RFID Sensor Networks

Joshua R. Smith
Associate Professor
Computer Science & Engineering and
Electrical Engineering
University of Washington

FISC 2030
March 22, 2012

RFID Sensor Networks

Joshua R. Smith
Associate Professor
Computer Science & Engineering and
Electrical Engineering
University of Washington

FISC 2030
March 22, 2012

WISP 3 axis x 10 bit accelerometer

WISP: Wireless Identification
and Sensing Platform

First UHF RFID w/

accelerometer

RFID Sensor Networks with the Intel WISP Winner Best Demo, Sensys 08
M. Buettner, B. Greenstein, R. Prasad, A. Sample, J.R. Smith, D. Yeager, D. Wetherall.
WISP: A Passively Powered UHF RFID Tag with Sensing and Computation, D.J. Yeager, A.P.
Sample, J.R. Smith, in S.A. Ahson, M. Ilyas Eds. RFID Handbook: Applications, Technology,
Security, and Privacy, CRC Press.

WISP & UHF RFID

UHF RFID: Much longer range than earlier generations of RFID (up to 30 feet)
Uplink communication by backscatter (reflection)very low power
Backscatter energy efficiency improves with Moores law, unlike conventional radio!!
WISP has no batterypowered by reader device
WISP: Programmable, software defined, sensor-extensible RFID tag

Tag

RFID reader
ant

Power & data (downlink)

Data (uplink)

Tag

WARP Ambient RF Harvesting

WARP: Wireless Ambient Radio Power

Harvests from environmental RF sources

Television band
GSM band
Onboard sensing and computation

Rectified
voltage

Light level

Low-power radio uplink

8pm
9/8/10

8am

8pm
9/9/10

8am

4pm

Wireless Ambient Radio Power, A.P. Sample, A.N. Parks, S. Southwood, J.R. Smith in
Wirelessly Powered Sensor Networks and Computational RFID, Springer, 2012

1 MW TV transmitter 4.2 km distance

WARP Ambient RF Harvesting

Battery-free environmental sensing

Weather statistics
Toxic gas monitoring (e.g., CO)

Next Steps
Extended range radio
Optimized harvesting and storage
GSM Harvesting

Printed Low Power Amperometric Gas Sensors Employing RF Energy Harvesting

M. Carter, J. Stetter, J. Smith, A. Parks, Y. Zhao, M. Findlay, V. Patel, Proceedings
221st ElectroChemical Society Meeting, May 2012

Key enabling trend

Range scaling of far field WPT

Friis(Moore(t))
wireless power range scales exponentially (!)
but with exponent that is of EPI (IPuJ) scaling
10000000

10000000

Microprocessor Efficiency
Friis Distance (Power Limited)
Exponential Fit
Exponential Fit

1000000

100000

100000

Instructions per uJoule

10000

c2

1000

100

10000

0.46 t

1000

100

10

d2

10

0.23t

0.1

0.01
1970

0.1

0.01
1975

1980

1985

1990

1995
Year

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Range at which 6 K IPS workload can

be wirelessly powered (Meters)

1000000

While Inst/J is continuing to

scale, voltage scaling is
ending. Thus techniques to
efficiently harvest at low
voltage are desirable.

Inst/J
doubling time
2 years

Possible outcome if
voltage scaling limits
cannot be compensated
for

Range
doubling time
4 years

from Mapping the space of wirelessly powered systems

in Wirelessly Powered Sensor Networks and Computational RFID
Joshua R. Smith Ed., Springer 2012

What does this scaling trend mean?

Capabilities that barely work today will become robust in the future
Low end devices like RFID tags will get increasing compute
functionality, e.g. full-programmability
It will become possible to RF-power devices that seem too power-hungry
today, e.g.
microphones
cameras
Research effort is needed to overcome the voltage scaling challenge
Bad news: the further away we are, the lower the voltage
Good news: voltage is not a conserved quantitycan be boosted!

Hybrid analog / digital backscatter sensing

The original Great Seal bug aka The Thing

Our idea:
A digitally addressable passive backscatter mic
that will be read by a SW Defined RFID reader
Combine benefits of analog (low power sensing)
with digital (addressability, channel sharing, error correction, )

WISP

Amazing that RFID reader can collect sound from a totally passive microphone!
Theremin has come full circle.

Analog backscatter using SW Defined RFID Readers | Talla, Buettner, Wetherall, Smith
IEEE RFID 2012

Digital / analog backscatter traces

1 foot

Message exchanges between Reader and WISP

5 feet

Default mode: Digital mode

EPC Gen2 inventory followed by analog backscatter mode (1 second long)
After 1 second in analog mode, switch to digital mode

10

4/11/2012

WREL Wireless power

Analysis, Experimental Results,

and Range Adaptation of
Magnetically Coupled Resonators
for Wireless Power Transfer,
A.P. Sample, D.T. Meyer, J.R.
Smith, IEEE Transactions on
Industrial Electronics, Feb.
2011, vol.58, no.2, pp.544-554
Powering a Ventricular Assist
Device (VAD) with the FreeRange Resonant Electrical
Energy Delivery (FREE-D)
System, Benjamin H. Waters,
Alanson P. Sample, Pramod
Bonde, Joshua R. Smith,
Proceedings of the IEEE ,
vol.100, no.1, pp.138-49,
January 2012.

Future work:

Extreme wirelessly powered sensor systems

Fully implantable, fully wireless, perpetual

Heart pumps
Neural implants

Wirelessly powered telephones / listening devices

RF-powered & read camera
SMS-powered SMS messaging

Acknowledgement

Intel Science & Technology Center for Pervasive Computing

5 year center funded by Intel

NSF EEC 1028725 NSF Engineering

Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural
Engineering

http://istc-pc.washington.edu

Faculty Research Award

ECCS-0824265, "Realizing the internet

of things with RFID sensor networks"