*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Title: Achieving Hundred-meter Ranges in Low Powered RFID Systems with Quantum Tunneling Tags
Committee:
Dr. Gregory Durgin, ECE, Chair , Advisor
Dr. Andrew Peterson, ECE
Dr. John Cressler, ECE
Dr. Mary Ann Weitnauer, ECE
Dr. Gaetano Marrocco, Tor Vergata University
Abstract:
Sensor networks, radio equipped drones, and satellites are widely used in many applications such as health care, smart cities and precision agriculture. Nevertheless, the high power costs of communication per distance unit lead to poor technical solutions, particularly in terms of flexibility and efficiency. Backscattering communication through RFID nodes is a promising solution to solve the energy requirements of billions of connected devices, but this technology is still limited in rage and cannot compete yet with the wide coverage advantages of BLE, WiFi and cellular and LoRa networks. This research aimed to design a power-stingy backscattering device able to cover an area so wide to enable the use of RFID communications for new applications. The outcome of this work is a highly sensitive 5.8 GHz quantum tunneling RFID tag that achieves backscattering ranges above 1.2 km while consuming biasing powers as low as 20 uW and a radio communication efficiency of 2.9 pJ/bit. This is over 10 times higher than the maximum range of a semi-passive 5.8 GHz RFID link and more than 1000 times lower energy per bit than WiFi (IEEE 802.11ac). Moreover, this device is characterized by a simple RF front-end, by modulation speeds as high as 7 MHz, a sensitivity of -84 dBm, and increasing SNRs for increasing RF impinging powers. This work lays out the basis for both entrepreneurial and research activities that will lead to a new class of long-range backscattering passive sensors with power consumption far lower than traditional radios.
