UBITag: A Ubiquitous Optical Wireless Tag for Identifying Objects in the Physical Space

In this paper, an infrastructure that enables the association of a unique identification (ID) number to objects in the physical world is proposed. The system consists of a small tag that can be attached to any object. The tag is powered optically and establishes an optical communication link with a Reader. The Reader device can write a unique ID in the tag memory and can also readout the number. Each ID is also stored in a cloud database, which allows for associations of other attributes to the tag. By removing the need for a battery, using optical instead of RF communication, and minimizing the need for storing much information besides a single number, the size requirements on the tag are significantly reduced. A larger scale prototype is developed and end-to-end operation of the infrastructure is demonstrated. Prototyping is comprised the optical tag with active photovoltaic area of 1.44 mm² and dimension of 9.7 mm × 6.9 mm, a Reader that optically interrogates with tag through 9600 baud UART protocol, a two-columned debatable for TagID and TagInfo data maintenance and a mobile application. In the end, basic packaging requirements of the tags are discussed and custom spherical packages with 1.8-mm diameter are developed. In the future, it is possible to mass produce the tags at a very low cost and attach them to many physical objects in the environment-creating a bridge between the physical and the cyber worlds.