Integration of RFID into Wireless Sensor Networks: Architectures,

Opportunities and Challenging Problems

Lei Zhang and Zhi Wang

National Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Institute of Industry Process Control,

Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P.R.China
{zhanglei, wangzhi}@iipc.zju.edu.cn
Abstract
The vision of pervasive computing is based on the
idea that future computers will merge with their
environment. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) are two important
components of pervasive computing, since both
technologies can be used for coupling the physical and
the virtual world. However, RFID and WSN almost are
under development in parallel method, few integration
schemes and related opportunities are investigated in
detail. Through deep analysis of RFID and WSN, three
forms of new system architecture that combines the two
technologies are proposed and its feasibility, technical
challenges are discussed thoroughly.

1. Introduction
It is widely believed that the next revolution in
computing technology will be that the widespread
small wireless computing and communication devices
will integrate seamlessly into daily life [1]. We can
therefore expect in the near future lots of devices to
grow by multiple orders of magnitude such as tags,
sensors etc. They gather information about the current
environment, which means sensing and processing
information.
Among technologies, RFID and WSN are two
important components of this pervasive computing
since both as technology can be used for coupling the
physical and the virtual world in pervasive computing
environments.
It is possible for RFID to bridge the real and the
virtual world, which results in a machine readable
environment when tags are used at a large scale. RFID
systems have been applied in a number of applications,
such as asset tracking, telemetry-based remote
monitoring, and real time supply chain management.
Meanwhile WSN has been around mostly only as
proofs of concept except for military applications [2],
although it is considered as a major step towards
pervasive computing. Considering RFID as a specific

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kind of sensor, it certainly can be integrated to WSNs.

However, RFID and WSN are almost under
development in parallel method, few integration
schemes and its related opportunities are investigated
in detail.
In an effort to bridge the gap between industry and
academic focuses, we propose new network
architectures integrating both technologies to achieve
an optimal goal. Through deep analysis of RFID and
WSN, three forms of new system architecture are
proposed. WSN nodes and RFID tags are mixed
composing of heterogeneous network where tags and
sensor nodes work separately. A more functional smart
base station combining RFID readers and WSN base
stations is needed to coordinate tags and sensor nodes
working properly. Smart base stations will be a
decisive factor to the whole system, of which the
infrastructure is very complicated and costly. There is a
trade-off between the complexity of the infrastructure
and the device. The infrastructure can be simpler if
complexity is moved to the devices. We then propose a
distributed reduced functional sensor reader, which
organize themselves and cooperate with each other in
networks. The second integration increases the number
of readers in networks and reduces the complexity of
each reader. A smart active tag network architecture is
also proposed in the paper. Instead of sending message
to readers directly, message is transmitted between tags
until it reaches the ultimate object. Sensed information
is transmitted utilizing the network protocol of WSNs.
Selection of the form of integration is usually be costbased and depends on the application.
A nodes battery is not replaceable, so its energy is
the most important system resource. While an RFID
system where data is collected at one or several
centralized points is not energy-efficient [3]. Energy
efficiency has been a crucial problem when combining
RFID and WSNs. The best method for conserving
energy is to put as many nodes to sleep as possible. At
the same time, however, the network must maintain its
functionality through a connected subnetwork that lets
the monitoring station communicate with any of the

networks active nodes. Therefore ZigBee protocol is

likely the best candidate as it satisfies reliable, low cost,
low power consumption requirements. A theoretical
calculation how long the expected battery life time
lasts is also given in this paper.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 gives a brief introduction to WSN, RFID and
ZigBee. Heterogeneous network architecture mixed
RFID reader and sensor base station is proposed in
Section 3. Section 4 describes distributed reduced
sensor reader architecture and its network, Section 5
describes smart active tag network. Comparison of
three schemes and conclusion are given in section 6.

2. Technical Backgrounds
2.1. Wireless Sensor Networks
A wireless sensor network is a system which is
capable of self-configuring, self-networking, selfdiagnosing and self-healing, which have made sensor
networks a very attractive solution for a wide range of
environmental monitoring, distributed surveillance,
healthcare and control applications [1].

Fig. 1. Wireless sensor network

Sensor networks consist of tiny low-powered

computing network nodes with extremely restricted
computational, communication and battery capabilities.
The typical hardware platform of a wireless sensor
node will consist of sensor, microcontroller, and radio
frequency transceiver and power source. Each node is
equipped with a physical sensor for reading light,
temperature, sound, pressure or other physical
phenomena. The microcontroller manages the
procedures that make the sensor node collaborate with
the other nodes. When choosing a microcontroller
power consumption, required chip size, computational
power and on-chip memory are very important. A
transceiver unit connects the node to the network.
Choosing a low-power-consumption transceiver is
crucial for a low-consumption system because current
consumption of a transceiver takes up most of the

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power consumption of a system. Transceivers currently

used include the Infineon [6] or Chipcon [7] devices or
similar radio modems are available from various
manufacturers. Last important component of a sensor
node is power source. Battery management is an
important issue in WSNs since battery is irreplaceable.

Fig. 2. Functional diagram of a sensor node

The sensor nodes usually send their data to a

specific sink node or monitoring station for collection.
If all the nodes communicated directly with the
monitoring station, the communication load
especially over long distanceswould quickly drain
the networks power resources. Therefore, the sensors
operate in a self-organized, decentralized manner that
maintains the best connectivity as long as possible and
communicates messages via multihop spreading [5].

2.2. Radio Frequency Identification

RFID is a method of remotely storing and retrieving
data using devices called RFID tags/transponders. [3]
RFID first appeared in tracking and access applications
during the 1980s. These wireless systems allow for
non-contact reading and are effective in manufacturing
and other hostile environments where bar code labels
could not survive [9]. As a cheap and mature
technology, established for more than twenty years, it
enables location- and context-aware applications.
An RFID system includes five components [15]: (1)
tags located on the object to be identified, (2) readers
which may be a read or write/read device, (3) antennas
that emit radio signals to activate the tag and read/write
data to it, (4) a local control chamber sending
reading/writing commands to all the readers as well as
reading back tag information. Besides, a new
component added to some systems is called signpost.
Signposts activate only those tags within their
immediate vicinity at 123 kHz, enabling precise
identification of tagged items at specific locations.
A tag is a mini little label conserving fixed-format
data, which includes antenna and wireless
communication IC as big as sesame. Attached into
tagged items, RFID tags are particular identifiers
announcing its presence to a reader.
The RFID reader consists of transmitting and
receiving sections. It transmits a carrier signal, receives
the backscattered signal from the tag, and performs

data processing. All details of communication such as

establishing communication, collision prevention, and
authentication, are all dealt with by the reader itself.
The reader also communicates with an external host
computer. A basic block diagram of a typical RFID tag
and reader is shown in Figure3.

Fig. 3(a). Functional block diagram of typical RFID

tag

Fig. 4 (b). Functional block diagram of typical RFID

reader
RFID systems work strictly according to masterslave principle. All the behavior of readers and tags
are controlled by application program. System program
as master will send write/read instructions to readers,
while readers as slavers only response to the
commands from application program. To execute the
instruction from application program, readers will
establish communication with corresponding tags.
Compared with readers are masters, tags only response
the instructions from readers, and will never act
anything without readers instruction.

Fig. 4. RFID operation principle

An active RFID system particularly for long
distance identification requires readers installed in a
fixed position, but also has some special requirements
about the direction of antennas, therefore, flexibility of
system is limited greatly, and the cost of entire system
is no longer cheap.

2.3. ZigBee Protocol

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As in this heading, they should be Times 11-point

boldface, initially capitalized, flush left, with one blank
line before, and one after. 802.15.4/ZigBee is a new
rising short-haul low-rate technical resolution for
automatic system and remote control. IEEE 802.15.4
defines Physical Layer and MAC Layer (including
encryption mechanism in data transmission). ZigBee
Alliance takes charge in correlated standards and
interoperability testing from Network Layer to
Application Layer. Complete descriptions of the
protocols used in ZigBee can be found in [11], [12].
ZigBee protocol is considered as the best
configuration scheme for WSN applications in industry
application field, as it satisfies reliable, low cost, low
power
consumption
requirements
for
these
applications. ZigBee has some characters as follows,
which is extremely fit for WSNs where the range
needing to coverage and the number of devices in the
network are very large.
z The flash memory requirement for a ZigBee
device ranges from 4 to 32 KB depending on the
devices complexity, the required stack features,
and whether or not its a reduced function device
(RFD) or full function device (FFD). This is
about a quarter of Bluetooths requirements.
z ZigBee is so low powered that a typical batterypowered node can wake up, check in, send data,
and shut down in less than 30 ms. This leads to an
extremely long battery life. For devices with a 30s
check-in period or more, the batterys shelf life
will expire before the battery capacity runs If a
node is configured for use with a beacon frame
and a guaranteed time slot.
z Reliability of the whole network is guaranteed by
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), a
sophisticated MAC layer supporting CSMA-CA,
optional acknowledgement, AES 128-bit security,
clear channel assessment, link quality indication,
and mesh network architecture, all of which have
been demonstrated highly reliable in previous
IEEE standards by practice.
z Low cost. A ZigBee device includes a ZigBee IC
that solids all of functions of PHY layer and
MAC layer, which hook up to a low power
consumption 8-bit MCU. The cost of a naked
ZigBee IC plus the necessary discrete beats other
options on physical size and cost.
However, ZigBee has no comparability when it
comes to data rate because it isnt designed for a high
data duty cycle from each node. ZigBee is much less
mature than proprietary spread-spectrum solutions.
ZigBee might be a better option if you require the
following: small size, cost sensitivity, low latency, low
power, and interoperability.

3. Integration of RFID Reader and WSN

Base Station
One trend of the development of RFID is
integrating it into network. RFID network is very
mature now such as Real time locating System (RTLS),
which implies us to integrating sensor nodes into RFID
to get more environment information we need.
A mix of tags and sensor nodes are deployed in
detected area. Smart stations gather information from
tags and sensor nodes then transmit it to local host PC
or remote LAN. Here RFID and WSN information can
be integrated in the base station, which will be more
intelligent. For example, WSN data triggers RFID
reader for certain unusual event.
The new system will be composed of three classes
of devices. The first class is that of wireless devices
with no serious power constraints named as smart
stations. The device will contain an RFID reader, a 32bit microprocessor for local data processing and a
network connection. They are nearly identified with
the wired devices but use wireless connections to the
backbone network for more convenient deployment.
The second and the third class are normal tags and
sensor nodes.

4. Distributed Smart Node

As no network stack is embedded into the reader
in a RFID system at present, the reader can only be
operated passively and all of its behaviors are
controlled by local control system. Its very big volume
also makes it difficult to move around. Moreover, the
position of antennas of an RFID reader must be
computed carefully to cover all the tags in range and
not to conflict with other antennas or readers. All of
these disadvantages limit the applications of RFID. If
functions of a reader are cut short, an RFID reader
might get much smaller, less expensive and easy to
deploy. We propose a new smart node containing less
functional reader. For now there seems to be no
counterpart in RFID systems for this device.

4.1. Smart node

The smart node contains three parts: sensing part
which makes use of kinds of sensors to detect
interested physical scenario, reading part which reads
fewer tags comparing with a normal RFID reader, and
radio transceiver which transporting sensed data. We
give the schematic picture of smart nodes as Fig 6.

Fig.6. Schematic of smart node platform

Fig. 5. Heterogeneous network architecture

Limited resources and power challenges at smart

stations dont exist here, which suggests the traditional
Internet protocol architecture can be employed. This
means that there is a multi-layer networking stack
implemented in each smart station, that allows not only
for some processing, but also for the routing of data
and eventually even for reliable transport protocols
such as TCP.
802.11b/Wi-Fi technology is a good platform for
such heterogeneous network. In Physical layer,
802.11b/Wi-Fi uses the unlicensed 2.4 GHZ band and
DSSS technique, and maximum data rate can reach to
11 Mbps. In MAC sub-layer, 802.11b/Wi-Fi uses
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision
Avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme, which can improve
the efficiency of network remarkably.

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Smart nodes read fewer tags and can be deployed

densely as self-organizing WSN. Smart nodes run
autonomously and translate data information to the
sink node. The gathered information is transmitted
through multi-hops. As information of tags in the same
area is similar, it can be compressed with simple and
high effective data compressing methods in each smart
node. Consequently, flexible communication protocol
is necessary. Presently, ZigBee protocol is the best
candidate for the proposed architecture for its features
we describe in technical ground. ZigBee take much
method to lower power consumption in physical lay
and MAC layer. In the following we will make a
theoretical calculation how long the expected battery
lifetime would lasts. Energy constrains is an extremely
crucial problem when smart nodes are wanted to be
applied in industry for battery change is not taken into
account.

has a very high current consumption. Each transmitted

byte is followed by a stop bit which implies that each
Byte corresponds to 9 bits. The time it takes to send the
information is therefore given by
60(8 + 1) bits
38.4 kbit/s

Fig. 7. Architecture of networked smart nodes

(reduced functional sensor readers)

4.2. Energy calculation

[13] Proposes a prototype on RFID and Sensor
Networks similar to ours, however, it didnt take into
account the power consuming. We consume here
Mica2 [17] for controller platform and TAGSYS
Medio S002 [14] for reader part, and utilize their
parameters to calculate the battery life.
Medio S002 supports a maximum data rate of 38.4
kbit/s. The supply voltage U is 4 to 6 V and the output
power is 250 mw [14]. Here we suppose supply
voltage is 6 V and data rate is 38.4 kbit/s. Of course the
lifetime is depending on which types of batteries used.
The high quality AA batteries have a capacity about
2200 mAh. If the reader works continuously, the
battery lifetime will only be
2200 mAh*6V
250mw

= 52.8h

(1)

So its necessary to take every method to save

energy. The expected battery life shall be a year or
more, which puts hard constrains on the power
consumption of smart nodes. To meet this requirement,
the smart node has to go into sleep mode when it is idle.
Medio S002 has a current consumption of 500 A
when it is put in shutdown mode. The batteries will last
shorter than six months while the RFID reader is put in
shutdown mode. However it is lucky we can turn off
the power of the RFID reader completely when the
RFID reader is not used and thereby clear up the power
consumption. From now on we assume that the RFID
reader does not have any power consumption when it
is not used.
To be able to estimate the energy consumption of
the RFID reader when it is operational we make some
more assumptions. First we assume that when the
reader is reading there will be one tag within range.
From this it is able to estimate that the amount of data
that is sent between the reader and the microcontroller
is about 60 Bytes per read instruction. This figure is
important because during this transmission the reader

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= 14.06 ms

(2)

Further the time it takes for the reader to respond to

a command given is approximately 1 ms. In total 5
commands are sent to the reader when one tag is within
range resulting in the total respond time equals 5 ms.
Finally the time it takes to wake up the reader from
shutdown mode is 10 ms, and during this time the RF
field is not on resulting in a lower current consumption.
The current consumption of the reader equals 115 mA
while the RF field is on, and the consumption is 18 mA
when the RF field is off. If we assume that the reader is
instructed to read one tag every minute The average
current during a minute is
(14.06 ms + 5 ms )*115 mA+ 10 ms * 18mA
60 * 1000 ms

= 0.03953mA (3)

Current consumptions of the MICA2 platform in

full operation and in sleep mode are given in [17]. If
the microcontroller works with a duty-cycle of 1%, the
average current of microcontroller is 0.016mA and of
the transceiver is 0.092mA. A 1% duty-cycle would be
realistic to use with the ZigBee protocol, tough the
latency would be very long. The life time of the battery
can be calculated as
2200 mAh
0.03953 mA + 0.092mA+0.016mA

= 14912h=1.7 year (4 )

4.3. Case of application

Highly integrated and inexpensive smart nodes
network is much cheaper and more flexible compared
with the first class of heterogeneous network. It can be
applied into applications without strict real-time
requirement. It will find a wide application in industry,
such as maintenance and inventory security.
As Fig 8 show, smart nodes with temperature sensors
are deployed densely in the smart warehouse. Proper
deployment algorithms shall be used to adopt as few as
nodes to make all the tags in the range of readers. The
maintenance of inventory can be identified by a smart
node tracking system. An alarm could be triggered
when an asset leaves a facility without authorization.
And we may be able to learn that the temperature of
someplace in the warehouse is much higher than
usually and put out fire immediately before it comes
out of control.

802.15.4 standard provides symmetric key encryption

and authentication to support end-to-end system
security.

5.1. Case of application

Fig.8. Smart warehouse

Mini node network is specially fit for industrial

security, remote condition-based maintenance systems
that are switched on just once or twice per day.
Complicated and expensive readers are no longer
needed; instead, these mini nodes provide an
inexpensive way to monitor the condition of products.

5. Smart Sensor Tags

Many active and semi-active tags have incorporated
sensors into their design. Related studies can be found
in [13]. The active tag is similar to the Mica mote [17].
But they are not exactly sensor network nodes because
they communicate in centralized mode and cant
cooperate with each other through formed ad-hoc
network. Giving them microcontrollers, they will
decide by themselves which and when data should be
get. Therefore it is absolutely possible to substitute
Mica nodes for active tags when the Mica nodes
become much cheaper in the future. We call Mica
nodes used in potential RFID applications as Mini
nodes.
The mini nodes can pass information from one to
another until the data reaches the last transceiver,
which communicates with a single reader. It effectively
reduces the reader and wired network infrastructure.
The network architecture of a complete system
solution is shown as Fig.9.

Fig. 9. Mini node network architecture (Smart active

tags)

As the cost of devices is very low and data flow in

the network is little, IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee standard is
perfectly applicable to mini node network. ZigBee can
help dumb tag chips which have a low transmission
area get smarter for the features mentioned above.
Though integrating the mini nodes into a complete
system poses many difficulties with end-to-end
security guaranties as they are based on highly
application-specific software. Its lucky the IEEE

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Fig. 10. Fork lift operation dispatching in a factory

Fig 10 shows a fork lift operation dispatching in a

factory. Rotating parts of dynamos are making in a
production plant of a dynamos factory. After a rotating
part is finished it needs to be taken away by a fork lift
quickly. In most factories operator has to stop work in
hand and search in the large plant to find the fork lift
truck. The whole process sometimes requires more
than half an hour, which is a great waste of time. In the
future each finished rotating part of dynamos is
attached with a mini node and the fork lift is equipped
with a reader receiving information from mine nodes.
When a rotating part is finished the tag can transmit its
location between tags until its location information
gets to the fork lift. Then the fork lift can go to move
the rotating part automatically.
We completed this experiment in our lab making
use of Mica2 motes. The area of our lab is 11m * 9m.
Robot carrying a Mica mote can get the information of
every node in the room by 2 or 3 hops. The results of
experiment are acceptable, however, it has much more
work to do if we want to use it in real factory
environment.

6. Conclusions

Here in this paper we propose three different forms of

network architecture, which have consequent features
as different functional nodes integrated RFID tags or
readers with sensor nodes.
In the first class of integration form smart stations
mixed RFID readers and WSN base stations are a
decisive factor to the whole system. Base stations are
complicated and costly and its very big volume also
makes it difficult to move around. If there is something
wrong with a smart station the whole system will break
up and therefore reliability of the system is decreased.
Compared with smart stations, the last two classes of
integrations provide a new management much cheaper
and more flexible. It will be an efficiency solution
when real-time requirement is not strict and the
transmitting data is not very large. On the other hand,
when the number of transmitting data is very large or
real-time work needs to completed, mixed RFID reader
and WSN base station deployment will be very
effective, further energy limits need not to be worried.
Which form of integration shall be selected is
usually cost-based and will be dependent upon the
application. If the system is monitoring many objects
over a limited range, one might choose to have
heterogeneous network mixed WSN nodes and RFID
tags for a higher real-time requirement or mini node
network for fewer objects. On the other hand, if the
system is monitoring objects over a wide range, one
might choose distributed reduced functional sensor
reader network for no such real-time requirement.

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