Improving item-level tracing systems through Ad Hoc UHF RFID tags

In many practical applications, the item-level tracing systems based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is becoming more and more essential. Nevertheless, the requirements that an RFID tag should satisfy in the different steps of the supply chain, cannot be met by general purpose commercial tags, whose adoption would lead to low-performance systems. In this paper, we are presenting the properties of an ad hoc Ultra High Frequency (UHF) tag, designed and realized in order to work properly in the entire supply chain. The proposed tag has been tested to trace some critical pharmaceutical products, containing metals and liquids, and has been compared with a pre-selected commercial tag. Both tags mount the same chip. The very impressive results, reported in this paper, clearly demonstrate that well-designed ad hoc tags effectively improve the performance of any item-level tracing system.