Georgia Tech ECE Research Group
“What Should Gen3 Be?” was the provocative title of the online panel session run last month as part of IEEE RFID 2020. This was one of the more fascinating panel sessions I’ve seen in recent years. Organized by Prof. Mohammad Alhassoun from KFUPM (GTPG alum), the panel of industry and academic experts led to some lively perspective about the current and future of RFID. Youtube link below for those that would like to revisit the panel in its entirety.
Due to widespread COVID-19-related travel restrictions and disruptions, RFID Journal LIVE! 2020 and IEEE RFID 2020 have rescheduled the conference and industry gathering for September 9-11, 2020, at the same venue (Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL). Registration deadlines and other submission deadlines will be modified accordingly — keep an eye on the website as updates are posted!
As part of the IEEE 2020 conference in Orlando, FL, we announce the Workshop on Wireless MoCap. Please view the Call for Participation for more information. Taking place from 28-29 April 2020, the workshop will be exploring applications in wireless motion capture, fine-scale localization, and imaging. The workshop is currently accepting talk abstracts, full papers, tutorial proposals, demonstrations, and posters.
A Theoretical Channel Model for Spatial Fading in Retrodirective Backscatter ChannelsAbstract: The round-trip nature of backscatter communications subjects the radio link to unusually severe small-scale fading. Over fading channels, the received signal envelope in backscatter-based systems such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems fades worse than a standard one-way communication. In this paper, we study spatial fading of the received signal envelope in an important class of backscatter systems using retrodirective transponders that allow microwave and mm-wave communications at extraordinarily low-power consumption by an RF tag. Our comparative study shows that the use of retrodirective RF tags changes the backscatter channel statistics from being doubly faded to singly faded, resembling a conventional, one-way radio channel. Surprisingly, fading in retrodirective backscatter channels is highly varied and sensitive to the fine structure of the diffuse multipath waves in the radio environment in ways that fading in conventional radio links are not.