Keio Research Institute at SFC

* This laboratory has been completed.

Background

As battery-assisted passive tags utilizing the UHF band (953MHz in Japan) are low-price tags enabling reading and writing at long distances (10 meters), there are high expectations for these tags, especially for SCM-use and so forth. With radio wave laws and ordinances now in place and global standards established for hardware within ISO and EPCglobal, it has become possible to easily obtain and operate reader/writers incorporating international standards. This had led to the proposal and execution of a variety of applications and uses within not only SCM, but also manufacturing process management and product safety information management. On the other hand, in order to use UHF band electrical tag systems both safely and on a large scale, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of equipment performance evaluation, installation design and operational management. The Auto-ID Laboratory within SFC has been focusing on these issues for a number of years, proposing performance evaluation methods and international standards (ISO & EPCglobal), considering numerical evaluation methods for interference between systems and, based on these methods, considering radio wave laws and ordinances and technology used when establishing industry standards, research and development to improve each function, and presenting research results at various conferences. In FY 2007, the Laboratory has continued to work on applications within the design and production of multipurpose battery-assisted tags, equipment performance evaluation, installation design and operational management, and to exhibit and present research results on multipurpose battery-assisted tags at ORF. This has led to concrete demands for the utilization of multipurpose battery-assisted tags.

Scheduled activities

The technology involved in multipurpose battery-assisted tags can be largely divided into the following three types:

1. Hardware platform: Circuit board
2. Firmware: Software to operate circuit board’s microcomputer and CPLD
3. Applications: Software aiming to accomplish a specific objective by using hardware platform and firmware

The members of this Consortium should be able to unrestrictedly research and develop firmware and applications so as to jointly develop 1. Hardware platform.

The following activities will be conducted aimed at this.

• Examination of specifications: Along with collecting specification requirements for multipurpose battery-assisted tags of consortium members, hardware specifications will also be broken down
• Preliminary design: In cooperation with manufacturer, conduct verification testing of modified specifications
• Design & production: Outsourcing of design and production based on specifications
• Testing & evaluation: Testing and evaluation conducted to check whether specified functions are satisfied and, when needed, make adjustments

Researchers, managers and professors