Design of a Reconfigurable RFID Sensing Tag as a Generic Sensing Platform Toward the Future Internet of Things

This paper introduces a semipassive, reconfigurable UHF RF identification (RFID) sensing tag operating as the generic sensing platform (GSP) and the sensing nodes of the future Internet of Things (IoT). For generic real-time data acquisition, this new platform offers multiple inexpensive, plug-and-play sensing channels for the appended physical sensors. This new tag can be dynamically reconfigured to operate as a continuous data transmitting/receiving platform (online mode) or a data logging device (offline mode). In the offline mode, for accommodating and managing the high volume of data acquired by the tag sensors, a novel memory management scheme is designed and implemented. Furthermore, the platform employs an innovative data communication strategy that is compatible with the current electronic product code (EPC) Gen-2 communications protocols to facilitate the sensing data communications and other information exchange between the sensing node and the routing tier of IoT. Finally, the designed tag has been successfully deployed and tested in an experimental IoT setup for its performance evaluation as a GSP.