Design and simulation of self-powered radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for mobile temperature monitoring

This paper presents a design for a self-powered radio frequency identification (RFID) tag with a thin film bulk acoustic resonating piezoelectric power supply (PPS), which can be used for portable remote temperature monitoring. We call this system a PPS-RFID for short. The RFID systems have been found to have many applications in the internet of things (IOT) in the past decade. But semi-active RFID tags require an onboard battery which limits their applications in many fields. For these reasons, our research focuses on power sources for the RFID tags. This paper emphasizes the circuit design and simulation of PPS. In our tests, 0.283 mW was generated by PPS at 1 Hz vibration by a 650 N impact force. The results showed that the integrated PPS could supply sufficient power for the designed PPS-RFID tag. The PPS-RFID tag can be widely used for temperature monitoring during mobile transport of perishable items such as medicines or food. © 2012 Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.