Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 394–399

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Journal of Food Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

RFID smart tag for traceability and cold chain monitoring of foods: Demonstration
in an intercontinental fresh fish logistic chain
E. Abad a,*, F. Palacio b, M. Nuin c, A. González de Zárate c, A. Juarros a, J.M. Gómez b, S. Marco b
a
Micro and Nanotechnology Department, Fundación Tekniker, Avda. Otaola 20, 20600 Eibar, Guipúzcoa, Spain
b
Department of Electronics, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franqués 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
c
Food Research Division, Fundación Azti, Parque Tecnológico de Vizcaya, Astondoa Bidea. Edif. 609, 48160 Derio, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The main objective of this work was the validation of a RFID smart tag developed for real-time traceabil-
Received 30 July 2008 ity and cold chain monitoring for food applications. This RFID based system consists of a smart tag and a
Received in revised form 27 January 2009 commercial reader/writer. The smart tag, attached on the product to be tracked integrates light, temper-
Accepted 4 February 2009
ature and humidity sensors, a microcontroller, a memory chip, low power electronics and an antenna for
Available online 14 February 2009
RFID communications. These sensor logged data can be stored in the memory together with traceability
data. A commercial reader/writer was used for reading and writing data on the smart tag, with a wireless
Keywords:
reading distance of 10 cm, in real-time at any time of the food chain. The results concerning a demonstra-
RFID smart tags
Food logistics
tion of the system along an intercontinental fresh fish logistic chain are reported here. These results
Traceability proved that this system presents important advantages regarding conventional traceability tools and cur-
Cold chain rently used temperature data loggers such as more memory, reusability, no human participation, no tag
Fresh fish visibility needed for reading, possibility of reading many tags at the same time and more resistance to
humidity and environmental conditions.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The total amount of seafood consumed is growing due to inter-
national sourcing of raw material, advances in food processing
technology and healthy properties. In addition, the logistic chain
for chilled food is more complex every day: the origin is far away
from the destination, involving on board handling in ships, air
transport and more intermediate points in the logistic chain. As a
consequence, government officials and industry leaders concerned
with ensuring food safety and quality, are exploring means to pro-
vide more information and control on sourcing, processing and dis-
tribution of food products within supply chains and ultimately to
the consumers.
Recently established food regulations in different countries,
such as the EU directive 178/2002 (European Parliament, 2002),
has placed responsibility for ensuring product safety and quality
on individual producers, processors and retailers. Moreover, trace-
ability for control of food safety has been singled out as an area
where more surveillance and transparency is needed.
There can be found several definitions for traceability, such as
‘‘the ability to follow the movement of a food through specified
stages of production, processing and distribution” (Codex Alimen-
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: eabad@tekniker.es (E. Abad).
tarius, 2004), ‘‘the ability to trace the history, application or loca-
tion of that which is under consideration” or ‘‘when considering
a product, traceability can be related to the origin of materials
and parts, the processing history, and the distribution and location
of the product after delivery” (International Standardization Orga-
nization (ISO)). The EU Regulation 178/2002 describes it as ‘‘the
ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or
substance intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a
food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and
distribution”.
Regattieri et al. (2007) recently analyzed legal and regulatory
aspects of food traceability. This paper presents also the newest
technical instruments for traceability that allow item identification
in each step of the chain. These instruments are flexible or rigid
tags that follow the item and can be read further down the supply
chain. Nowadays the available tools are, mainly, alphanumerical
codes, bar code labels and Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID)
tags.
The simplest RFID system is a product identification tool that
uses a wireless microchip and an antenna in the tag that does
not need physical contact or sight positioning (like barcodes) with
the reader. The reading phase is very fast and fully automated. It is,
thus, a very promising technology for the food sector, because it
improves management of perishable foods, as well as tracking
and tracing of food quality and safety problems. The main prob-
lems related to these technical systems are the tag cost and a lack

0260-8774/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2009.02.004
 E. Abad et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 394–399
of standardization, although, prices are going down continuously
and efforts for defining standards of operation are being made.
In the case of fresh perishable products, there is also a major
requirement for precise temperature monitoring along the com-
plete logistic chain in order to ensure food safety. Current temper-
ature monitoring systems used in the chill chain that can follow
the product during storage and transport, like strip chart recorders
or temperature dataloggers are usually expensive and not auto-
mated, thus requiring manual inspection. Besides, in order to read
the temperature information recorded, it is necessary to open the
container or package containing the food, and therefore, they can
only be read at the final destination. For these reasons, their use
is limited only to some parts of the cold chain or to a few type of
products, while for other products and important parts of the
chain, continuous product temperature monitoring is not
completed.
The usual solution implemented by many logistic companies is
the use of conventional paper labels for traceability information
and a strip chart recorder placed inside two or three marked boxes
per shipment to monitor the temperature. The main drawbacks of
this current system are the price and the need of opening the box
for manual reading.
Recently, several solutions for implementing temperature man-
aged traceability systems using RFID tags with embedded temper-
ature sensors have been reported (Ogasawara and Yamasaki, 2006;
Jedermann and Lang, 2007). Moreover, one of the current chal-
lenges in smart tags is the integration of chemical sensors onboard
of flexible tags (Abad et al., 2007a) to monitor for example the rip-
ening or deterioration gases generated by food products. Within
the frame of the GoodFood project (FP6-IST-1-5008774-IP) several
RFID tags integrating physical and chemical sensors have been
developed.
The aim of this work was to validate a real-time traceability and
cold chain monitoring flexible tag developed in the GoodFood pro-
ject for the food logistic chain integrating temperature and relative
Fig. 1. Photograph of the tag prototypes, developed on flexible substrates (a) and rigid substrate (PCB) together with the commercial reader used for this demonstration (b).
The red led indicated that the communication between the tag and reader was on.
395
humidity sensors with RFID communication capabilities. The re-
sults of using this smart tag for online monitoring along a fresh fish
logistic chain from South Africa to Europe are presented.
The idea is to enable a future generation of producers and logis-
tic groups to trace the product at any time if needed, and to check
the complete history of a certain product. This information may
serve to estimate the product freshness or lifetime. As a result,
the use of this kind of system will protect the consumers from
the consumption of unsafe foods.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. RFID systems
The heart of the RFID tracing system developed is a smart tag
and a reader/writer module. The smart tag, attached on the prod-
uct to be tracked, integrates light, temperature and humidity sen-
sors, a microcontroller, a memory chip, low power electronics and
an antenna for RFID communications with the reader/writer.
RFID technology in the high frequency (HF) band at 13.56 MHz
was considered the best frequency for integration on flexible tags,
specially for foods with an important water content. Furthermore,
in order to be compliant with recent RFID developments, the ISO
15693 communication standard was selected for data transmis-
sion. Low power readers operating at 13.56 MHz RFID technology
have a limited reading distance of about 10 cm. However, by
proper High Frequency Amplification, the standard permits to
increase the reading distance up to 1 m. The developed tag is com-
patible with commercial readers, like the evaluation module
TRF7960_EVM (Texas Instruments, USA) used for this work. The
communication between the reader and the host computer is made
by means of a USB connection. A photograph of the tag prototypes,
developed on both Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and flexible sub-
strates, together with the commercial reader used for this work
are shown in Fig. 1.
396 E. Abad et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 394–399
The sensor logged temperature and relative humidity data ver-
sus time, and the measured values could be stored in the memory
together with the product traceability data introduced by the user
at any time of the logistic chain. The commercial reader/writer was
used for reading and writing data on the smart tag, with a wireless
reading distance of 10 cm, in real-time, sending an activation sig-
nal to the tag which answers forwarding the information loaded
in the memory. The reader processes the information and trans-
mits it to a computer.
2.2. Tag prototypes
Two tag prototypes using rigid and flexible substrates were fab-
ricated for this work (see Fig. 1). Details on the fabrication of the
flexible prototypes are given elsewhere (Abad et al. 2007b). Com-
ponents assembly was carried out by the electronic company MA-
SER Microelectronica (Mendaro, Spain).
The implemented prototype is a semi active tag, including pas-
sive communication and active sensor read-out, based on low
power electronics. The size of the prototype is 78 mm  54 mm,
slightly smaller than a standard credit card. The main components
of the tag inlay are:
1. The transponder (Finkenzeller, 2003) that was designed to per-
form data reception and transmission from the reader and to
obtain the supply voltage from the 13.56 MHz signal. This tran-
sponder consists of several electronic components and an
antenna. The antenna (38 mm  54 mm) is was composed of
a seven-turn spiral-shaped inductor, track thickness of 18 lm,
track width of 300 lm and spacing between two tracks of 300
lm, and a parallel trimmable plate capacitor to tune the fre-
quency to the 13.56 MHz.
2. The temperature and humidity commercial sensor SHT15 (Sen-
sirion, Switzerland) was selected for this application. This prod-
uct is a single chip comprising a calibrated digital output
(accuracy of ±0.4 @ 5–40 °C). The sensor needs to be powered
between 2.5 V and 5.5 V.
3. A light sensor having a spectral range between visible and IR
with a small footprint. For this reason a photodiode SLCD61N1
(Silonex, Canada) was chosen. It provides an interrupt to micro-
controller in case of the light exceeds the alarm limit, for
instance, if the box product is opened.
4. The MSP430F1612 microcontroller (Texas Instruments, USA)
was chosen after a benchmark comparing characteristics
between several devices. It has three different power consump-
tion modes, an internal memory of 55 Kbytes flash and 5 Kbytes
RAM and the possibility to be supplied by two different voltages
in both digital and analog part. An external Electrically-Erasable
Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM) memory was also
incorporated to the tag.
5. In order to reduce the power consumption, a Complex Program-
mable Logic Device (CPLD) with ultra low power consumption
at 1.8 V supply was used to implement all the communication
protocol into it, avoiding the use of a high frequency clock for
microcontroller.
6. A lithium battery LFP25 (Varta, Germany) with a total capacity
of 25 mA.h was used to power the microcontroller and the sen-
sor. This battery has a nominal voltage of 3 V. In order to obtain
1.8 V for the digital part, a DC–DC step down converter was
included.
The consumption of the device was calculated using the data-
sheet values for every component during both active and low
power modes. The total consumption increases with the sampling
frequency in a linear way. The comparison of this calculation with
the total capacity of the Varta battery (25mAh) gives an estimation
of a working time (without changing the battery) of about 5 days,
taking a measurement every second, and about 29 days, taking a
measurement every 6 s.
2.3. Software
The smart tag can be written, activated and read-out by means
of the reader connected by a USB port to a laptop running a com-
munication software specifically developed for this work.
The microcontroller of the RFID tag was programmed to man-
age both the data acquisition and the RFID communications. Data
acquisition can be triggered by two methods that the user can
choose on the software: alarm triggered and time triggered. The
sampling frequency and the alarm range can also be defined by
the user through the communication software. In the alarm mode,
only sensor values exceeding an alarm threshold are stored with
the corresponding alarm time. In the time triggered mode, the sys-
tem acquires sensor data at the programmed sampling frequency.
Even in this mode, the system may acquire additional sensor val-
ues if the light sensor gives an alarm.
The smart tag memory stored all the monitored values together
with the traceability data, which could be recalled at different
stages of the logistic chain.
2.4. Laboratory tests
Initially, laboratory tests in a climatic chamber Dycometal mini-
test CCK 2.5/100 (Dycometal, Spain) were conducted to validate the
RFID smart tag inlays. Two temperature ramps were programmed:
the first one from 25 °C down to 2.5 °C in 1 h, and the second one
from 2.5 °C up to 30 °C in 29 h.
For this validation, the data acquired by one rigid tag and one
flexible tag prototypes were compared with those acquired by a
commercial data logger, Tiny tag Ultra 2 (Gemini Data Loggers,
UK). The three devices were programmed to measure every 2
min, and were switched on at the same time.
Power consumption tests were also conducted to ensure en-
ough battery on the tag for the field tests. For this tests the pack-
aged prototypes were kept measuring temperature and humidity
every 15 min for 15 days. This period is longer than the time re-
quired for the fresh fish logistic chain monitoring.
2.5. Fresh fish chain scenario
For demonstration purposes of the RFID smart tag, an intercon-
tinental fresh fish logistic chain was selected, the South African
fresh hake commercial chain to the European market (Fig. 2). This
chain begins with the fish capture and transport to the processing
factory in refrigerated trucks. At the factory the fish is gutted, sized
and packed in polystyrene boxes. At that moment, alphanumeric
tags including country of origin, product specie, net weight, catch
date, method and vessel, presentation, size and all necessary data
are attached to the boxes. Then, a refrigerated truck transports
the fish boxes from the processing factory to the origin airport in
South Africa in a 12 h journey. The flight to the destination airport
in Europe takes about 12 h long. Once in Europe, in the logistic
company the fish boxes are re-organised according to their desti-
nation and are re-expedited to the wholesalers. Finally, another
refrigerated truck transports the fish boxes to the retailers. The
whole logistic chain can take about 3 days from the capture of
the fish to the consumer.
2.6. Validation field tests
Prior to monitoring the complete cold chain from South Africa,
real tests with fish were performed during a trip in a refrigerated
 E. Abad et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 394–399
Fig. 2. Schematic representation of the fresh fish logistic chain selected for this demonstration: the South African fresh hake commercial chain for the European market.
truck from the Perishable Centre of Frankfurt Airport (Germany), to
the Perishable Centre of Vitoria Airport (Spain). For this first field
test, three prototype tags (two rigid and one flexible) were used.
The commercial data logger Smart TXi Label (PakSense, USA) was
also used for results comparison. This commercial label is not a
RFID tag.
The fish load was fresh hake coming from South Africa by plane
to Frankfurt Airport. Considering the very extreme environment of
the chilled fish (because of the presence of water, salt and ice), it
was strictly necessary to protect the tag inlay presented in Fig. 1.
The first approach was to use IP65 commercial boxes (Bopla, Ger-
many) to protect the inlays, as shown in Fig. 3, before placing the
smart tags within the polystyrene boxes in contact with the fish
(see Fig. 4). Moreover, to carry out the humidity measurements,
and to avoid malfunctions in the electronics caused by water con-
densation, it was necessary to use a SF1 filtercap (Sensirion, Swit-
zerland), placed in a hole on the top of the IP67 housing box that
provided protection to the SHT15 sensor. The RFID tag was placed
on a corner of the fish box to ensure a correct real-time reading of
the temperature and relative humidity measurements (maximum
reading distance of about 10 cm) from the outside without the
need of opening the fish box.
All RFID smart tag prototypes were programmed to log temper-
ature and relative humidity measurements every 2 min, and they
were all activated at the same time. The tags were introduced in-
side the polystyrene boxes (as shown in Fig. 4) once the fish load
arrived in the European Union and passed the mandatory veteri-
nary inspection. After sealing the fish boxes, the load was sent by
road to Vitoria in a refrigerated truck.
Fig. 3. Smart tag inlay inside the commercial IP65 housing box used for protection.
397
In the second validation field test, the temperature monitoring
with the RFID tags began in the processing factory in South Africa,
where the tags were placed inside the fish boxes, and continued at
each step of the food chain until the retailer distribution in Vitoria
(Spain). Important traceability data such as origin, specie, capture
data, etc. were also recorded in the tag and traced along the whole
logistic chain according to the Tracefish Standard (CEN, 2003).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Laboratory tests
Fig. 5 shows the results obtained in the laboratory tests. Both
the rigid and flexible tag prototypes detected the same tempera-
ture fluctuations as the commercial datalogger Tiny Tag, during
the fast temperature changes (part A of Fig. 5) as well as during
the slow changes (part B).
3.2. Field tests
Results obtained in the first field tests on the trip from Frankfurt
to Vitoria are represented in Fig. 6. The peaks obtained can be cor-
related with the following travel events: section A of Fig. 6 illus-
trates the room temperature at the offices of the Perishable
Centre in Frankfurt Airport, where the tags were written and acti-
vated. After that, the polystyrene boxes were taken inside the cold
storage rooms of the Perishable Centre, which has a controlled
temperature between 2 and 3 °C. This temperature decrease was
Fig. 4. Smart tag placed inside a polystyrene box with the fish and the cooling gels.
398 E. Abad et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 394–399
Fig. 5. Time dependence of the temperature measured by a tag prototype with a
flexible inlay, a tag prototype with a rigid inlay and a commercial data logger (Tiny
tag) inside a climatic chamber with programmed temperature ramps. The
frequency of the measurements was 2 min.
Fig. 6. Time dependence of the temperature measured by a flexible tag (Sensor
Flexible), two rigid tags (Sensor 8 and Sensor 9) and a commercial data logger
(PakSense Smart TXi Label) during fish transport from Frankfurt to Vitoria in a
refrigerated truck. The frequency of the measurements was 2 min.
measured by all the devices as it can be seen in section B of Fig. 6.
Then, the fish boxes were loaded into the truck. At that point, the
tags measured a 2 °C temperature increment (see section C of
Fig. 6). Once the truck was on the road, the temperature was con-
stant (section D of Fig. 6) during the 17-h trip to Saint Jean de Luz
(France), where a partial unload was programmed. The effect of the
unload can be seen in section E of Fig. 6 as a 3 °C temperature
increment. When the partial unload was done, the truck departed
from Saint Jean de Luz to Vitoria, which took approximately 2 h
and 10 min. The evolution of the temperature during this period
can be observed in section F of Fig. 6. The last unload of the fish
in the Perishable Centre of Vitoria Airport, corresponded to a 3 °C
temperature increment in the region G of Fig. 6. Finally, section
Fig. 7. Time dependence of the temperature and humidity measured by two rigid
tags (sensor 6 and sensor 9) along the complete fresh hake chain from South Africa
to Vitoria. Sensor 6 had a filtercap installed in the housing box to measure external
relative humidity and the sensor 9 had no filtercap. The frequency of the
measurements was 5 min.
H of Fig. 6 shows the controlled temperature inside the cold stor-
age rooms of Vitoria Airport Perishable Centre.
From the data comparison, it can be seen that one of the rigid
prototypes (sensor 9) and the flexible prototype show slow tem-
perature changes, while the other rigid prototype (sensor 8) and
the commercial tag PakSense Smart TXi Label present fast temper-
ature variations. These differences can be explained by the differ-
ent placement of the tags inside the fish box. The rigid sensor 9
and the flexible prototype were located closer to the ice bag
accompanying the fish, avoiding fast temperature changes. In
Fig. 6 it can also be appreciated that sensor 8 has a faster response
than the Smart TXi Label.
The tests conducted demonstrate the correct operation of the
developed systems in real conditions. Moreover, these systems
have faster response than a commercial data logger.
Once all these tests were concluded and the functionality of the
system was demonstrated, the second field test was conducted in
order to monitor the temperature and humidity data of a fish cargo
from the fish processing plant of Mossel Bay (South Africa) to the
Perishable Centre of Vitoria Airport (Spain).
Two rigid tags were sent to Mossel Bay, one of them with the
filtercap installed in the housing box (sensor 6) and the other
one without filtercap (sensor 9). Fig. 7 shows the temperature
and humidity data recorded by both tags. Again the peaks can be
correlated with some events that happened along the logistic chain
as follows: once the fish was processed and packed into the poly-
styrene boxes, a cold-shock treatment was applied to cool down
the fish to 15 °C (section A of Fig. 7) before loading it into a refrig-
erated truck for a 14-h trip heading for the facilities of the Perish-
able Centre of the Cape Town International Airport (section B of
Fig. 7). At the Perishable Centre, the fish passed a veterinary
inspection in order to ensure the required freshness and quality,
which took 5 h (corresponding to section C of Fig. 7). The aircraft
loading can be appreciated as a 5 °C increment between parts C
and D of Fig. 7. The air travel from Cape Town to Vitoria, which
took 12 h, corresponds to part D of Fig. 7. During the unload of
the aircraft a humidity increment occurred, that can be seen be-
tween sections D and E of Fig. 7, whereas the temperature was con-
stant. Once the fish boxes arrived at the Perishable Centre of
Vitoria Airport, they underwent another veterinary inspection,
which matched section E of Fig. 7. Finally, the fish boxes were
 E. Abad et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 93 (2009) 394–399
stored into the cold storage rooms of the Perishable Centre at 0 °C,
temperature shown in section E of Fig. 7.
The humidity measurements show a large difference between
the data coming from both sensors. This difference can be easily
explained by the fact that sensor 6 was inside a protecting box
with a hole and a filtercap to measure the external humidity,
whereas sensor 9 was sealed inside the box (with no hole in it),
measuring thus the humidity conditions inside the housing box.
For that reason the real data for relative humidity surrounding
the fish are coming from sensor 6. It is very interesting to observe
that the humidity data can be even more sensible to the events
occurring along the logistic chain than the temperature ones.
Fig. 7 also evidences the differences between transport condi-
tions (from B to E) where the temperature and humidity presented
almost periodic fluctuations, in comparison with the storage condi-
tions where both parameters were stable (section E). A possible
explanation to these periodic fluctuations is the location of the fish
boxes containing the sensors very close to the air refrigeration sys-
tems of the aircraft and truck.
For these tests, all the data uploading and downloading was
performed using the commercial reader connected by a USB port
to a laptop computer running the specifically developed software.
However, the use of portable terminals for these operations is
planned. In addition, a commercial credit card-like packaging or
the integration of the smart tags in the polystyrene boxes will be
explored in the future.
4. Conclusions
A RFID smart tag including temperature and relative humidity
sensing capabilities was developed for food traceability and cold
chain monitoring purposes. The system was demonstrated and val-
idated along an intercontinental fresh fish logistic chain.
The smart tag developed in this work presents important
advantages regarding these conventional tools. The main one is
that this is an automated system that integrates online traceability
data and chill chain conditions monitoring. Moreover, a key aspect
of this RFID system is the fact that the data can be read-out at any
time of the logistic chain without opening the polystyrene boxes
containing the fish and the tags. Many tags can be read at the same
time as they pass through a reader in a fully automated way. Fur-
thermore, the tag price in high added value products, as the case
presented here, is affordable since there would be only one tag
per box. These developed RFID tags can also measure and resist
temperatures below 0 °C, so they can be very useful to monitor fro-
zen foods logistic chains. The integration of a humidity sensor
makes the system specially sensitive to changes in the storage
conditions.
399
In summary, the innovative system validated in this work:
1. allowed tracing if the expected temperature range were main-
tained on the way from the producer to the consumer,
2. provided real-time traceability information of the product to
the different fish/food distribution chain links,
3. allowed getting a better safety and quality control along the
complete fish/food logistic chain.
Therefore, the RFID smart tag developed can help to improve
the competitiveness of the fish/food companies, improve their lo-
gistic management, and also to reinforce the confidence of the con-
sumers in the fish/food logistic chain.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the European Commission thought
the Project no. FP6-IST-1-508774-IP. The authors wish to thank
the collaboration of Mr. J.M. Iriondo, General Manager of Maser
Microelectronica, and Mr. J.M. Navajas, General Manager of Deco-
exsa Perishable Centre.
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