The successful research project establishes a solution to enhance range and reliability of passive RFID badges.
ABTS Convention Services (ABTS), a global meetings and convention services company with 19 years of experience, is researching the feasibility of powering RFID conference badges using environmental sources of energy rather than costly, environmentally unfriendly batteries.
A significant problem with conventional passive RFID is that it requires relatively strong RF signal strength from a nearby reader device to power the tag’s chip and the subsequent transmission back to the reader. This limits range and reliability of the tag.
Providing onboard power to the tag gets around some of these limitations making it better suited for applications such as lead retrieval and attendance tracking. The project’s design accomplishes this by combining multiple energy sources: solar (for indoor lighting), electromagnetic (kinetic or movement) and piezoelectric generators to provide additional power to the tag.
This research has provided valuable knowledge of what is required to power a passive RFID tag without batteries. It is hoped that this research will contribute to the development of smart-badge technology for lead retrieval and attendance tracking in the meetings and event industry.
The year-long project was a joint venture between ABTS, NiPS Laboratory, University of Perugia (Italy), WisePower Srl, a spin-off company of the University of Perugia, dedicated to the designing and prototyping of a new class of energy generators for mobile devices, and Heading Srl, a leader in workforce training for the electric power sector on behalf of Enel and Terna. All inquiries should be directed to Adam Graham, executive vice-president of information technology at ABTS Convention Services at agraham@abtscs.com.
