Pulsing the Passive RF Identification Technology

Despite its first applications in the 1940s and 1950s, RF identification (RFID) technology only really developed starting in the early 2000s with the development of the international Electronic Product Code standard. As its name indicates, the original function of RFID was the identification of objects, animals, and people via a tag that contains a unique identifier. However, RFID is now being given new capabilities, such as integrated sensors or actuators, additional memory, and better security, which implies that its potential fields of application will keep growing, especially with the rise of the Internet of Things. In its passive version, which is the original RFID, the tag is a passive electronic component, mainly composed of an antenna and an integrated circuit (called an RFID chip), that is remotely powered and that emits its identifier using the principle of modulated backscattered communication. The remote powering and backscattering require a reader in the vicinity of the tag that acts as both a radio transmitter and a receiver and as an external RF power source.