Job Description
Over the past decade, RFID has gained substantial attention across a range of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, from access control and e-health management to the Meeting, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) industry. Its appeal lies in its low cost, compactness, and simplicity of deployment. Passive RFID tags, in particular, are attractive because they are battery-free and powered solely by the energy transmitted from the RFID reader. Integration of sensing capabilities in the RFIF tag architecture to acquire critical environmental data, such as temperature, humidity, pressure, motion, and chemical composition, will revolutionize many sectors of high societal and economic importance, including healthcare and security, food cold-chain supply logistic, museum inventory management, to mention a few. Building on this foundation, this project—funded by ARC-HUB—seeks to develop next-generation antenna for RFID tags with integrated sensing capabilities. In the context of frozen food supply chains, these novel antennas will not only transmit a package’s unique identification number but also indicate whether the product has been exposed to temperatures above zero, by altering the input impedance of the tag. This sensing mechanism is designed to be seamless: when illuminated by a standard UHF RFID reader, the tag will transmit a different identification code depending on the sensed temperature state. In this way, the proposed technology transforms passive RFID from a simple tracking tool into a low-cost, disposable sensing platform for cold-chain accountability.
