RFID testing and evaluation for an RF-harsh environment

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been proposed as the solution to the real-time asset visibility problem in numerous supply chain, health-care, and manufacturing applications. Some of those applications occur in RF-harsh environments which degrade the performance of an RFID system. Such environments can create a mismatch between the anticipated performance and the actual performance of RFID systems. In this paper, aspects of the geometry and RF phenomena commonly found in manufacturing plants are simulated in a laboratory to evaluate the robustness of UHF RFID technology for a manufacturing factory environment. Preliminary results show that multipath effects and inconsistencies in performance across tag and reader models continue to impede the successful operation of RFID technology in manufacturing environments. Furthermore, these obstacles can be navigated only with very careful equipment selection and environment characterization. The systems-based RFID testing and evaluation methods in this paper serve to emulate some of the facets of an RF-harsh environment in order to pinpoint what recommendations can be made to improve the effectiveness of future RFID implementations in the manufacturing world.