The Evolution of Chipless RFID

Abstract

[…] Even though the “golden age” of chipless RFID may be in the past, many opportunities still remain for new types of chipless RFID to meet demanding application requirements. New types of low-cost RFID reader designs, signal processing, and artificial intelligence now enables access to new materials signatures; and new types of electro-optical and smart materials now provide new mechanisms for encoding information. While the commercial and academic RFID field seems mired in UHF back-scatter technologies, it is imperative to break out of this thought bubble and continue to explore other frequencies of operation, other types of electromagnetic coupling, other types of representation besides frequency, and other types of materials. Several research groups, including the MIT Auto-ID Lab, have also begun to explore “Hybrid” RFID tags, which combine both chip and chipless components to create new families of RFID labels. The field of chipless RFID has also taught us that chipless signatures exist naturally in many materials and devices in our environment. By designing a “Smart Reader” that can operate at all RF frequencies, as well as optical frequencies, ultrasound, and molecular sensing in the form of olfaction, it is now possible to consider “Smart Reader” appliances that employ detection methods that are not only chipless, but also “tagless,” in order to automatically identify and sense the objects, materials, food, and living things in our environment. The future is only limited by our imagination.