A Flooding Warning System based on RFID Tag
Array for Energy Facility
Chang-He Li Keng-Weng Lao
Department of Electrical and Computer Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering Engineering
University of Macau University of Macau
Macao, China Macao, China
mb65414@umac.mo johnnylao@umac.mo
Abstract—Passive radio-frequency identification (RFID)
tags are widely used due to its economic cost and satisfactory
performance. So far, passive RFID tags are mostly applied to
identify certain objects, such as underground pipe
identification under buried conditions. However, there is lack
of study on the application of buried tags for further
application. In this paper, the performances of buried RFID
tags are studied to develop a flooding warning system based on
RFID tag array for energy facility such as power stations. In
this study, the corresponding signal strength received by the
RFID reader is evaluated when the RFID tags are buried by
seven materials respectively. The results show that flood
warning detector can be constructed using passive RFID tag
array and reader.
Keywords—Passive RFID tags, RFID, buried, signal strength,
RSSI
I. INTRODUCTION
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a wireless non-
contact technology using of radio frequency electromagnetic
fields to transfer data for the purpose of identification.
Comparing to the barcode, an RFID tag does not require
line-of-sight and it can be read by several readers
simultaneously. The RFID tag cannot be easily replicated,
ripped or smeared, which makes it a secure product. In
addition, an RFID tag can store huge volumes of data and a
strong encoded identification series can thus be held within it.
The facts proved that RFID tag reduces labor costs and
improves efficiency. The demand of RFID tag is so high that
according to "Statista" the global market size of RFID tag
will be 17.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. It is projected to be
sized at around 24.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 [1].
Tracing back the history, the beginnings of radio
frequency identification technology is the radio-based
identification system used by Allied bombers during World
War II. The development of RFID system started from the
1970s. In 1973, Mario W. Cardullo filed a patent application
for an active RFID tag with rewritable memory, which is the
first RFID tag in the word. In the middle of 1990's, the first
Ultra High Frequency (UHF) reader was invented. In 2004,
Walmart spent around 50 million USD to develop RFID in
its retail system and the income is really considerable [2].
With the rapid development of RFID technology, RFID tag
is more and more widely used. By now, the RFID tag is used
in many different industries, such as inventory management
[3], supply chain management [4], access control,
underground pipes identification system, laundry system,
asset tracking, etc. There are two major types of RFID tag,
one is active RFID tag and the other one is passive RFID tag.
An active RFID tag has a transmitter and a power supply.
The power source makes the tag transmit data to a RFID
978-1-5386-5057-8/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Kam-Weng Tam
Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
University of Macau
Macao, China
kentam@umac.mo
reader and the reading range can be 100 feet or more. The
passive RFID tag does not have internal power source and it
is powered by the electromagnetic energy transmitted from a
RFID reader. Due to this reason, the passive tag can only be
read within about 20 feet. No power source requirement is an
advantage of passive tag, it can operate 24/7 without risk of
power loss. Moreover, the passive tag is very cheap in price
while active RFID tag is relatively expensive. These two tags
both bear advantages and disadvantages. The choice of them
is dependent on the particular application and the budget.
The RFID systems can operate in either Ultra High
Frequency (UHF, 860-960 MHz), High Frequency (HF,
13.56 MHz) or Low Frequency (LF, 125-134 kHz). The tag
detection distance depends on frequency. The higher the
frequency, the longer the detection distance will be. The read
range of low-frequency tag is limited to several inches while
the read range of UHF tag can reach to 50 feet or more.
Although RFID tags have also been applied to identify
underground cables [5], their applications are somehow
limited to object identification. There is still lack of study for
the performance of buried RFID tags. The performance of
buried RFIDs is obviously different from non-buried ones. In
fact, in our project, we propose to use RFID tags and its
buried performance to develop a flooding alarm system, such
as the one in [6]. Instead of water level detector, RFID tag
array and reader system could be used.
In order to understand more about the performance of
RFID tag array when buried, in this paper, seven different
common materials are used for burying and blocking the
passive RFID tags. They are air, plastic foam, sand, saw dust,
stone, fresh leaves, and water. A box with adjustable length
but fixed in width and height is set. Under this setting, the
thickness of material can be changed by adjusting the box
dimension. The UHF RFID reader is placed in front of the
box and the reader antenna is facing perpendicularly to the
box front side. For the RFID tag array, a upvc rod with 4
RFID tags attached inside the centre of the box (More details
are shown in Fig. 3). By changing the thickness of material,
the signal blocking ability of different materials to the buried
passive RFID tags can be studied. The main performance is
evaluated signal strength indication (RSSI), which is used to
indicate the block strength of the barrier. The paper is
organized as follows. A brief review of passive RFID tags
and RFID reader is given in Section II. Section III shows the
idea for proposed flooding warning system with RFID tag
array. Section IV gives preliminary experimental settings and
results of the performance of buried RFID tags. Finally, the
conclusion is summarized in Section V.
 II. PASSIVE RFID TAGS AND RFID READER
In this section, the basic theory of passive RFID tags and
RFID reader is reviewed first. A RFID system consists of
three major parts: RFID tag, signal reader and reader antenna.
When the RFID system works, the reader transmits radio
waves via its antenna to read the information stored on a tag.
The tag's antenna gets the energy from the radio waves and is
used to power up the internal chip which generates a signal
back to the reader. The server can process the data then store
them into database.
Passive RFID tag consists an Integrated Circuit (IC) and
internal antenna without any internal power source. There are
two main types of passive RFID tag on the market, one is
inlay and the other one is hard tag. The inlay is more
common while hard tag is made of plastic, ceramic or rubber
and designed for some unique function or application. The
UHF 860–960 MHz passive RFID tag is used in this
experiment due to its characteristics of waterproof and
preservative coating. RFID passive tag array can make a high
localization accuracy. In general, the more tags in the tag
array, the more localization accuracy. Besides, a larger
distance between the tags also contributes to a higher
localization accuracy [3].
A RFID reader contains an Radio Frequency (RF)
module, which is typically composed by a transmitter, a
receiver, and a microprocessor. A transmitter consists of
three parts: oscillator, modulator and amplifier. An oscillator
creates a carrier signal firstly then the modulator impinges a
data command on this carrier signal, followed by amplifier
amplifies the signal enough so that the RFID tag can get it. A
receiver has a demodulator and an amplifier. The returned
data is extracted by the demodulator then the amplifier
amplifies the signal for processing. A microprocessor plays a
crucial part in data processing. A block diagram of a typical
RFID system is shown in Fig. 1. The S-8600 4-Port UHF
RFID Reader [7] is applied in this study. It sends a radio
signal to the tag via the MT-262011/TRH/A/K 902-928 MHz,
8.5 dBic RHCP antenna [8].
Fig. 1. A block diagram of a typical RFID system
Based on the discussions above, RFID system is effective
when the signal reader is able to receive the energy. However,
under buried condition, the signal energy will be absorbed by
the buried material. This is also the main focus of this paper.
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is a measurement
of the power present in a received radio signal, and is the
main reference data to compare the blocking characteristics
of different materials in this paper.
III. PROPOSED FLOODING WARNING SYSTEM BASED
ON RFID ARRAY
During hot summer, typhoons often hit Macao. The low-
lying area could be threatened by flooding. Protection of the
customer transformer and related power facilities against
flooding is indeed a critical issue for electricity companies.
Fig. 2 shows a typical power station environment in Macao
and illustrates the idea of the flooding alarm system.
QGBT
RMU
TRF
Flooding Alarm
RFID Reader
Detector
RFID Tags
Fig. 2. An illustrative idea of an RFID tag array based flooding alarm
detector in a power station
The power station contains important devices such as
ring main unit (RMU), transformer (TRF) and quadro geral
de baixa tensão (QGBT). These devices are usually not
designed to be operated during flooding conditions. Thus
when flooding occurs, they may cause system breakdown or
power failure of the corresponding power area. This can lead
to severe economic and development losses. Possible actions
should be taken to avoid disasters. One solution is
installation of these devices on higher floors. However, this
solution may only be suitable for new constructed stations,
where novel design is applicable. For devices in old stations,
they still suffer from flooding threats. Another possible
solution is the installation of a flooding alarm system. When
the water level gets up to a certain level, the alarm system
will trigger a signal so that further actions can be taken, such
as raising the gate of the entrance. The system is easier to be
implemented and can also be applied to old stations. It is thus
more feasible to employ the flooding alarm system.
Our proposed RFID tag array based flooding warning
detector include an RFID reader with antenna, and economic
passive RFID tags, as shown in Fig. 2. In the proposed
system, RFID tags are placed on the floor, while a RFID
reader with antenna is placed on top of them to read the
signal strength. Under normal conditions (where no water
blocks), the RFID reader is able to read a high signal strength
for all tags. As flooding occurs, and the RFID tag array is
buried by water, the signal strength received reduces or the
tags cannot even be identified by the reader. This difference
can be used to develop the flooding alarm detector for the
system. In fact, for future Internet of Thing (IoT) application
for power station, it is anticipated that UHF RFID will be
used to provide both sensing and identification of relevant
components of these power facilities. Thus, it is highly
demanded to double said technology for flooding detection
as the welcoming tool for emerging IoT for smart power
system.
IV. PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTAL SETTINGS AND
RESULTS
As introduced, an important idea on the flooding alarm
detector is that the signal strength received by the RFID
reader will be changed when the RFID tags are buried or
blocked. Therefore, a study is carried out to investigate the
performance of buried RFID tags by different materials.
A. Experimental Settings
Fig. 3 show the experimental settings used for the
investigation. In order to perform the experiments, a
specially made box with adjustable length, but fixed width
and height is used. Four passive RFID tags are attached to a
plastic rod, with 6 cm apart. The rod is placed vertically in
the middle of the box. A RFID reader is placed near the side
of the box, and some filling materials are used to represent
tags can be detected when d>154 cm, while 2 tags can
still be detected at d=149 cm).
• The sequence with longest detectable distance goes
from air > plastic foam > sand > saw dust > stone >
leaves > water.
• The sequence with longest distance d for all 4 tags to
be detected goes from: air > sand > stones > saw dust
> plastic foam > leaves > water.
The results show that with water blocking/burying the
RFID tags, the reader cannot detect the RFID tags when d is
longer than 33 cm. This supports that flooding detector can
be constructed using proposed system configuration.
4

the material used to bury the RFID tags. 3

2
1
0
0 50 100 150 200 250

4
3
Distance d (cm) 2
1
0
0 50 100 150 200 250

Number of tags detected

3
2
1
Tag 1
RFID Reader 0
0 50 100 150 200 250
6 cm
Tag 2 Filling 4
3
2
Material Spectrum Range 860 - 960 MHz
1
0
Tag 3 0 50 100 150 200 250
Output Power 0 - 33 dBm
4
Receive Sensitivity < -85 dBm 3

Box Tag 4
Baud Rate 115200 bps / 38400 bps
2
1
0
0 50 100 150 200 250

4
3
2

Fig. 3. Experimental settings used for investigation 1

0
0 50 100 150 200 250

It is further defined that the distance between the 3

2
1
horizontal distance between the RFID reader and the rod 0
0 50 100 150 200 250

(with RFID tags attached) is d cm, in which the value d can
be adjusted by varying the length of the box.
In the experiment, seven different filling materials are
being investigated. They are namely, air, plastic foam, sand,
saw dust, stone, leaves, and water. The corresponding signal
strength is being monitored and the results are presented
below.
B. Experimental Results and Analysis
In this section, the experimental results obtained are
presented and analyzed based on different aspects: 1)
Number of detected tags vs distance d; 2) Detected signal
strength in each tag vs. distance d; 3) Variation range of the
RSSI signal under different filling materials
1) Number of detected tags vs. distance d
It is found from the experiment that as the distance d
gets larger, less number of tags can be detected by the reader
and the phenomenon differs for different materials. Fig. 4
show the graph of number of detected tags versus distance d.
The following phenomena can be observed:
• The distance d that at least one tag can be detected is
the longest with air as the filling material (210 cm).
• Water and leaves can easily block RFID energy since
no tags can be detected when the distance d is larger
than 33 cm and 59 cm, respectively.
• The number of detected tags does not vary linearly
with the distance d (observe an example: for sand no
Distance (d) cm
Fig. 4. The relationship between the number of detected tags and reading
distance d
2) Detected signal strength in each tag vs. distance d
Next, the detected signal strength of each tag is analyzed
against the distance d. Fig. 5 shows the variation the signal
strength of the four tags with distance d under different
filling materials. It is interesting that when the RFID tags
are buried by material other than air, the received signal
strength of all four tags is similar, although the distance d
that they can be detected gets smaller. Another interesting
finding is that for sand, the detectable signal strength for
each tag is also higher, even higher than that with air. This
may indicate that some materials can be used to stabilize the
RFID signal strength over a certain distance. Moreover, tag
1 usually shows a higher strength compared to other three
tags. This shows that angle of detection may be another
factor affecting buried RFID tag performance. However,
this needs further investigation to quantify.
Furthermore, with water as the blocking/burying
material, the signal strength received is highly reduced, and
the distance d which RFID tags can be detected are quite
short, 33 cm only. The results thus suggests that there is low
possibility for fault alarm since RFID tags can still be read
at d=33 cm for other normal material.
 V. CONCLUSION
-60
In this paper, an RFID tag array based flooding warning
-80 system is proposed and studied. Severe economic and city
0 50 100 150 200 250
loss can be avoided if an alert can be sent out before serious
-60
flooding occurs. Seven different materials, including water,
-80

0 50 100 150 200 250

are used in this study to investigate the performance of
buried RFID array by evaluating the corresponding RSSI
Signal Strength (RSSI) (dbm)

-60

-80
signal strength recorded by the RFID reader. It is found that
0 50 100 150 200 250 when the RFID array is blocked by materials other than air,
-60 the tags in the array cannot be detected within a shorter
-80 distance. However, for some materials such as sand,
0 50 100 150 200 250
although the tags cannot be detected as long as air does, the
-60
RSSI level is actually higher than that of air within its
-80

0 50 100 150 200 250

detectable distance. This may indicate that some materials
-60
may be able to strengthen the RFID signal. Overall, with
-80
water as the filling material, the tag array cannot be detected
0 50 100 150 200 250 when the distance reaches around 30 cm, while the tags can
-60 still be detected for other materials. This shows that the
-80 RFID tag array can be used to develop the flooding warning
0 50

Tag1
100

Tag2 Tag3
150

Tag4
200 250
system for energy facility.
Distance (d) (cm) ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 5. The RSSI signal strength of 4 tags with different materials This work has been carried out in Multi-Year Research
Grant project (MYRG2016-00093-FST) with RFID facilities
3) Variation range of the RSSI signal under different support. Thanks all the members in Wireless Communication
filled materials Laboratory of University of Macau for the technical support.
From the experimental results, the signal strength Special thanks to Bi Xiao-Kun and Yanset Pang for the
detected in fact varies within a certain range. Fig. 6 shows helping during the whole experiment period.
the variation range of the RSSI signal when the box is filled
with different materials. The figure shows that although REFERENCES
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Fig. 6. The variation range of RSSI for different materials