Introduction

Today I am going to talk about my envisioned research on EM transduction based chipless RFID
Sensors to apply in Precision Agriculture.

Outline
The framework of my presentation would include the background information in terms of the
literature review followed by the research motivation and the specific aims of my research.
Thereafter, I will give a brief illustration on the initial research that I conducted for the last one year.
I will also talk about the proposed research to fulfil the research aims followed by specific
contributions of my work.

Background Information
Precision Agriculture
It is a management concept that involves the collection and processing data regarding the variations
in soil properties and the surrounding environment.

Fig. 1 shows 3 agricultural sites with different sensors. These sensors transmit their info to a
monitoring station or farmhouse wirelessly which are then transferred to a centralized control
station where the farmers o agronomists can analyse the data.

Sensors for PA
In my literature review, I have mostly focused on the state of the art commercial sensors used in PA.
I have also done a comprehensive review on EM transduction based chipless sensors. This leads us
to determine few common features and limitations of the existing sensors.

Literature Review
Soil moisture
 Soil moisture profiles are critical for efficient irrigation system and cropping practices.
 It is very important to save water in agricultural sector as it accounts for almost 65% of
Australia’s total water usage.
 10% water saving is equivalent to one-third of total water usage by capital cities.
 Commercial available soil moisture sensors are bulky and expensive.

Soil Temperature
 Seed germination gets hampered at low temperature, even if it germinates gets become
very weak and vulnerable to pests and diseases.
 Nutrients such as phosphorus become less available. Phosphorus is required for root growth.
 An optimum temperature is required for plant growth.
 No less than 200 US $ for both cases

Soil Crack
 Performance of furrow irrigation systems depends on water infiltration. Soil with high
infiltration rate requires short furrow lengths.
 Cracks allow water to penetrate much faster. So furrow width can be determined with the
knowledge of crack.

Soil strain
  Shrinkage Reduces crop production and affects soil properties.

Gas
 Higher concentration of atmospheric gases - forecasted to change global environment.
 Agriculture relies on natural resources which are influenced by environment.

Common features of commercially available sensors in PA

 Expensive sensor nodes and readers.
 Wired

RFID
 Two major components- TAG and Reader
 Tag sends backscattered signals with id info.
-Non-line-of-sight reading allows it to be used in any environments.
- Along with ID -Can monitor surrounding environments using sensor enabled tags
EM Transduction Principle
 RF transducer transforms physical parameter variation into a RF parameter modification
- Resonance frequency, RF impedance, Quality factor, Radar cross section (RCS) level,
Time domain Reflectometry (TDR) signature
EM Transduction Principle Chipless RFID Sensors
 Passive- No integrated IC and signal processing circuitry

State of the Art Chipless Sensors

 Common feature- resonance variation
 No ID except moisture sensor
 Not printable
 Moisture sensor-though printable- just proof of concept

Motivation
 Can be made multiplatform
- More than one physical parameter can be monitored using a single sensor

Preliminary Research
Chipless RFID Crack Sensor

 Explain the working principle.

 The main hypothesis of this work is to provide high resolution sensing for detecting crack
accurately. This uses SWB pulse which is extremely short due to higher bandwidth. A
comparison of UWB and SWB sensors are shown here.
SWB Antenna

 This antenna can be used as a reader antenna for the crack sensor.

Proposed Research
Development of Chipless RFID Sensors

 High Q Metamaterials produces highly sensitive response against any physical changes in
environment
 Smart material that changes their electro-chemical properties with environmental
parameters