Design of a printed organic RFID circuit with an integrated sensor for smart labels

For item-level tagging in supply chains and logistics the massive deployment of current RFID tags is still too costly despite a drastic decline in price. Therefore, efforts are made in developing organic and printed electronics to enable the vision of item-level tagging. This novel technology promises to overcome the current cost constraints and become ubiquitous. However, the constraints of organic and printed electronics allow merely the design of simple circuitry, which means that neither processor nor larger integrated circuits can be printed. In addition, the lack of high-performance in organic electronics does not even allow the application of traditional communication protocols. The high communication load between reader and tags based on traditional communication schemes is not practical e. g. for regular compliance checks of pallets with up to 1000 items. In this paper, we propose a solution for a smart label system based on the constraints of the organic and printed electronics. The communication scheme uses simultaneous transmission of sensory data. We further present an analog circuitry for an tag specially tailored for the deployment of smart labels in a scenario such as the maintenance of perishables in a cool chain. The approach exploits the possibilities of printing irreversible sensor indicators and randomized structures when using organic electronics. Further on, we show first experimental results performed in our smart label test bed, and illustrate its business relevance towards managing massive amounts of tags in a short time frame.