MRI/Acq.: RFID Testbed Using Renewable Energy for Object Identification and Habitat Monitoring
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Project Proposed: This project, acquiring a Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) testbed, aims to enable fundamental cross-disciplinary cross-layered research into design, implementation, and deployment of the next generation RFID technologies and applications. The equipment support research in the following topics: - Design of novel next generation Computational RFID (CRFID hardware that can harvest energy from alternative sources (WiFi and solar), and can operate with extremely limited energy, - Design of a CRFID operating system that can tolerate frequesnt interruptions pf power through lightweight checkpointing and predictive management, - Development of data cleaning and probabilistic interference techniques for processing streams of noisy and incomplete RFID data, - Design of accurate locationing techniques using re-targetable mobile RFID readers on robots, - Deployment of an RFID-based biological monitoring application involving crickets with small implanted tags that brings together the above research thrusts, and - Enhanced RFID security mechanisms and analysis of security vulnerabilities. The effort integrates research and education in RFID systems, computer systems, data management, security, energy-aware computing, and biology to advance knowledge and understanding of zero-power pervasive devices. The project addresses the critical challenge of RFID reader placement by designing computational RFIDs that can harvest from alternative sources other readers, designs an operating system tailored to the needs of such computational RFID devices, and designs services to localize RFIDs and manage noisy and missing data. Moreover the security characteristics of RFIDs at different layers are analyzed and cryptographic solutions for highly constrained devices are developed Expected results include hardware designs, operating systems, algorithms, protocols, and models for designing such systems. The experimental and prototyping efforts should provide new insights into system design issues. Design of novel next generation Computational RFID (CRFID
Broader Impacts: The research directly impacts the design, development, and deployment of the next-generation RFID applications and businesses including medical, environmental, energy, military, homeland security, and transportation areas. The equipment has direct impact on undergraduate research and student diversity. The RFID testbed will be integrated within the curriculum across Computer Science, Evolutionary Biology, and Electrical Engineering leading to a better understanding of the technology and its impact on the environment and energy.
