A flexible dual frequency testbed for RFID

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the setup of a testbed developed for the fast evaluation of RFID systems in two frequency domains. At the one hand the 13.56 MHz and at the other hand the 868 MHz frequency domain are supported. The suggested design flow for configuring the testbed is highly automated and supports rapid evaluations of different designs and implementations within shortest time. Several layers of abstraction for rating existing and future RFID standards are provided, from abstract simulation models down to the implementation on the rapid prototype. This includes a fast setup for measuring and rating existing RFID standards, or running them side by side, as well as the rapid exploration of future RFID designs and various aspects of those prototypes. It allows for verifying both protocol stack- and signal processing of RFID systems. In order to demonstrate this concept, we briefly describe an implemented example system, and our overall hardware layout in detail. Measurement results on two existing RFID standards corroborate the concept.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
RFID, dual frequency, rapid prototyping, reader, testbed