFID tags. Tags which are world-readable pose a risk to both personal location privacy and corporate/military security.

Privacy organizations have expressed concerns in the context of ongoing efforts to embed electronic product code (EPC) RFID tags in consumer products.

Test I made at DISMI

The reader has two antennas and is connected to a notebook via TCP/IP port

Orange labels are RFID tags

To connect Alien with the notebook you have to specify the IP address

Instantiating the reader at a network address andspecifying a network address for replies.

AutoStopTimer is the time for reading tags. This is a critical value!

// Instantiate a new reader object, and open a connection on the NET

AlienClass1Reader reader = new AlienClass1Reader();

reader.setConnection("192.168.0.2",23);

reader.setUsername("alien");

reader.setPassword("password");

reader.open();

// Set up Notification.

reader.setNotifyAddress("192.168.0.1",service.getListenerPort());

reader.setNotifyFormat(AlienClass1Reader.XML_FORMAT);// Listener only supports XML messages

reader.setNotifyTrigger("TrueFalse");// Notify whether there's a tag or not

reader.setNotifyMode(AlienClass1Reader.ON);

// Set up AutoMode

reader.autoModeReset();

reader.setAutoStopTimer( 4000 );// Read for 4 second

reader.setAutoMode(AlienClass1Reader.ON);

If there are tags in the antennas area, the system reports a message with the tags identification number, the time when the tag was discovered, and last time the tag was seen.

The main method only initializes the class MessageListenerTest

public void messageReceived(Message message){

System.out.println(" Message Received:");

if (message.getTagCount() == 0) {

System.out.println("(No Tags)");

} else {

for (int i = 0; i < message.getTagCount(); i++) {

Tag tag = message.getTag(i);

System.out.println(tag.toLongString());

//Main metod

public static final void main(String args[]){

MessageListenerTest test = new MessageListenerTest();

} catch (Exception e) {

System.out.println("Error:" + e.toString());

While Alien is reading it reports the ID number of the tag read, plus other information

Typical output is a sequence of information

You can also obtain this information in a XML file

This function is very powerfull, you can integrate this informations with a web service to realize different kinds of applications.

XML message is obtained with the method getXML() of the object Message.

This is the output when a new tag is read by Alien.

Message Received:

Tag=0000 0000 0000 6101 3407 3649Disc=Fri Mar 07 08:11:50 CET 2008Last=Fri Mar 07 08:11:52 CET 2008Count=9Ant=0

XML message:

Alien RFID Reader

Alien RFID Tag Reader, Model:

192.168.0.2

2008/03/07 08:11:55

AUTO MODE EVALUATES TRUE

0000 0000 0000 6101 3407 3649

2008/03/07 08:11:50

2008/03/07 08:11:52

Is possible to write and update data of RFID tags

Programming commands are not enabled by default; to enable it is necessary to pass the command (see later for ASCII commands):

Alien >set Function = Programmer

Then there are some methods to write data

The most basic way to communicate with a reader is to use a method called doReaderCommand(), which sends an ASCII command and returns theASCII response

String readerName = reader.doReaderCommand("get ReaderName");

Whit few line of code is possible to create a session to comunicate with Alien

You can perform the same commands with java methods or with ASCII strings

This is the code. When the connection is open, a BufferedReader is created to pass command whit the method doReaderCommand

public AlienClass1Communicator() throws Exception {

AlienClass1Reader reader = new AlienClass1Reader();// Create reader object

// Connect to a networked reader:

reader.setConnection("192.168.0.2",23);

reader.setUsername("alien");

reader.setPassword("password");

reader.open();// Open the reader connection

// Use stdin for user input

BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));

System.out.print(" Alien>");// Show prompt

String line = in.readLine();// Grab user input

if (line.equals("q")) break;// Quit when "q" is pressed

System.out.println(reader.doReaderCommand(line));// Send command, print result

} while (true);// Repeat indefinitely

System.out.println(" Goodbye.");

reader.close();// Close the reader connection

Here I only ask the reader his name, type and version

rfid tag - technology and scenarios

Technology

rfid rfid

rfid davide

passive rfid

rfid hardware

types of rfid tag antenna

world of objects davide

wikipedia definition

unimore image