RFID Performance Testing
Radio frequency identification (RFID) may be used to automatically detect, locate and/or identify objects, making it an ideal candidate for many pervasive computing applications. As RFID technology improves in terms of cost and performance, it is increasingly being explored in a variety of applications, ranging from eldercare through to the smart supply chain. However, while passive UHF RFID has many benefits over other RFID variants, reliable operation as the tag moves in the environment is inherently difficult to predict and can represent a significant challenge. It is also hard to know what effect applying the tag to an object will have.
We have developed a novel and practical experimental method called attenuation-thresholding which may be used to characterize the operating range of UHF RFID systems. It has a number of advantages over the conventional read-rate approach, but in particular it can also take account of the effects of the object that is being tagged.
Contact: Steve Hodges
Publications
- Hodges, S., Thorne, T., Mallinson, H. and Floerkemeier, C. "Assessing and Optimizing the Range of UHF RFID to Enable Real-World Pervasive Computing Applications". In A. LaMarca et al. (Eds.): Pervasive 2007, LNCS 4480, pp. 280 – 297, 2007. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
- Mallinson, H., Hodges, S., Thorne, A. A System to Test the Performance of RFID-Tagged Objects, saint-w, p. 23, 2007 International Symposium on Applications and the Internet Workshops (SAINTW'07).
- "Determining a Better Metric for RFID Performance in Environments with Varying Noise Levels" H. Mallinson, S. Hodges and A. Thorne., 12th IEEE Interna-tional Conference on Methods and Models in Automation and Robotics, 2006.
Low Power WiFi Operation
We are exploring ways in which laptop computers and ultra-mobile PCs can remain connected to the WiFi infrastructure whilst in suspend mode, thereby drastically increasing battery lifetime whilst remaining contactable by remote hosts.
Contact: Steve Hodges or James Scott |
