Virtualized Computational RFID (VCRFID) Solution for Industry 4.0 Applications

This paper presents a Virtualized Computational Radio Frequency Identification (VCRFID) solution that utilizes far-field UHF RF for sensing, computing, and self-powering at the edge. A standard UHF RFID system is asymmetric as it consists of a relatively large, complex “reader”, which acts as an RF transmitter and controller for a number of small simple battery-less “tags”, which work in passive mode as they communicate and harvest RF energy from the reader. Previously proposed Computational RFID (CRFID) solutions enhance the standard RFID tags with microcontrollers and sensors in order to gain enhanced functionality, but they end up requiring a relatively high level of power, and thus ultimately reduced range, which limits their use for many Internet-of-Things (IoT) application scenarios. Our VCRFID solution instead keeps the functionality of the tags minimalistic by only providing a sensor interface to be able to capture desired environmental data (temperature, humidity, vibration, etc.), and then transmit it to the RFID reader, which then performs all the computational load usually carried out by a microcontroller on the tag in prior work. This virtualization of functions enables the design of a circuit without a microcontroller, providing greater flexibility and allowing for wireless reconfiguration of tag functions over RF for a 97% reduction in energy consumption compared to prior energy-harvesting RFID tags with microcontrollers. The target application is Industry 4.0 where our VCRFID solution enables battery-less fine-grain monitoring of vibration and temperature data for pumps and motors for predictive maintenance scenarios.