Passive RFID technology for the internet of things

RFID tags can no longer be treated as pure bar-code substitutes as their functional capabilities increase rapidly. Many of them are able to store and compute data, or hold sensors. The data flow in the EPCglobal network, which was created for “traditional” low-cost tags, does work one-way: from tags to a couple of servers where data for the tags is stored and can be accessed by other readers or servers. To draw advantage from the increased functionality of the tags it will become important to have a two-way end-to-end communication between servers and tags, e.g. to remotely change data on the tags. In this paper we show how to modify RFID readers and low-cost tags to make them suitable for a remote two-way communication. We consider the required capabilities of readers and tags and show how communication can be done via mobile IPv6. Security considerations round the description before we can conclude, that also passive low-cost RFID tags are able to become part of the future Internet of Things.