The PhD school is organized by Pr. Etienne Perret, (LCIS, Grenoble INP, UGA) and will take place on Monday 27 of October. This event is an opportunity for every student to discover a specific part of the RFID technology. All students (and colleagues) are highly encouraged to register for this event.
Title: The Evolution of RFID Technology: A Historical Overview
Abstract: RAIN RFID is a technology based on passive modulated backscatter that allows one to identify, authenticate and locate wirelessly powered tags. Its applications range from inventory / supply chain management and asset tracking to healthcare and retail. This talk covers the history of RFID and evolution of RFID tags and systems, from its early days to the present state of RAIN RFID, including its capabilities, applications, and ongoing developments.
Pavel Nikitin received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002. He is currently a Technical Fellow with Impinj where he is doing research, design, and development of RAIN RFID tags and systems products. He previously worked at Honeywell, Intermec, IBM, and Ansys. He is an IEEE Fellow, NAI Senior Member, received four Best Paper awards, has over 80 US and international patents and over 70 IEEE publications.
Title: Principles and Technologies of RAIN Sensing
Abstract: The talk will explore the evolution of RFID from simple ID tags to battery-less RAIN sensor nodes for wireless monitoring of physical and chemical quantities. Key sensing architectures will be presented—antenna-based, self-tuning chips, embedded sensors, and ADC interfaces—along with industrial use cases and advanced prototypes such as epidermal and implantable tags.
Gaetano Marrocco Laurea in Electronic Engineering and Ph.D. in Applied Electromagnetics from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 1994 and 1998, respectively. Researcher at the University of Roma Tor Vergata in 1994-2014. Associate Professor of Electromagnetics in 2013-2017. Guest Professor at the University of Paris-est Marne la Vallèe in 2015, and Full Professor at the University of Roma Tor Vergata since 2018. Since 2018 to 2024 he served as Director of the Medical Engineering School and currently is the Deputy Director of the Department of Civil engineering and Computer Science Engineering.
The first phase of his research career was devoted to the modelling and designing structural broadband and ultra-wideband antennas for Satellite (ESA, ASI), Avionic and Naval (Leonardo) communications. Since 2003, he has been investigating sensor-oriented miniaturized antennas for Biomedical Engineering and Radiofrequency Identification (RFID), contributing to the move from the RF labelling of objects to the passive sensor networks in the Internet of Things era. He carried out pioneering research on bodycentric battery-less wireless sensors concerning textile RFID antennas, tattoo-like sensors (flexible and stretchable epidermal electronics), and radio-sensors embedded inside implantable prostheses.
Title: How wireless electronic devices fit into the sustainability issue
Abstract: After reviewing the environmental impacts of human activities, especially in the electronics sector, and clarifying what sustainability means, the presentation will focus on wireless technologies to explore their positive and negative effects and how these impacts can be evaluated. The presentation will include examples from the literature
Pascal Xavier was born in France in 1964. He received the Ph. D. degree in Physics from the University of Grenoble, France, in 1994. He was also graduated from Grenoble INP in electrical engineering in 1988. From 1994 to 2003, in the CNRS, his research interests were dealing with numerical methods for the analysis of coupled thermo-electromagnetics problems and design of microsensors in the fields of microwaves. He joined the Centre for Radiofrequencies, Optics and Microelectronics of the Alps (CROMA) of Grenoble in 2003 where he is currently director of a French Research Network dedicated to sustainable electronics, and coordinator of a Horizon Europe EIC Pathfinder Challenges project on responsible electronics. His research interests include design, realization and test of sustainable microwave devices and sensors for environmental applications, bioelectromagnetism and characterization of complex materials. He is Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Technology University Institute of Grenoble (UGA), involved in teaching of Electronics and Physics.
Title: Fundamentals to Frontiers of UHF Backscatter Communication
From the basic fundamentals to the cutting-edge research topics, the physical layer of backscatter communication remains a crucial component for low power communication. This session will provide an overview of a backscatter communication system, along with its roots in antenna scattering theory. From there, we will discuss key considerations for these systems, practical experimental setups for the lab, and recent developments in modulation schemes.
Stewart J. Thomas received the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina USA where his research in RFID communication systems included one of the first demonstrations of QAM backscatter modulation. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania USA where he continues his research investigating backscatter communication techniques, wireless power transfer and the intersection of RFID and IoT systems. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in the field of RFID, has served as a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification, and has supported the IEEE RFID conference series as a member of the conference organizing committee and in various roles since 2014, including the Technical Program Chair for RFID 2020 and Executive Chair for IEEE RFID 2022.
Title: Battery-free Wireless Sensor for IoT applications
Abstract: This course covers the fundamental concepts, typical architectures, and design requirements for implementing battery-free wireless sensors in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. We begin with an overview of key technical concepts and architectures related to passive and active wireless sensors, including interrogation techniques based on backscattering, radar, and standard wireless protocols. The course also details the energy harvesting and wireless power transfer techniques. Next, we focus on wirelessly powered, battery-free sensing nodes that enable Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT). These nodes leverage standard wireless protocols (e.g., BLE or LoRaWAN) for data transmission while harvesting energy from a dedicated RF source operating in an ISM radio band.
Alexandru Takacs is Associate Professor with the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, where he performs research within LAAS–CNRS. His research interests include energy harvesting and wireless power transfer, battery-free wireless sensors and networks, cyber-physical systems for IoT applications, the design of microwave and RF circuits, small antenna design and flexible substrate technologies. Dr. Takacs was member of Technical Program Committee (TPC) of Wireless Power Transfer Conference WPTC’2016, WPTC’2018 and WPTC’2019 and for European Microwave Conference (EUMC’2015, EUMC’2016, EUMC’2019). He has been co-general chair of European Wireless Week (now Wireless Power Transfer Conference and Expo), co-TPC chair for European Microwave Conference (EUMC’2019) and Operational Officer and Student Grant Chair for EuMC’2015.
Title: UHF portal discrimination
Abstract: The presentation will address the discrimination issue in UHF RFID portals used in logistics and how Data Science and Artificial Intelligence can dramatically improve performances, with less than 0.5% errors compared to 5% errors in State of the Art.
Christophe Loussert has 30 years of deep tech R&D, with many patents and academic publications on engineering of complex RFID systems. Before joining Acceliot, Christophe co-founded the company TAGSYS in 2001. Currently working on the remaining unresolved issues for RFID system using AI for new business opportunities.
Title: Enhancing Chipless RFID with AI
Abstract: After introducing chipless RFID from a conceptual perspective, we will examine an experimental case study involving a commercial reading system. Lastly, we will explore how AI-based algorithms can improve the understanding of the reading environment and therefore more effectively decode signals reflected by chipless tags.
Idoia Ochoa is currently an Associate Professor with Tecnun, School of Engineering, University of Navarra. Her research interests include computational biology, data compression, bioinformatics, information theory and coding, machine learning, communications, and signal processing. She was awarded the MIT Innovators under 35 Award, in 2019, and a Ramon y Cajal Grant, in 2020.
Etienne Perret is Full Professor in electrical engineering at Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP, France. His current research interests include wireless communication systems based on the principle of backscatter modulation, also known as the backscattering of EM waves, particularly in the fields of RFID and chipless RFID for identification and sensor applications. His research also includes electromagnetic modeling of passive devices for millimeter and submillimeter-wave applications, along with advanced computer-aided design techniques based on the development of an automated co-design synthesis computational approach.
Title: Hands-on training on SAR-based localization of passive UHF-RFID tags
Abstract: Synthetic Aperture (SAR) localization of passive, chipped, UHF-RFID tags has proven to be a reliable method to locate tags accurately with errors bounded to 10-20 cm (comparable to the tag’s size!). The method requires a moving RFID antenna and a system to accurately measure its path, e.g., allowing signal processing techniques to pinpoint the tagged object. This short course aims to show the theoretical background of SAR-based RFID localization, assisted by hands-on coding training to implement the method on a PC.
Andrea Motroni received the M.E. (with honors) degree in Telecommunication Engineering and the Ph.D. (with honors) degree in Information Engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 2017 and 2021, respectively, where he is currently an Assistant Professor in Electromagnetism. His current research interests include indoor radiolocalization systems, with specific focus on UHF-RFID and UWB technology for robot and vehicle localization, the integration of robotic systems with RFID towards new systems for industry and logistics, UHF-RFID smart gates and other RFID-based applications for Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, and people safety in both indoor and outdoor environments.