IEEE RFID 2026 has selected a series of Special Sessions focusing on the most pioneering and emerging topics in the field of RFID. If your paper aligns with any of these themes, you are encouraged to submit it to one of the sessions listed below.

Please check the box associated with the Special Session of your interest during the online submission process on EDAS (currently being set up).

List of  Approved Special Session:

Special Session #1: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for High-Consequence Environments

Organizers: Alessandro Cattaneo (Los Alamos National Laboratories, US), Justin Strait (Los Alamos National Laboratories, US), Brendon Parsons (Los Alamos National Laboratories, US)

High-consequence environments encompass those settings where a failure can lead to significant impacts, including harm to people and damage to the environment, as well as failure of a company mission resulting in economic and reputation loss. These environments are typically characterized by a high level of complexity that may arise from multiple factors, including technical challenges associated with the deployment in special environments, the potential for cascading failure modes, long time and severe cost associated with recovery from failure, and security postures that require high scrutiny of the technology ahead of adoption and special maintenance during its use. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has successfully enabled modern inventory management solutions in key industry sectors including retail, logistics, supply chain management, and transportation. Nevertheless, the broad adoption of RFID in high-consequence environments is still lacking. These environments would undeniably benefit from RFID-enabled improved asset visibility, integration with processes for enhanced efficiency and productivity, and reduced risk of human errors. This special session offers researchers the opportunity to share with the broader scientific community any recent advances that enable the use of RFID technology in high-consequence environments and promote its value proposition. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: RFID technology innovations, performance evaluation, data analysis and interpretation, modeling, development of advanced functionalities (e.g., sensing, data transmission and tamper indication), risk assessment, and business-related analysis (i.e., return on investment, A/B testing, continuous process improvement).

 

Special Session #2: Intelligent RFID Systems for Smart Infrastructure and Sustainable Cities

Organizer: Dr. Jinene Ben Said (Higher National Engineering School of Tunis (ENSIT), Tunisia)

This special session focuses on emerging RFID-based solutions that enable smart, sustainable, and connected infrastructures. The session aims to explore how RFID technology integrates with IoT, AI, and edge computing to improve urban mobility, energy efficiency, and environmental monitoring. Topics of interest include RFID-enabled smart transportation, waste management, structural health monitoring, and intelligent logistics. The session seeks to bring together researchers and industry experts to discuss innovative architectures, algorithms, and real-world implementations driving the future of smart cities.

 

Special Session #3: Location-Aware Empowered Systems: Wireless Technologies and New Concepts for Location Sensing, Motion Capture, and Pattern Recognition

Organizers: Andrea Motroni (University of Pisa, Italy), Emanuele Tavanti (University of Pisa, Italy), Jian Zhang (Kennesaw State University, GA, USA), Xiangyu Wang (University of Alabama, AL, USA), Guoyi Xu (University of Rhode Island, RI, USA)

Accurate localization is a key enabler for cyber-physical and location-aware systems, empowering intelligent interaction among humans, robots, and environments. This session aims to explore novelties in wireless-based localization and motion capture using RFID, UWB, BLE, Wi-Fi, radar, and other backscatter technologies. Contributions on indoor propagation modelling, channel sounding, and RF characterization are especially welcome, as well as investigations on hybrid sensor-fusion systems combining wireless technologies with LiDAR, vision, inertial, or acoustic systems. Applications targeted by this session range from robotics and automation to wellness and everyday life, gathering any aspect of the physical and digital worlds where location-awareness is pivotal.

 

Special Session #4: Additively Manufactured Wireless Sensors and RFID TAGS

Organizers: Niels Benson (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), Will Witthow (Loughborough University, UK)

The digital freedom of additive manufacturing as well as its potential for low cost and less waste production ranges from 2D and 2.5D to 3D manufacturing techniques enabling flexible thin film electronics as well as monolithic RFID related 3D devices. This special session concentrates on the latter and is seeking contributions on wireless sensors as well as chip and chipless RFID-Tags which can endure in harsh environments, such as under the influence of high-temperature or oxidative stress with enabled electromagnetic functionality such as localization and sensing capabilities (e.g. temperature, pathogen detection). Here, fundamental as well as applied contributions are welcome dealing with new device concepts and / or material science questions based on ceramics and polymers for application specific property tuning and functionalization.

Special Session #5: Beyond Conventional Backscatter Communications (New Session Title & Description)

Organizers: Gregory Durgin (Georgia Tech, US),  Christopher Saetia (Georgia Tech, US), Simon Hemour (University of Bordeaux), Ambuj Varshney (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

This special session will explore the use of tunnel diodes, reflection amplifiers, and other novel circuits and devices for use in RFID and technologies that move beyond conventional backscatter techniques. Today, numerous applications demand greater communications ranges and throughput, while maintaining low power consumption. Research has focused on shifting away from conventional transistor-based designs to new architectures involving novel semiconductor devices that can better meet these demands along with other needs, such as efficient energy harvesting, signal generation, etc. The papers in this session will cover innovations in this space that make use of such novel semiconductor devices, including reflection amplifiers, injection-locked oscillators, enhanced RF energy harvester designs, transmitters that operate without any external carrier, and more!

Special Session #6: RFID enabled sensors: From Integrated circuit (IC) design to system implementation

Organizers: Roc Berenguer (University of Navarra), Beriain, Andoni (Kliskatek S.L and Univ. of Navarra)

The past few years have seen an increased use of fully passive or energy harvested assisted RFID enabled sensors, for wireless sensor networks, allowing them to be powered without wires and without the need to change batteries. The proposed special session goes one step further presenting the state-of-the-art advances at different levels. First at the integrated circuit design, showing latest advances that allow increased communication range and multi-sensing properties controlled by just single RFID IC. Second at the power source level, presenting new energy harvesting sources suitable for operation of semi passives RFID. And last, the implementation advances in new RFID sensing applications. Finally, mention that in the proposed special session the expected contributions comprise a variety of multidisciplinary expertise in the field of RFID technology, such electromagnetic theory and physics together with integrated circuit (IC) design and communication technology required for the optimization and implementation of the next generation of RFID enabled wireless sensor nodes.

Special Session #7: AI-Powered RFID and IoT Systems for Edge Intelligence and the Internet of Bodies

Organizers: Salvatore Tedesco (Tyndall National Institute, Ireland), Ismail Uysal (University of South Florida, FL, US), Qamer H. Abbasi (University of Glasgow, UK), Andrea Motroni (University of Pisa, Italy)

The rapid convergence of AI, RFID, and IoT technologies is reshaping how intelligent systems sense, communicate, and act at the network edge. This special session explores the emerging landscape of AI-powered RFID and IoT architectures enabling real-time intelligence in industrial, biomedical, and body-centric applications—collectively forming the Internet of Bodies (IoB). Topics of interest include ML-driven signal interpretation, RF propagation modeling and optimization, edge-AI inference for low-power embedded systems, secure and privacy-preserving RFID/IoT communications, and intelligent multi-sensor fusion for human-centric monitoring. The session will also address hardware–software co-design challenges, such as lightweight neural networks deployable on resource-constrained tags and readers, and the role of on-device learning for adaptive, resilient edge intelligence. By bringing together experts from academia and industry, this session aims to highlight practical innovations and research challenges that will drive the next generation of autonomous, interconnected, and human-aware RFID/IoT systems, with transformative impact across healthcare, manufacturing, and smart environments.

Special Session #8: Wide-Spectrum and Digital-Twin-Enabled RFID Sensing: From Chirp-Modulated Backscatter to Cyber-Physical Intelligence

Organizers: Shiva Nageswaran (Auburn University, US), Xiangyu Wang (University of Alabama, AL, USA), Jian Zhang (Kennesaw State University, GA, USA)

The next generation of RFID technologies is rapidly evolving beyond traditional identification towards pervasive sensing and cyber-physical intelligence. This special session brings together leading researchers exploring wide-spectrum RFID architectures, chirp-modulated backscatter communications, and digital-twin-driven sensing intelligence. By uniting advances across spectrum, signal design, and system intelligence, the session highlights how RFID can evolve into a foundational technology for Industry 5.0 and smart infrastructure. Recent innovations in wideband and chirp-based are redefining the limits of range, robustness, and sensing fidelity—unlocking new applications from drone-assisted inventory to infrastructure health monitoring. Meanwhile, multi-band RFID sensing, spanning UHF to millimeter-wave frequencies, opens opportunities for richer environmental perception and hybrid localization. On the system level, digital-twin frameworks now offer real-time virtual representations of RFID networks, fusing physics-based models with data-driven analytics to achieve predictive maintenance, intelligent logistics, and adaptive learning. As these capabilities converge, RFID is positioned to become a cornerstone of Industry 5.0 and smart infrastructure. This session will feature invited and contributed papers exploring emerging methods, architectures, and applications that integrate these three fronts – spectrum diversity, advanced modulation, and digital-twin intelligence. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• • • Chirp-modulated and nonlinear backscatter coding schemes
    • Cross-band and wide-spectrum RFID sensor networks
    • Multi-modal fusion of RFID with mmWave, BLE, or vision sensors
    • Digital-twin modeling for RFID-based cyber-physical systems
    • AI-assisted calibration, prediction, and uncertainty estimation in RFID sensing
    • Energy-harvesting and self-powered RFID sensor nodes
    • Interoperability, standardization, and real-world testbed demonstrations

Collectively, the session aims to define a roadmap for next generation RFID – systems that are spectrally agile, semantically aware, and deeply integrated with digital twins, paving the way for resilient and intelligent identification and sensing.