View article

Taking advantage of the sensor interface capabilities of a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, the integration of different types of sensors on printed ultrahigh frequency (UHF) RFID tags is investigated. The design, development, and testing of printed smart sensing tags compatible with the RFID standard electronic product code Gen 2 is presented. Two different strategies are employed to interface the sensors: 1) passive single-chip and 2) semipassive architectures. Both strategies provide sensor data by directly answering to the RFID reader inquiries or using a data logging mechanism to store the sensor data in the RFID chip memory. Temperature readout is measured using the embedded sensor in the RFID chip. Additionally, a light sensor and pressure sensor interfaced to a microcontroller are implemented in the passive and semipassive tags versions, respectively. For the employed RFID chip, two …