Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on RFID-Technology and Applications, Guangzhou, China, 17 - 19 June 2010

A Low Power-Long Range Active RFID-system Consisting of

Active RFID Backscatter Transponders
Emil Nilsson, Björn Nilsson, Lars Bengtsson, Bertil Svensson, Per-Arne Wiberg, Urban Bilstrup

Abstract In this paper we present a novel active radio synchronizing, and need for a more complex transceiver. Our
frequency identification system consisting of transponders with wake-up radio features high sensitivity, yielding a reading
low complexity, low power consumption, and long system range of 50 meters, and a low complexity transceiver. The
circuit integration area indicate that the production cost is
wake-up radio, also working as a transceiver, consists of a
comparable to the one of a passive tag. The hardware keystone single LC-oscillator operated in the subthreshold region and
is -up transceiver, which is a single thus exhibiting very low power consumption. This work
oscillator with very low power consumption. The shows a novel design of an RFID system based on tags using
communication protocol, based on frequency signalling binary a small, low cost, mixed signal, mass produced ASIC. Such a
tree, contributes to the low complexity of the tag architecture. low cost active-RFID tag could compete with passive-RFID
More than 1500 tags can be read per second. The average
transponder ID read-out delay is 319 ms when there are 1000
tags in terms of price (typically a few cents). The same tag
transponders within reach of the interrogator. The calculated topology may also be used in a passive RFID system. A
expected life time for a transponder is estimated to be almost combined active/passive RFID system could thus be designed
three years. which utilizes readers with the capability of reading both
active and passive tags. Using passive tags in some scenarios
I. INTRODUCTION gives the added functionality of limiting the reading range to
what is typical for passive RFID. An application where such
T HE emerging need for long range identifying systems
indeed points out that the diversity in RFID technology
need to be in focus. An interesting application for RFID is
tags may be of interest is in tagging medicine in order to
counteract any attempts to use fake drugs in the medical field.
theft protection in stores and warehouses. There exist Reports from the European Union state that counterfeit goods
solutions, such as EAS transponders in combination with hard increased by 13% in 2008 with a 50% increase in fake
shells or Spider wraps. However, these solutions are believed medicines [8].
to be too expensive, ineffective, and even having impact on This paper is organized as follows; II) Short description of
sales. A global survey shows that shoplifting was seen as the the hardware technology used in the transponder. III)
major problem that retailers faced 2009, accounting for Description of the communication protocol. IV) Description
42.5% of shrinkage, that is equivalent to $48.9 billion [1]. of the RFID reader. V) Performance of the system. VI)
One drawback when using the Active RFID (A-RFID) Conclusion. VII) Future work.
techniques is that the transponder (tag) needs to be
synchronized to the RFID-reader or listen continuously or II. DESCRIPTION OF THE TRANSPONDER
periodically for the reader in order to know when it should
A. Principle of operation
deliver its identification number (ID). The active transponder
needs an energy source of its own for this purpose. The active An LC-oscillator, see Fig. 1, is used in the tags as a wakeup
tag battery life time is then affected by how the radio. The oscillator is designed to consume low power by
synchronization is done. In this paper we describe a novel operating in weak inversion region (subthreshold). The
RFID system built on a frequency binary tree search protocol. oscillator is biased near oscillation and a radio signal received
The tag is using a wake-up radio technology, developed by by the antenna pushes the bias point into a region where stable
Nilsson et al. [2], featuring very low power consumption oscillation is obtained. Fig. 2 illustrates how the RF-signal
when in sleep mode. Various solutions for wakeup adios have -up
been published [3][4][5][6][7]. They suffer from difficulties radio receiver, resulting in a signal being transmitted back
like low receiving sensitivity resulting in short reading range, (backscattered) to the reader on the same frequency. The
awakening due to false signaling, need of cyclic timing, TR, TT and Td, can be seen in Fig. 2. Idle state listed
in Table I is when the oscillator is near oscillation and active
state is when it is oscillating and transmitting.
Manuscript received February 19, 2010. This work was supported in part There are two intended states of operation for the receiver,
by The Crafoord Foundation and the Swedish Savings Bank Foundation.
E. Nilsson, B. Nilsson, B. Svensson, U. Bilstrup, and P-A. Wiberg are an idle state, where the receiver is armed and waiting for an
with CERES at Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden, and the company input signal, and an active state, in which it has received an
LeptonRadio AB, Halmstad, SWEDEN. (+46 35-167744; fax: input signal and therefore is oscillating. The idle state
+46 35-120348; e-mail: [Link]@[Link]).
L. Bengtsson is with CERES and the department of Computer Science and
corresponds to a bias point with lower gain, and the active
Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden. state corresponds to a bias point with higher gain. The
978-1-4244-6700-6/10/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

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 Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on RFID-Technology and Applications, Guangzhou, China, 17 - 19 June 2010

gradually pushed toward point active state, where an

Frequency control oscillation is created which sustains even when the exciting
Oscillation control pulse vanishes. The necessary energy in the incoming pulse
that may change state of the receiver depends on the nonlinear
State machine
function of the active device, as well as on the Q-value of the
L C GL GA tank circuit.
B. Wake-up oscillator chip prototype
A prototype oscillator is fabricated in UMC 180 nm CMOS
RF detector Baseband detector technology and uses on-chip inductors. Simulations show that
large energy consumption savings can be achieved (10 times
Fig. 1. Principle of the new wake-up radio transceiver architecture.
lower) by instead using off chip inductors enabling much
higher Q-value [2].The second version prototype will be
RFID-reader Tag using such off-chip coils (co-located with a printed battery
Printed [9][10]).
battery
fx Wake-up III. COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL
Logic
fx oscillator The protocol for communication between the tag and
reader is described in [11] and is of the binary tree type
Reader TX
[12][13][14], meaning that the ID is extracted bit by bit when

ID-
A. Frequency coding, and allocation
TR Tag TX
To extract bits in the tag ID, the protocol uses frequency
signaling. The tags in the vicinity of the reader are first

Td TT
extracted by using four different frequencies, where every
time
Fig. 2. Active backscatter. The timing diagram shows a reader P
transmitting (during time TR) and a tag responding (during time TT ) n0 n1 n2 n3 n4
on the frequency fx. The delay until the tag responds is the signal
propagation delay, plus the start-up delay for the tag oscillator (during
time Td).
2.4 GHz f0 f1 f2 f3 f4 f

Fig. 3. Frequency spectrum allocation.

nonlinear response is essential for the ability to achieve
stability in each of the described states.
frequency corresponds to a two-bit combination in the ID as
TABLE I follows and is spread in the 2.45 GHz ISM band, see Fig. 3.
TRANSPONDER DATA.
Tag power consumption, idle state [mW] 0.02
f0 : is the beacon signal, 2400+n0 [MHz], used to wake
Tag power consumption, active state [mW] 1.4
Tag sensitivity [dBm] -72 f1 : +n0+n1 [MHz]
Tag output power [dBm] -10 f2 : +n0+n1+n2 [MHz]
Tag idle to active state [µs] 1.0 f3 : +n0+n1+n2+n3 [MHz]
f4 : +n0+n1+n2+n3+n4 [MHz]
The nonlinearity is used for keeping the receiver at a stable
equilibrium point when the input signal contains too little
energy in the relevant frequency band. Out of band signals are
discriminated by the tank circuit. When an input signal is
applied, the average current of the oscillator is increased,
following the path of the nonlinearity. The gain will be too
small to form and sustain an oscillation to build up from noise
at the bias point of the idle state. However, when the
incoming pulse has sufficient energy, the effective bias is

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 Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on RFID-Technology and Applications, Guangzhou, China, 17 - 19 June 2010

FPGA
As an example of addressing a specific tag consider the
following case Filter fIF
A A
bank D L LNA
C C fBW
To wake-up the tag with this ID (to see if it is available and f1 f2 f3 f4
Tacq
to extract its information) the following sequence would be fLO

transmitted by the reader (sequence starts with a beacon, f0, Controller

f0, f2, f1, f3, f4, f4, f2, f1, fLO

corresponding to the overlapping sequence of
fIF
bit- PA
fBW
B.
range
It is possible to identify all tags in range for the reader Fig. 4. Reader hardware implementation block diagram.
without knowing anything in advance of the tag population.
output IF frequencies. The controller decides which of the
The ID extraction starts when the reader transmits the beacon
synthesizers that should be active. Before the output signal is
signal (on frequency, f0), awakening all tags in reach. In the
mixed up to fRF it is bandpass filtered by an analog filter. The
next step the reader transmits on all four frequencies, f1 f4,
RF frequency band of interest is set by tuning the LO
synthesizer to the corresponding LO frequency fLO. Further
corresponding to its two least significant ID bits, and the tag
optimization might be achieved by controlling the output
power produced by the output Power Amplifier (PA).
frequency. This method is iterated, traversing bit by bit,
The ADC will have a bandwidth of 2fBW using subsampling,
halving the tag population until the there are only two bits left,
or high speed sampling at 2fIF. The filter bank consists of four
the tags two most significant ID bits. When reading the two
filters with a length of nFIR bits. The ADC and the filter bank
last bits in the ID, done in the final reading, there are two
have available a period of Tacq, less than 4 s, to sample the IF
possible bit combinations left and two tags can be extracted at
signal and to set the f1 to f4 signals indicating the presence of a
the same time.
signal above the noise floor at the specific frequencies. The
C. Addressing a specific tag controller and output signal synthesizer will have available a
In some applications it is known which tags that should be period of Tcntrl, less than 1 s, to decide based on the protocol
in vicinity of the reader. Instead of trying to read all tags it is described in Section III, and to set the new appropriate vector
possible to selectively read tags. If the ID of a tag is already of output signal frequencies. The synthesizers are in operation
known by the reader, then it is possible to address that all the time eliminating the settling time for a new frequency.
However, if not adding a fifth synthesizer, one of the four
composed of the bit combination in the tag ID, in a synthesizers has to be tuned to f0 at the start of each new read
straightforward way. The addressing method is useful for sequence and then tuned back.
saving tag energy, only doing a minimal number of The FIR filters will work in sequence with the ADC,
activations of the tags. processing incoming ADC data, word by word. Thus the total
sampling period Tp may be approximated to Tacq without any
D. Data transfer significant error. The limit filter frequency resolution is set
It is also possible for the reader to retrieve information by,
stored on the tag (e.g. sensor data). This is done by continuing f 1/ Tacq (1)
the ID read cycle, but instead of retrieving ID bits from the tag,
the reader retrieves the stored data. resulting in a resolution of 250 kHz. The minimum sampling
frequency in MHz is,
4
IV. DESCRIPTION OF RFID READER
fs 2 f BW ni . (2)
The RFID reader, depicted in Fig. 4, consists of the 0
following blocks: RF/IF-converter, ADC, digital filter bank,
TABLE II
and a controller unit. The digital filter bank and controller unit THE SYSTEM COMPONENT DATA.
are hosted in a FPGA. In the input path the RF/IFconverter Tag power consumption, idle state [mW] 0.02
amplifies and mixes the RF-signal fRF down to the IF Tag sensitivity [dBm] -72
frequency fIF. The down converted signal is filtered before it Tag output power [dBm] -10
enters the FPGA circuit. The input power Pin to the ADC is Reader sensitivity [dBm] -85
kept to an optimum level by an Automatic Level Control Reader output power [dBm] 20
(ALC) also providing the controller unit with a coarse value
of the amplitude level. The output path of the converter The required FIR filter length is nFIR = 2TacqfBW.
consists of a four parallel synthesizers tuned to the decided The detection of a present signal is done by comparing the

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 Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on RFID-Technology and Applications, Guangzhou, China, 17 - 19 June 2010

background noise power in the channel with the power V. SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
received after an acquiring signal being sent. The noise is The system performance is deduced from calculations and
expected to be dominated by interferers rather than thermal simulations in [11] and is presented as 1) readout delay, the
noise when an LNA is used. The needed number of bits for time it takes in average to read a tag ID 2) the tag life time
the ADC will be established by this noise power and the when draining the tag battery. 3) Operating range of the
expected signal power from the tags. The expected shifting system. Calculations and simulations are based on numbers in
noise level stress the need for an adaptive RF/IF converter. By Table II.
using the ALC information the number of bits can be The average read-out delay with a population of 1000 tags
minimized. is 319 ms. The maximum throughput is 1570 tags per second.
The timing for the system can be seen in Fig. 5. When the The calculated expected life time of how many days a
reader is extracting a tag ID bit, it starts by transmitting a battery will last if the reader tries to read the tags every
carrier at time t0 on frequency fx. Tag 1, which is assumed to 60 seconds is more than 900 days.
have no propagation delay of the received signal, starts to The range of the RFID system is calculated using the free
build up oscillation immediately, and reaches stable space propagation loss formula
oscillation at t2. The delay due to propagation of the RF signal
for tag N is assumed to be 170 ns (corresponds to max Gt Gr 2
Pr Pt 2
(3)
distance for the system, 50 meters), after which the tag starts 4 d 2L
to build up oscillation at t1. At time t4 the reader stops where Pr is the power available at the tag input port, Pt is
transmitting and starts to sense the radio channel; and reader output power, d is the distance, Gt and Gr is antenna
continues to sense until t5 and calculates an average value of gain set to 1, and L is system loss set to 1. Calculating both
the energy on the channel during this time. The reader then directions, reader to tag, and tag to reader, with values from
waits until t7 so that every tag in the vicinity of the reader has Table II results in a maximum operating range of 50 meters,
stopped transmitting. The reader then, during t7 t8, which fulfils the requirement for our A-RFID system.
calculates an average of the energy when no tags are
transmitting. By comparing the power levels at, sense 1 to VI. CONCLUSIONS
sense 2 the reader is able to distinguish between tags
answering and a noisy environment. A new bit extraction Wake-up radio technology, such as the one described and
cycle starts at t9. used in this paper, gives a number of benefits for RFID
applications, most importantly that a tag is reachable by the
ttr RFID reader at anytime and does not need any advanced
Reader TX Reader Sense 1 Reader Sense 2 Reader TX synchronized wake-up algorithms.
Like in conventional radio front-ends, important issues in
dosc Tag 1 TX
.. wake-up radios are power consumption, method of
.
synchronization, and total silicon area of the mixed signal die.
dosc Tag N TX
Reducing tag complexity infers a corresponding increase in
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 t [µs reader complexity. In the low-frequency system that has been
t0 t2 t4 t5 t7 t8
t1 t3 t6 t9 implemented and tested, the principle of operation has been
Fig. 5. Timing of the system when two tags are in reach of the reader.
proven. Transferring the design to the 2.45 GHz ISM band
Tag 1 is close to the reader, tag 2 is at the rim of the area covered by the includes using standard off-the-shelf technology, with no
reader. ttr is the time needed to extract one bit from the tag ID. added complexity or change in functionality.
The low complexity and power consumption of the
A. Low frequency prototype reader described backscatter radio transceiver enables low-cost tags
A reader prototype with a frequency range running from with long reading range, two-way communication (tag -
20 MHz to 28 MHz, has been built and tested [15]. It is based reader), and sensor logging.
on a 12-bit ADC and an FPGA. The filtering was Synchronization between reader and tags is done using a
implemented by using a fast Fourier transform (FFT) frequency binary tree communication protocol that can be
algorithm and by getting the power spectrum of the signal. used for addressing single tags or for reading out all tags
The filter section was followed by a frequency identifier. The within reach from the reader.
controller was implemented as a 100 MHz processor core on With this active RFID system more than 1500 tags can be
the FPGA. The length of each FFT output block was 512 bits read per second. The average delay when reading a tag ID in a
giving a frequency resolution of 234 kHz. The FFT-block population of 1000 tags is 319 ms.
takes about 5 The reading range of this active RFID system is 50 meters.
transformation, this means that during one listening cycle of The estimated life time for a tag, in this active RFID system,
250 FFT calculations can be powered by a low-cost 7x7 square centimeter printed battery,
performed. is almost three years, in a scenario where t
out as often as 60 times per hour.

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 Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on RFID-Technology and Applications, Guangzhou, China, 17 - 19 June 2010

VII. FUTURE WORK

The CMOS oscillator that is the foundation in the wakeup
radio transceiver for the A-RFID tag is currently being
refined. A digital architecture for running the protocol on the
tag is under investigation and will be presented. The aim is to
design an RFID system based on tags using a small, low cost,
mixed signal, mass produced ASIC. Such a low cost
active-RFID tag could compete with passive-RFID tags in
terms of price.

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