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SECURITY IN
RFID AND SENSOR
NETWORKS

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


WIRELESS NETWORKS
AND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS
Dr. Yan Zhang, Series Editor
Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
E-mail: yanzhang@ieee.org

Broadband Mobile Multimedia: Resource, Mobility and


Techniques and Applications Security Management in
Yan Zhang, Shiwen Mao, Wireless Networks and Mobile
Laurence T. Yang, and Thomas M Chen Communications
ISBN: 978-1-4200-5184-1 Yan Zhang, Honglin Hu,
and Masayuki Fujise
Cooperative Wireless ISBN: 978-0-8493-8036-5
Communications
Yan Zhang, Hsiao-Hwa Chen, Security in RFID and Sensor Networks
and Mohsen Guizani Yan Zhang and Paris Kitsos
ISBN: 978-1-4200-6469-8 ISBN: 978-1-4200-6839-9

Distributed Antenna Systems: Security in Wireless Mesh


Open Architecture for Future Networks
Wireless Communications Yan Zhang, Jun Zheng and Honglin Hu
Honglin Hu, Yan Zhang, and Jijun Luo ISBN: 978-0-8493-8250-5
ISBN: 978-1-4200-4288-7
Unlicensed Mobile Access
The Internet of Things: From RFID to Technology: Protocols, Architectures,
the Next-Generation Pervasive Security, Standards and Applications
Networked Systems Yan Zhang, Laurence T. Yang,
Lu Yan, Yan Zhang, Laurence T. Yang, and Jianhua Ma
and Huansheng Ning ISBN: 978-1-4200-5537-5
ISBN: 978-1-4200-5281-7
Wireless Mesh Networking:
Millimeter Wave Technology in Architectures, Protocols and
Wireless PAN, LAN and MAN Standards
Shao-Qiu Xiao, Ming-Tuo Zhou Yan Zhang, Jijun Luo, and Honglin Hu
and Yan Zhang ISBN: 978-0-8493-7399-2
ISBN: 978-0-8493-8227-7
Wireless Quality-of-Service:
Mobile WIMAX: Techniques, Standards and
Toward Broadband Wireless Applications
Metropolitan Area Networks Maode Ma, Mieso K. Denko,
Yan Zhang and Hsiao-Hwa Chen and Yan Zhang
ISBN: 978-0-8493-2624-0 ISBN: 978-1-4200-5130-8

AUERBACH PUBLICATIONS
www.auerbach-publications.com
To Order Call: 1-800-272-7737 • Fax: 1-800-374-3401
E-mail: orders@crcpress.com

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


SECURITY IN
RFID AND SENSOR
NETWORKS

Edited by
Yan Zhang
Paris Kitsos

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Auerbach Publications
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
© 2009 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Auerbach is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works


Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4200-6839-9 (Hardcover)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zhang, Yan, 1977-


Security in RFID and sensor networks / Yan Zhang and Paris Kitsos.
p. cm. -- (Wireless networks and mobile communications)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4200-6839-9 (alk. paper)
1. Sensor networks--Security measures. 2. Radio frequency identification systems--Security
measures. I. Kitsos, Paris. II. Title.

TK7872.D48Z42 2009
681’.2--dc22 2008037932

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at


http://www.taylorandfrancis.com
and the Auerbach Web site at
http://www.auerbach-publications.com

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Contents
Editors
Contributors

PART I Security in RFID


Chapter 1 Multi-Tag RFID Systems
Leonid Bolotnyy and Gabriel Robins

Chapter 2 Attacking RFID Systems


Pedro Peris-Lopez, Julio Cesar Hernandez-Castro,
Juan M. Estevez-Tapiador, and Arturo Ribagorda

Chapter 3 RFID Relay Attacks: System Analysis, Modeling, and Implementation


Augusto Lima, Ali Miri, and Monica Nevins

Chapter 4 Physical Privacy and Security in RFID Systems


Leonid Bolotnyy and Gabriel Robins

Chapter 5 Authentication Protocols in RFID Systems


Goran Pantelić, Slobodan Bojanić, and Violeta Tomašević

Chapter 6 Lightweight Cryptography for Low-Cost RFID Tags


Pedro Peris-Lopez, Julio Cesar Hernandez-Castro,
Juan M. Estevez-Tapiador, and Arturo Ribagorda

Chapter 7 Distance-Bounding Protocols for RFID


Jorge Munilla Fajardo and Alberto Peinado Domínguez

Chapter 8 Secure Proximity Identification for RFID


Gerhard P. Hancke and Saar Drimer

Chapter 9 Public Key in RFIDs: Appeal for Asymmetry


Erwing R. Sanchez, Filippo Gandino, Bartolomeo Montrucchio,
and Maurizio Rebaudengo

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Chapter 10 Scalable RFID Privacy Protecting Schemes
Sepideh Fouladgar and Hossam Afifi

Chapter 11 A Secure RFID Access Control Mechanism


Dijiang Huang and Zhibin Zhou

Chapter 12 Threat Modeling in EPC-Based Information Sharing Networks


Alexander Ilic, Trevor Burbridge, Andrea Soppera,
Florian Michahelles, and Elgar Fleisch

Chapter 13 RFID-Based Secure DVD Content Distribution


Shiguo Lian and Zhongxuan Liu

PART II Security in Wireless Sensor Networks


Chapter 14 A Survey on Security in Wireless Sensor Networks
Qinghua Wang and Tingting Zhang

Chapter 15 Intrusion Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks


Thanassis Giannetsos, Ioannis Krontiris, Tassos Dimitriou,
and Felix C. Freiling

Chapter 16 Key Establishment in Wireless Sensor Networks


Ioannis Chatzigiannakis and Elisavet Konstantinou

Chapter 17 Malicious Node Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks


Yu Chen, Hao Chen, and Wei-Shinn Ku

Chapter 18 Jamming in Wireless Sensor Networks


Aristides Mpitziopoulos, Damianos Gavalas,
Charalampos Konstantopoulos, and Grammati Pantziou

Chapter 19 Concealed Data Aggregation for Wireless Sensor Networks


Aldar C.-F. Chan

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Chapter 20 Message Authentication in Surveillance Networks
Raymond Sbrusch and T. Andrew Yang

Chapter 21 A Broadcasting Authentication Protocol with DoS and Fault Tolerance


for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks
Yixin Jiang, Minghui Shi, Xuemin (Sherman) Shen,
Chuang Lin, and Xiaowen Chu

PART III Security in Integerated RFID and WSN


Chapter 22 Threats and Vulnerabilities of RFID and Beyond
Jaap-Henk Hoepman and Thijs Veugen

Chapter 23 Finite Field Arithmetic for RFID and Sensor Networks


José L. Imaña

Chapter 24 Designing Secure Wireless Embedded Systems


Ilker Onat and Ali Miri

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Editors
Yan Zhang received his BS in communication engineering from Nanjing University of Post and
Telecommunications, China; his MS in electrical engineering from Beijing University of Aeronau-
tics and Astronautics, China; and his PhD in the School of Electrical & Electronics Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is an associate editor on the editorial board of
Wiley Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (WCMC); Security and Communication
Networks (Wiley); International Journal of Network Security; International Journal of Ubiqui-
tous Computing; Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS); International Journal of
Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems (IJAACS); International Journal of Ultra Wide-
band Communications and Systems (IJUWBCS); and International Journal of Smart Home (IJSH).
He is currently serving as the book series editor for Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications
book series (Auerbach Publications, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group). He serves as guest coeditor
for the following: IEEE Intelligent Systems, special issue on “Context-Aware Middleware and Intelli-
gent Agents for Smart Environments”; Wiley Security and Communication Networks special issue on
“Secure Multimedia Communication”; Springer Wireless Personal Communications special issue on
selected papers from ISWCS 2007; Elsevier Computer Communications special issue on “Adaptive
Multicarrier Communications and Networks”; International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive
Communications Systems (IJAACS) special issue on “Cognitive Radio Systems”; The Journal of
Universal Computer Science (JUCS) special issue on “Multimedia Security in Communication”;
Springer Journal of Cluster Computing special issue on “Algorithm and Distributed Computing
in Wireless Sensor Networks”; EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
(JWCN) special issue on “OFDMA Architectures, Protocols, and Applications”; and Springer Jour-
nal of Wireless Personal Communications special issue on “Security and Multimodality in Pervasive
Environments.”
He is serving as coeditor for several books: Resource, Mobility and Security Management in
Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications; Wireless Mesh Networking: Architectures, Pro-
tocols and Standards; Millimeter-Wave Technology in Wireless PAN, LAN and MAN; Distributed
Antenna Systems: Open Architecture for Future Wireless Communications; Security in Wireless
Mesh Networks; Mobile WiMAX: Toward Broadband Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks; Wire-
less Quality-of-Service: Techniques, Standards and Applications; Broadband Mobile Multimedia:
Techniques and Applications; Internet of Things: From RFID to the Next-Generation Pervasive
Networked Systems; Unlicensed Mobile Access Technology: Protocols, Architectures, Security,
Standards and Applications; Cooperative Wireless Communications; WiMAX Network Planning
and Optimization; RFID Security: Techniques, Protocols and System-On-Chip Design; Autonomic
Computing and Networking; Security in RFID and Sensor Networks; Handbook of Research on
Wireless Security; Handbook of Research on Secure Multimedia Distribution; RFID and Sensor
Networks; Cognitive Radio Networks; Wireless Technologies for Intelligent Transportation Sys-
tems; Vehicular Networks: Techniques, Standards and Applications; Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiple Access (OFDMA); Game Theory for Wireless Communications and Networking; and Delay
Tolerant Networks: Protocols and Applications.
Dr. Zhang serves as symposium cochair for the following: ChinaCom 2009; program cochair
for BROADNETS 2009; program cochair for IWCMC 2009; workshop cochair for ADHOC-
NETS 2009; general cochair for COGCOM 2009; program cochair for UC-Sec 2009; journal
liasion chair for IEEE BWA 2009; track cochair for ITNG 2009; publicity cochair for SMPE
2009; publicity cochair for COMSWARE 2009; publicity cochair for ISA 2009; general cochair
for WAMSNet 2008; publicity cochair for TrustCom 2008; general cochair for COGCOM 2008;
workshop cochair for IEEE APSCC 2008; general cochair for WITS-08; program cochair for PCAC
2008; general cochair for CONET 2008; workshop chair for SecTech 2008; workshop chair for

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


SEA 2008; workshop co-organizer for MUSIC’08; workshop co-organizer for 4G-WiMAX 2008;
publicity cochair for SMPE-08; international journals coordinating cochair for FGCN-08; publicity
cochair for ICCCAS 2008; workshop chair for ISA 2008; symposium cochair for ChinaCom 2008;
industrial cochair for MobiHoc 2008; program cochair for UIC-08; general cochair for CoNET
2007; general cochair for WAMSNet 2007; workshop cochair FGCN 2007; program vice-cochair
for IEEE ISM 2007; publicity cochair for UIC-07; publication chair for IEEE ISWCS 2007; program
cochair for IEEE PCAC’07; special track cochair for “Mobility and Resource Management in Wire-
less/Mobile Networks” in ITNG 2007; special session co-organizer for “Wireless Mesh Networks” in
PDCS 2006; and a member of technical program committee for numerous international conferences,
including ICC, GLOBECOM, WCNC, PIMRC, VTC, CCNC, AINA, and ISWCS. He received the
Best Paper Award in the IEEE 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking
and Applications (AINA-07).
Since August 2006, he has been working with Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
(http://www.simula.no/). His research interests include resource, mobility, spectrum, data, energy,
and security management in wireless networks and mobile computing. He is a member of IEEE and
IEEE ComSoc.

Paris Kitsos received his BS in physics in 1999 and his PhD in 2004 from the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, both at the University of Patras. Since June 2005 he has
been a research fellow with the Digital Systems & Media Computing Laboratory, School of Sci-
ence & Technology, Hellenic Open University (HOU), Greece (http://dsmc.eap.gr/en/main.php).
He is an associate editor of Computer and Electrical Engineering (an international journal [Else-
vier]) and a member on the editorial board of International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing
(Hindawi). He is also the coeditor of RFID Security. Techniques, Protocols and System-On-Chip
Design published by Springer in 2008. He has participated as a program and technical committee
member in more than 40 conferences and workshops in the area of his research. He has also par-
ticipated as a guest coeditor in the following special issues: Computer and Electrical Engineering
(an international journal [Elsevier Ltd]) “Security of Computers and Networks”; Wireless Personal
Communications (an international journal [Springer]) “Information Security and Data Protection in
Future Generation Communication and Networking”; and Security and Communication Network
(SCN) (Wiley journal) “Secure Multimedia Communication.”
Dr. Kitsos’ research interests include VLSI design and efficient hardware implementations of
cryptographic algorithms and security protocols for wireless communication systems, and hardware
implementations of RFID cryptography algorithms. He is an adjunct lecturer in the Department
of Computer Science and Technology, University of Peloponnese. He has published more than 60
publications in international journals, books, and technical reports, and also reviews manuscripts for
books, international journals, and conferences/workshops in the areas of his research. He is also a
member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Contributors
Hossam Afifi Yu Chen
Mobility and Security Group Department of Electrical and Computer
Department of Wireless Networks and Engineering
Multimedia Services Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering
Institut National des Télécommunications State University of New York
Evry, France Binghamton, New York

Slobodan Bojanić Xiaowen Chu


Department of Electronic Engineering Department of Computer Science
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid Hong Kong Baptist University
Madrid, Spain Kowloon, Hong Kong

Leonid Bolotnyy Tassos Dimitriou


Department of Computer Science Athens Information Technology
School of Engineering and Applied Science Athens, Greece
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
Alberto Peinado Domínguez
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros
Trevor Burbridge de Telecomunicación
British Telecommunications plc University of Málaga
Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath Málaga, Spain
Ipswich, United Kingdom
Saar Drimer
Aldar C.-F. Chan Computer Laboratory
Department of Computer Science University of Cambridge
National University of Singapore Cambridge, United Kingdom
Singapore
Juan M. Estevez-Tapiador
Ioannis Chatzigiannakis Computer Science Department
Department of Computer Engineering Carlos III University of Madrid
and Informatics Madrid, Spain
University of Patras
Patras, Greece Jorge Munilla Fajardo
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros
and de Telecomunicación
University of Málaga
Computer Technology Institute Málaga, Spain
Patras, Greece
Elgar Fleisch
Hao Chen Department of Management, Technology,
Department of Electrical and Computer and Economics
Engineering Eidgenössische Technische Hochscule
Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering Zurich, Switzerland
State University of New York
Binghamton, New York and

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Institute of Technology Management Dijiang Huang
University of St. Gallen Computer Science and Engineering Department
Saint Gallen, Switzerland Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
Sepideh Fouladgar
Mobility and Security Group
Alexander Ilic
Department of Wireless Networks and
Department of Management, Technology,
Multimedia Services
and Economics
Institut National des Télécommunications
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule
Evry, France
Zurich, Switzerland
Felix C. Freiling
Department of Informatics José L. Imaña
University of Mannheim Department of Computer Architecture
Mannheim, Germany and Systems Engineering
Faculty of Physics
Filippo Gandino Complutense University of Madrid
Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica Madrid, Spain
Politecnico di Torino
Torino, Italy
Yixin Jiang
Damianos Gavalas Department of Electrical and Computer
Department of Cultural Technology Engineering
and Communication University of Waterloo
University of Aegean Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Lesvos, Greece
Elisavet Konstantinou
Thanassis Giannetsos
Department of Information and Communication
Athens Information Technology
Systems Engineering
Athens, Greece
University of the Aegean
Gerhard P. Hancke Karlovassi, Greece
Smart Card Centre
Information Security Group Charalampos Konstantopoulos
Royal Holloway University of London Department of Informatics
London, United Kingdom University of Piraeus
Piraeus, Greece
Julio Cesar Hernandez-Castro
Computer Science Department
Carlos III University of Madrid Ioannis Krontiris
Madrid, Spain Athens Information Technology
Athens, Greece
Jaap-Henk Hoepman
TNO Information and Communication Wei-Shinn Ku
Technology Department of Computer Science
Groningen, the Netherlands and Software Engineering
Auburn University
and Auburn, Alabama
Digital Security Group
Faculty of Science Shiguo Lian
Radboud University France Telecom R&D Beijing
Nijmegen, the Netherlands Beijing, China

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Augusto Lima Goran Pantelić
School of Information Technology Network Security Technology
and Engineering Belgrade, Serbia
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Grammati Pantziou
Department of Informatics
Chuang Lin Technological Educational Institution
Department of Computer Science of Athens
and Technology Athens, Greece
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China Pedro Peris-Lopez
Computer Science Department
Zhongxuan Liu Carlos III University of Madrid
France Telecom R&D Beijing Madrid, Spain
Beijing, China
Maurizio Rebaudengo
Florian Michahelles Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica
Department of Management, Technology, Politecnico di Torino
and Economics Torino, Italy
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule
Zurich, Switzerland Arturo Ribagorda
Computer Science Department
Ali Miri Carlos III University of Madrid
School of Information Technology Madrid, Spain
and Engineering
Gabriel Robins
and Department of Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Virginia
University of Ottawa
Charlottesville, Virginia
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Bartolomeo Montrucchio Erwing R. Sanchez


Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica
Politecnico di Torino Politecnico di Torino
Torino, Italy Torino, Italy

Aristides Mpitziopoulos Raymond Sbrusch


Department of Cultural Technology Division of Computing and Mathematics
and Communication University of Houston–Clear Lake
University of Aegean Houston, Texas
Lesvos, Greece
Xuemin (Sherman) Shen
Monica Nevins Department of Electrical and Computer
Department of Mathematics and Statistics Engineering
University of Ottawa University of Waterloo
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Ilker Onat Minghui Shi


School of Information Technology Department of Electrical and Computer
and Engineering Engineering
University of Ottawa University of Waterloo
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Andrea Soppera Qinghua Wang
British Telecommunications plc Department of Information Technology
Martlesham Heath and Media
Ipswich, United Kingdom Mid Sweden University
Sundsvall, Sweden
Violeta Tomašević
School of Applied Informatics
Singidunum University T. Andrew Yang
Belgrade, Serbia Division of Computing and Mathematics
University of Houston–Clear Lake
Thijs Veugen Houston, Texas
TNO Information and Communication
Technology Tingting Zhang
Delft, the Netherlands Department of Information Technology
and Media
and Mid Sweden University
Sundsvall, Sweden
Department of Mediamatics
Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Mathematics, and Computer Science Zhibin Zhou
(EEMCS) Computer Science and Engineering Department
Delft University of Technology Arizona State University
Delft, the Netherlands Tempe, Arizona

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Part I
Security in RFID

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
1 Multi-Tag RFID Systems
Leonid Bolotnyy and Gabriel Robins

CONTENTS

1.1 Introduction.. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Multi-Tag Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1 Optimal Placement of Multi-Tags .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Experimental Equipment and Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
1.4 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
1.4.1 Linear Antennas .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
1.4.2 Circular Antennas .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
1.5 Importance of Tag Orientation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
1.6 Controlling Experimental Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
1.6.1 Tag Variability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
1.6.2 Reader Variability .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
1.7 Object Detection in the Presence of Metals and Liquids .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
1.8 Effect of Object Quantity on Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
1.9 Effect of Multi-Tags on Anticollision Algorithms .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
1.10 Multi-Tags as Security Enhancers .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
1.10.1 Chaffing and Winnowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
1.10.2 Preventing Side-Channel Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
1.10.3 Splitting ID among Multi-Tags .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
1.11 Applications of Multi-Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
1.11.1 Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
1.11.2 Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
1.11.3 Safety . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
1.11.4 Object Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
1.11.5 Packaging .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
1.11.6 Theft Prevention .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
1.11.7 Tagging Bulk Materials .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
1.12 Economics of Multi-Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
1.12.1 Costs and Benefits of Multi-Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
1.12.2 Tag Manufacturing Yield Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
1.12.3 RFID Demand Drivers .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
1.12.4 Cost-Effective Tag Design Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
1.12.5 Summary of Multi-Tag Economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
1.13 Conclusion .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Acknowledgment .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
References . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a promising technology for automated object identification
that does not require line of sight, and accurate object identification is the primary objective of RFID.
However, many factors such as object occlusions, metal/liquid opaqueness, and environmental con-
ditions (e.g., radio noise) impede object detection, thus degrading the overall availability, reliability,
and dependability of RFID systems. For example, a recent major study by Wal-Mart has shown that
object detection probability can be as low as 66 percent. To improve the accuracy of object identifi-
cation, we propose the tagging of objects with multiple tags. We show that this strategy dramatically
improves the efficacy of RFID systems, even in the face of (radiopaque) metals and liquids, radio
noise, and other interfering factors. We define different types of multi-tags and examine their benefits
using analytics, simulations, and experiments with commercial RFID equipment. We investigate the
effects of multi-tags on anticollision algorithms, and develop several techniques that enable multi-
tags to enhance RFID security. We suggest new promising applications of multi-tags, ranging from
improving patient safety to preventing illegal deforestation. We analyze the economics of multi-tag
RFID systems and argue that the benefits of multi-tags can substantially outweigh the costs in many
current applications, and that this trend will become even more pronounced in the future.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Bar code scanners require a line of sight to the bar codes, and they usually have to be close to the
objects being identified. Moreover, bar codes are scanned one at a time, and bar code scanners (or
the bar codes themselves) must physically move between successive reads. This mechanical process
limits the bar-code read rate to at most a few bar codes per second. On the other hand, RFID readers
can read hundreds of tags per second and they do not require line of sight, thus allowing for fast
automation of the reading process, and therefore making RFID-based identification very appealing
commercially. However, as the identification process is automated, we must ensure the successful
reading of all the tags within the readers’ field to detect all objects.
Object detection is impeded by ubiquitous background radio noise. Moreover, metals and liquids
reflect or absorb radio signals, further degrading the readers’ ability to achieve accurate and complete
tag identification. Missed items, even at a relatively low rate of 1 percent, can result in large financial
losses for businesses with low profit margins that rely on RFID-enabled automatic checkout stations.
This situation is real and serious, because milk, water, juices, and canned/metal-foil-wrapped (i.e.,
Faraday caged) goods are commonly stocked in markets. Experiments by Wal-Mart in 2005 showed
90 percent tag detection at case level, 95 percent tag detection on conveyor belts, and only 66 percent
detection rate of individual items inside fully loaded pallets [1].
A report by the Defense Logistics Agency [2] showed that only 3 percent of the tags attached to
objects moving through the Global Transportation Network (GTN) did not reach the destination (165
single-tagged objects were tracked in this study). However, the same report shows that only 20 percent
of the tags were recorded in the GTN at every checkpoint, and at one of the checkpoints fewer than
2 percent of tags of one particular type were detected. In addition, some of the tags were registered
on arrival, but not on departure. As a result of these low object detection rates, accurate real-time
tracking of objects moving through the GTN network was not possible. This report underscores the
unreliability of object detection using a single RFID tag per object.
Cardinal Health, a multi-billion-dollar healthcare company, conducted RFID trials in 2006 which
showed mixed results [3]. Several product lines were automatically tagged, programmed, and later
tracked. The company reported that only 94.8 percent/97.7 percent of tags were encoded correctly.
The accuracy of product tracking varied widely from ∼8 to 100 percent, depending on the product,
the tracking location, and the tracking stage. Most product detection rates were in the low-80 percent
to mid-90 percent range. These results show the inadequacy of standard RFID solutions for healthcare
applications.
In addition to ambient radio noise, environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity
can also adversely affect the success of object detection [4]. Moreover, objects moving at high speeds

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


can have significantly reduced detection rates. The number of objects stacked together, variation in
tag receptivity (even among tags from the same manufactured batch), and tag aging (and degradation
in general) can diminish the object detection probabilities as well. From the security standpoint,
objects tagged with a single tag are easier to steal (a simple metal foil placed over the tag can block
detection). In addition, RFID systems used in healthcare pose a special dependability challenge,
because RFID system deployment will directly affect patients’ welfare.
To address the problems discussed above, we propose attaching multiple RFID tags to each
object, as opposed to using only a single tag per object [5]. Multi-tags will greatly improve object
detection probabilities and increase reader–multi-tag communication distances, even in the presence
of metallics, liquids, radio noise, and adverse environmental conditions. Multi-tags will greatly
benefit theft deterrence and prevention applications, as well as dependable computing applications
such as healthcare, where higher reliability and safety are required. All these benefits can be achieved
at a reasonable cost, as we discuss below.

1.2 MULTI-TAG APPROACH


We base our analysis of multi-tags on the expected angle of incidence of the radio signal from the
reader to the tag. We perform the analysis for inductive coupling as well as for far-field propagation.
In the case of inductive coupling, Figure 1.1 depicts the angle α of the tag relative to the perpendicular
direction of the signal transmitted from the reader, and gives the formula of the voltage induced in the
tag by the received signal [6]. We analyze the expected voltage in one tag, as well as in ensembles of
two, three, and four identical tags, assuming a fixed frequency, signal strength, and antenna geometry
(i.e., loop area and number of antenna coil turns). In other words, we focus on the parameter that
induces many of the benefits of multi-tags, namely the expected incidence angle of the arriving
signal.
We define the angle β to be the angle between the tag and the direction of the arriving signal
(rather than focusing on the angle between the tag and the perpendicular orientation of the tag to the
B-field). We therefore replace cos(α) with sin(β) in the voltage equation in Figure 1.1. Our goal is
to maximize sin(β) in the voltage equation to maximize the induced voltage and thus the strength of
the received signal. Also, because power ∼ voltage2 on board a tag, we obtain power ∼ sin2 (β).
Similarly, for far-field propagation, the power induced in the antenna by the signal is proportional
to the gain of the antenna, which in turn is proportional to Poynting’s vector p = E × H where E
is the instantaneous electric field intensity and H is the instantaneous magnetic field intensity. We

V0 = 2π f NSB0 cos α
Line of axis
(Tag)
B-field where
f is the frequency of the arrival signal
N is the number of turns of coil in the loop
S is the area in the loop (m2)
B0 is the strength of the arrival signal
α α is the angle of the arrival signal
β
Tag

FIGURE 1.1 Reader-induced voltage on board a tag.

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


also have E ∼ sin(β) and H ∼ sin(β). So, we obtain power ∼ sin2 (β) [7–9]. Therefore, to improve
object detection for both inductive coupling and far-field propagation, we seek to bring the expected
incidence angle β closer to 90◦ .
Besides improvements in expected power generated on board a tag, multi-tags improve object
detection because even if one tag is occluded/damaged, another tag may still be detectable. In our
theoretical analysis of improvements in object detection using multi-tags, we ignore environmental
conditions (e.g., radio noise), object occlusions, presence of metals and liquids in the vicinity of an
object, number of objects stacked together, etc. We will explore the effect of detection impeding
factors in our extensive experimental studies discussed in Section 1.3.

1.2.1 OPTIMAL PLACEMENT OF MULTI-TAGS


The first question is how to orient the tags relative to each other to maximize the expected angle of
incidence of the radio wave with respect to one of the tag antennas. In our analysis, we assume a
uniform distribution for the direction of the arriving signal. Indeed, in many RFID applications the
orientation of a tag’s antenna to the arriving signal can be arbitrary (e.g., products in a shopping cart,
cell phone in a pocket). In the case of a single tag, the tag can be positioned arbitrarily, because its
orientation would not affect the expected (uniformly distributed) signal arrival angle. For two tags,
it is optimal to position them perpendicular to one another in the x–y and x–z planes. Similarly, for
three tags, tags should be positioned pair-wise perpendicularly in the x–y, x–z, and y–z planes. For
four tags, it turns out that to maximize the expected signal incidence angle to at least one of the tags,
it is best to position them parallel to the faces of a tetrahedron, a platonic solid.*
To validate our conjecture of optimal multi-tag placement for two and three tags, we computed
the expected largest grazing angle of the radio signal to one of the tags analytically and using a
simulation. The optimal placement of four tags was validated using simulations only, due to the
considerable complexity of the corresponding analytical expressions. We first compute the expected
largest grazing angle for two tags. Let α be the angle between two tags. Without loss of generality,
let 0 ≤ α ≤ π2 . Then the average grazing angle ξ is

π
180 1  
2π 2

ξ= · Max[Δ1 , |Δ2 |] sin(φ)dθ dφ


π 2π 0 0

where
Δ1 = π2 − φ
Δ2 = Arcsin[sin(α) sin(θ) sin(φ) + cos(α) cos(φ)] [10]

To determine the optimal positioning of two tags, we want to maximize ξ subject to constraint
that 0 ≤ α ≤ π2 . We performed computations of ξ using numerical integration in MATHEMATICA. The
computations showed monotonic increase in ξ as the angle α increases from 0◦ to 90◦ . Therefore,
when two tags are perpendicular to each other the expected largest grazing angle to one of the tags
is maximal and equals ∼47.98◦. We can use the above ξ equation for two planes to compute the
expected grazing angle for one plane by setting α = 0. We obtain the following:
π
180 1    π 
2π 2

ξ= · − φ sin(φ)dθ dφ ≈ 32.7◦
π 2π 0 0 2

*
For five or more tags, it becomes more complicated to analytically determine the optimal relative positioning of the tags,
except for specific special cases, such as for N = 6 where the tags should ideally be placed parallel to the faces of a
dodecahedron, and N = 10 where the tags should be parallel to the faces of an icosahedron.

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


We performed similar computations for three tags. Let α be the angle between the first tag and
the second tag. Let α1 and α2 be angles between tag 1/tag 3 and tag 2/tag 3, respectively. We obtain
an almost identical expected angle formula as for two tags, except that additional coefficient are
present in the body of the integral:

π
180 1  
2π 2

ξ= · Max[Δ1 , |Δ2 |, |Δ3 |] sin(φ)dθ dφ


π 2π 0 0

where
Δ1 = π2 − φ
Δ2 = Arcsin[sin(α) sin(θ) sin(φ) + cos(α) cos(φ)]
Δ3 = Arcsin[x · cos(θ) sin(φ) + y · sin(θ) sin(φ) + z · cos(φ)]
z = cos(α1 )
cos(α2 ) − cos(α) cos(α1 )
y=
√ sin(α)
x = 1 − y2 − z 2

Note, the above average angle ξ equation contains singularities, as it is not defined for some
geometrically impossible (α1 , α2 ) pairs [10]. The average angle ξ equation for three tags is much
more complicated than the equation for two tags, and we computed the equation using numerical
methods in MATHEMATICA for only select values of inter-tag angles α, α1 , α2 . The expected grazing
angle values were computed extensively for all valid discrete (1◦ –90◦) inter-tag angles using the
simulation, which we describe below. The values computed using the simulation agreed closely with
the values computed using MATHEMATICA, giving us confidence in the correctness of the formulas.
The simulation showed that the optimal positioning of three tags is the mutually perpendicular
positioning, resulting in the expected largest grazing angle ∼58.11◦.
To corroborate our analytical computations of the largest average grazing angle, we developed
a software simulator that computes the expected grazing angle for an arbitrary number of tags. The
simulator enumerates all possible multi-tag orientations and for each orientation it calculates the
average value of the maximum angle to any tag over many randomly generated simulated signals.
The result of the simulation is the largest of the average maximum angles over all possible multi-tag
positions. The simulator also records average maximum grazing angles for all orientations for future
comparison with analytical computations.
To calculate the expected angle of incidence for a given multi-tag positioning, our simulator
generates a random uniformly distributed point on the surface of a sphere [11]. This point determines
the direction of a random uniformly distributed radio signal relative to the origin, and calculates the
angle to every tag in the multi-tag ensemble, while recording the largest of these angles. For one- and
two-tag ensembles our simulation generates 10 million such random trials and averages the induced
maximum angles. For three-tag ensembles, it generates 1 million random trials, and for four tags, it
generates 100,000 trials. The runtime of the simulator is (k ·n2m−1 ) where k is the number of random
reader signals, n is the number of possible angles between tags, and m is the number of tags (size
of multi-tag ensemble), m ≥ 1. Some of our simulations ran for several weeks on a single machine.
Also, we ran week-long decomposed parallel computations on a cluster of 64 dual-processor Alpha
PCs through portable batch system job scheduling software.
The results obtained from the analytical computations agree with the experimental results for
one, two, and three tags at many points within a reasonably small error bound. We show the close
match between the analytical and simulation computations for two tags in Figure 1.2. Similar results,
although with smaller precision (due to fewer random trials) were obtained for three tags. The near-
identical analytical and simulation results raise our confidence level in the correctness of the average
angle computations. Accurate computations for one, two, and three tags allowed us to use only

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Average incidence angle for two tags
60

Simulation
50
MATHEMATICA
Average angle (degrees)

40

30

20

10

0
1 9 17 25 33 41 49 57 65 73 81 89
(a) Angle between tag planes

Computation difference
0.025
0.020
0.015
Average angle delta (degrees)

0.010
0.005
0
–0.005 1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49 53 57 61 65 69 73 77 81 85 89

–0.010
–0.015
–0.020
–0.025
(b) Angle between tag planes

FIGURE 1.2 Accuracy of angle computation for two tags. Analytical and simulation computations are in tight
agreement with at most several hundredth of a degree difference. (a) Comparison of analytical and simulation
computations. (b) Computational error.

the simulator to compute the average angle for a larger tag ensemble (i.e., four tags), because the
complex geometries involved make it intractable to analytically compute this quantity. For four tags,
the average maximum grazing angle is ∼61.86◦. Figure 1.3 shows the simulation results of the
expected largest incidence angle for one-, two-, three-, and four-tag configurations.
We note that there is a two-digit increase in the expected angle as we move from one tag to two
tags, and also as we go from two tags to three tags, but only a 3◦ improvement as we move from
three tags to four tags. This suggests that adding an extra tag or two may be beneficial for the purpose
of increasing the induced voltage (and thus improving the communication range), but using four or
more tags will not garner substantial additional benefit in that respect. Nevertheless, even though the
benefit of having more than three tags per object to increase the reader–tag communication range may
be relatively small, there are other benefits to using more than three tags. For example, if an alternate
benefit of multi-tags (e.g., theft prevention or human safety) is the primary goal, we may still benefit

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


70
60
61.86

Angle (degrees)
50 58.11
40 47.98
30
32.7
20
10
0
1 2 3 4
Number of tags

FIGURE 1.3 Expected largest reader signal’s angle to any tag.

Absolute tag power increase


2.8
2.6
2.4
Increase factor

2.2
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
1 2 3 4
Number of tags

FIGURE 1.4 Absolute tag power increase for various number of tags per object.

from using more than three tags per object (and we can achieve further detection improvements by
optimizing the tags’ positioning).
Having computed the expected incidence angle improvements using multi-tags, we can determine
the absolute and relative tag power gains for various multi-tag ensembles. Recalling that power
∼ sin2 (β), Figure 1.4 shows the expected improvements in tag power. An increase in the expected
tag power boosts the expected reader-to-tag communication distance. Figure 1.5 depicts the expected
communication range increase for inductive coupling technologies as the number of tags is increased,
and also for far-field propagation scenarios. These values were computed based on the relation of the
distance between a reader and a tag, and the tag power generated by the reader. For backscattering

technology, the effective communication distance varies as ∼ power; for inductive coupling, the

maximum communication distance varies as ∼ 6 power [12].
Our incidence angle-based analysis assumes that the signal can come from any direction with
equal likelihood, which is realistic for many applications (e.g., goods randomly piled inside a shop-
ping cart, cell phone arbitrarily placed inside a pocket). However, for some applications where the
position/orientation of the object is known in advance or may only span a narrow range of possibil-
ities, the optimal positioning of the tags may be different from the assumption-free ones suggested
above. Similarly, the number of tags may vary among objects, to further optimize overall detection.
Also, in our analysis of optimal multi-tag positioning we considered tag orientations only. However,
to further improve objects detection, multi-tags should be spaced apart to reduce the likelihood of
multiple tags being occluded simultaneously.

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Distance increase factor
1.7
Far-field propagation
1.6

1.5
Increase factor
1.4

1.3
Inductive coupling
1.2

1.1

1
1 2 3 4
Number of tags

FIGURE 1.5 Expected factor of communication range increase for inductive coupling and far-field
propagation as a function of the number of tags per object.

1.3 EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT AND SETUP


To validate our analytical and simulation studies, we conducted an extensive experimental evalua-
tion of multi-tags. Our experiments were performed using commercial FCC-compliant equipment
(Figure 1.6), namely ultrahigh frequency (UHF) readers manufactured by Alien Technology (model
ALR-9800, four antennas, multi-protocol, 915 MHz) and ThingMagic (model Mercury 4). We
utilized sets of linear and circular reader antennas from Alien Technology, and circular reader anten-
nas from ThingMagic. A single Alien Technology reader antenna can either broadcast or receive
signals, whereas the more versatile ThingMagic antenna can both send and receive signals. We used
several types of tags from UPM Raflatac, the world’s leading RFID tag manufacturer. In particu-
lar, we picked unipolar (dipole) UPM Rafsec UHF “Impinj 34 × 54 ETSI/FCC” tags and bipolar
(quadrupole) UPM Rafsec UHF “Impinj 70 × 70 ETSI/FCC” tags for our experiments.
We performed the experiments in an otherwise empty room to minimize radio interference and
signal reflection anomalies. We placed multiple tags on a diverse set of 20 solid nonmetallic objects*

FIGURE 1.6 Multi-tag experimental equipment: Alien Technology Corporation reader and antenna (top
left), ThingMagic reader and antenna (top right), UPM Rafsec and Alien Technology Corporation tag samples
(bottom row).

*
Solid nonmetallic multi-tagged objects included soap bars, cereal boxes, paper plates, plastic boxes, packaged foods, clothing
items, etc.

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


using four tags per object, and a set of 20 metal and liquid-containing objects* using three tags per
object. We positioned tags perpendicular to each other whenever possible, and spread the tags as
far apart in space across an object as possible, to minimize tag occlusions by other tags or objects.
The experiments with solid nonmetallic objects used sets of both unipolar and bipolar tags. The
experiments containing metallic and liquid objects were performed only with unipolar UPM Rafsec
UHF “Impinj 34 × 54 ETSI/FCC” tags.
We positioned Alien Technology reader antennas side-by-side in pairs, with each pair consisting
of a sending and a receiving antenna. Each pair of antennas was equidistant to the center of a plastic
bag containing objects, placed 20.5 in. above the floor, and aligned perpendicularly toward the center
of the bag. We allowed sufficient time for the reader to read all the tags within its range by performing
many tag reads and maintaining adequate time-outs between reads to make sure that the effects of
the environmental noise were minimized. We performed our experiments for linear as well as for
circular antennas using seven different power levels ranging from 25.6 to 31.6 dBm, in increments
of 1 dBm.
In a separate set of experiments, circular ThingMagic antennas were equidistant and perpendicu-
lar to the bag containing the objects, located 33in. above the floor, in the rectangular “gate” formation.
Each ThingMagic antenna was both sending and receiving signals. As with the Alien Technology
hardware, we allowed sufficient reader time for object identification. We randomly (re)shuffled the
tagged objects multiple times to change the tags’ spatial orientations with respect to the reader’s
antennas, to improve the statistical significance of the results (the values reported in the tables and
graphs below are averages over all random object shufflings). We also varied the power emitted by

the antennas, keeping in mind that the communication distance is proportional to power.
We will mostly describe our experiments involving the Alien Technology hardware, because
this equipment allowed us to collect data for both circular and linear antennas. Linear antennas have
smaller angular coverage than circular (omnidirectional) antennas in exchange for greater signal
strength in the specific direction. In the discussions and graphs below, we will implicitly assume
that the Alien Technology equipment was used in each experiment, unless explicitly stated that the
ThingMagic hardware was used instead. Similarly, all the experiments discussed in Section 1.4 have
used the unipolar UPM Rafsec UHF tags “Impinj 34 × 54 ETSI/FCC,” unless explicitly stated that
bipolar tags were used.

1.4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS


1.4.1 LINEAR ANTENNAS
Our experiments show that multi-tags considerably improve object detection probabilities for linear
antennas. The detection probabilities for different numbers of tags per object, different numbers
of reader antennas, and various reader power levels are summarized in Table 1.1. This table
shows that switching from one to two tags per object produces a high double-digit increase in
tag detection probability, and a low double-digit increase when moving from two to three tags,
but only single-digit increase from three to four tags. These results corroborate our theoretical
expectations [13].
Figure 1.7a graphically shows the increase in object detection probability for each object (the
objects are sorted along the x-axis according to their detection probabilities). Again, we observe
significant separations between the first three curves. In Figure 1.7b, we compare object detection
improvements between two tags per object versus two reader antennas. From this data we can see a

*
The multi-tagged metallic and liquid objects included cans of tomato sauce, canned vegetables, canned and bottled soda,
bottled water, etc.

ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
dictated by the artistic requirements of the subject, and not by the
necessities or allurements of what I may call for brevity, competitive
painting. It was never a question with him of the preparation within
twelve months of an annual poster, which was to occupy so much
linespace, and send the betting on him up or down as the case might
be.
What, on the other hand, were the essential ideas of Bastien-
Lepage’s work? To begin with, he was a painter of exhibition
pictures, of what are called in Paris machins. He was an inveterate
salonnier, with the ideals and the limitations of the typical uncultured
Paris art-student, the fort of his atelier. Faire vrai is the sum and aim
of his intention. Realists he and his like have been jauntily labelled
by the hasty journalist. But the truth in their work is truth of
unessentials, and their elaborate and unlovely realities serve only to
cover themes that are profoundly unreal.
To begin with, it was thought to be meritorious, and conducive of
truth, and in every way manly and estimable, for the painter to take a
large canvas out into the fields and to execute his final picture in
hourly tête-à-tête with nature. This practice at once restricts the limits
of your possible choice of subject. The sun moves too quickly. You
find that grey weather is more possible, and end by never working in
any other. Grouping with any approach to naturalness is found to be
almost impossible. You find that you had better confine your
compositions to a single figure. And with a little experience the
photo-realist finds, if he be wise, that that single figure had better be
in repose. Even then your picture necessarily becomes a portrait of a
model posing by the hour. The illumination, instead of being that of a
north light in Newman Street, is, it is true, the illumination of a
Cornish or a Breton sky. Your subject is a real peasant in his own
natural surroundings, and not a model from Hatton Garden. But what
is he doing? He is posing for a picture as best he can, and he looks
it. That woman stooping to put potatoes into a sack will never rise
again. The potatoes, portraits every one, will never drop into the
sack, and never a breath of air circulates around that painful
rendering in the flat of the authentic patches on the very gown of a
real peasant. What are the truths you have gained, a handful of
tiresome little facts, compared to the truths you have lost? To life and
spirit, light and air?
The tacit assumption on which the theory and practice of the so-
called realist rests, is that if photography, instead of yielding little
proofs on paper in black and white, could yield large proofs on
canvas in oils, the occupation of the painter would be gone. What a
radical misconception of the nature and function of art this is,
becomes evident when we paraphrase the same idea and apply it in
the region of letters. Few would be found to defend the proposition
that a stenographic report of events and words as they occurred
would constitute the highest literary treatment of a given scene in
life. A page of description is distinguished as literature from reporting
when the resources of language are employed with cunning and
mastery to convey, not a catalogue of facts, but the result of the
observation of these facts on an individual temperament. Its value
depends on the degree of mastery with which the language is used,
and on the delicacy and range of the writer’s personality, and in no
wise on the accuracy of the facts recorded.
Richter says somewhere that no artist can replace another, and
not even the same artist himself, at different periods of his life. One
characteristic of the work of the modern photo-realist in painting is
that almost any one of them could have painted a portion of the work
of any other without making any appreciable discord of execution
apparent. They are all equipped from the first at the studios with a
technique which serves them equally, once for all. It is known as la
bonne peinture. It differs from style in being a thing you can acquire,
and I believe it is even maintained, not only to be perfectible, but to
have been, on several occasions, perfected.
Nothing is more frequently brought home to the student of modern
painting than the truth that the work of the salonnier, the picture, that
is, that is born of the exhibition and for the exhibition, wears its air of
novelty and interest strictly for the season. If he meet it again in a
house, or in the holocaust of a retrospective exhibition, its date is
stamped upon it with the accuracy of a page of Le follet or Le
moniteur de la mode. And whether a picture be asserted at the date
of its exhibition as advanced, or the contrary, as daring or dull, if it is
born of the exhibition, it dies with the exhibition, and the brood to
which it gives birth hold their life on the same tenure.
It was impossible, on seeing Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc at the
Paris Exhibition of 1890, after a lapse of some years since its first
appearance, to resist the conclusion that it falls inevitably under the
heading of “machin.” In the composition, or in what modern critics
prefer to call the placing, there is neither grace nor strangeness. The
drawing is without profundity or novelty of observation. The colour is
uninteresting, and the execution is the usual mechanically obtrusive
square-brush-work of the Parisian schools of art. Dramatically, the
leading figure is not impressive or even lucid; and the helpless
introduction of the visionary figures behind the back of the rapt maid
completes the conviction that it was an error of judgment for a
painter with the limitations of Lepage to burden a touching and
sanctified legend with commonplace illustration. A faithful copy of so
strange and interesting a subject as Mme. Sarah Bernhardt cannot
fail to be a valuable document, but Lepage’s portrait has surely
missed altogether the delicacy of the exquisitely spiritual profile. The
format of the little panel portrait of the Prince of Wales evoked in the
press the obviously invited reference to Clouet. The ready writer
cannot have looked at so much as a single pearl in the necklace of
one of Clouet’s princesses.
To judge fairly of an artist, however, we must follow him on to his
own ground. In his portrait of his grandfather, at the same exhibition,
it was quite possible to see Lepage at his best as a workmanlike and
photographic copyist of a figure in repose. It was at the same time
possible to turn from this picture straight to Manet’s fifre, and to his
bon bock, and thus to measure the gulf that separates a meritorious
workman from an inspired executant of the first rank. No useful end
can be gained by obscuring this fact, and if, in league with the
modern gigantic conspiracy of toleration, we are to speak of Bastien-
Lepage as a master, what terms are left us for Keene and Millet, for
Whistler and Degas?
WALTER SICKERT.
Chelsea, 1891.
A STUDY OF MARIE
BASHKIRTSEFF.
In Possession of her Mother.] [Engraved by C. State.

Marie Bashkirtseff.
(From a Portrait by Herself.)
A STUDY OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF.

The brilliant sunshine of a glorious October morning poured through


the tall windows of Marie Bashkirtseff’s studio on my last visit to the
Rue de Prony. This mellow light bathing her canvasses brought them
out in fullest relief, and I had never had such a favourable
opportunity of judging her work in its entirety. I was struck more than
ever by the vigour and vitality of these studies, sketches, pastels,
and pictures struck off at a white heat of mental production between
the ages of seventeen and four and twenty. Hanging above the
gallery which runs along one side of the wall were her first studies
from life, which astonished Julian so much that he pronounced them
phenomenal; here were her numerous sketches showing the
sincerity of her efforts to be true to nature; and her finished pictures
full of individuality and power.
As the eye rested on these portraits where the keynote of
character had been so unmistakably struck,
on these bits of city life in their shabbier aspects, on these Paris
street children with faces so prematurely sharpened or saddened,
you became at once aware that this artist was a naturalist of the
naturalists. Her chief object was to seize life—to seize the flying
impression as she happened to see it; to render it with unflinching
faithfulness to nature without any attempt at arrangement,
composition, or beauty of treatment.
“Oh, to catch nature!” This is the cry of Marie Bashkirtseff, as it is
the cry of Impressionism, as it was perhaps the cry of the primitive
artist who with much labour and wrestling of the spirit modelled the
first rude image of the lioness or painted the first likeness of an
archer, bow in hand. Not quite the same, perhaps. For these early
workers in clay or pigments saw nature with the eyes of children—
those visionary eyes to which the leaves of the trees, the flowers of
the field, the dogs and horses and cats and cows are as much part
of the interminable fairy-tale in which they live as the more fantastic
figures in more orthodox stories. For these primitive artists looked at
the world with the eyes of children, and though they looked at her
with clear, wide-open eyes, they could not help seeing her
symbolically, seeing the analogy between men and beasts, between
beasts and plants, between the articulate and inarticulate phases of
nature, so that whatever they produced not only stood for itself but
for a host of subtly apprehended affinities linked together by
imaginative insight into the mystery of things. And in tracing the
development of this primitive style of art a little further, in following it
to its legitimate development into the loftiest forms of Greek art, we
cannot help seeing that it was the consummate flower of this archaic
symbolism. With this difference, that while Egyptian, Assyrian, and
Indian artists invented the most grotesque and fantastic forms to
express the wonder and mystery of the world, the Greeks tried to
find outward expression for that archetype of beauty which has as
yet only existed in the mind of man.
And nature, plus the mind of man, plus that master faculty which
refuses and chooses, and which reaches its highest results by
making fresh combinations from what is widely diffused in nature:
that, surely, is the secret of art. This faculty of selection and
concentration, within the limits of some more or less conventional
form, seems to belong to every manifestation of art, which can never
under any circumstances be a simple reproduction of nature. How
can it, indeed, since, as Blake so pithily puts it: “A fool sees not the
same tree a wise man sees”? And we question whether any two
people, any two painters would ever see precisely the same thing—
the same tree, however hard they might try to free themselves from
the bias of personality; or would succeed in giving us an identical
pictorial representation of any subject whatsoever. For the artist’s
own mind, unlike a photographic apparatus, would always intervene
so as to force him to see life through the medium of his
temperament. Indeed, will not the circulation of the artist’s blood, the
pitch of his nerves, the thoughts he has thought and the emotions he
has felt from the beginning of consciousness, have to be taken into
account as factors in any individual painter’s picture of a tree or any
other object? For this reason a picture can never be truly likened to a
window opening on nature unless, indeed, it be a stained-glass
window. On the contrary, the artist for the time being lends us his
eyes to see nature with. And as the eyes of a Titian or a Turner saw
combinations and harmonies of tones and tints whose magnificent
effect entirely escapes the eyes of ordinary mortals, it is much wiser
to accept their interpretation than to go into hair-splitting discussions
as to the precise exactitude of their copy to a reality which is
eternally changing.
Take only the painters of the realistic modern French school—can
we not tell at a glance, in going through the Louvre, whether it is
nature according to Corot, to Rousseau, or to Millet that we are
looking at? For whether the realists like it or no, the world will reflect
itself in their brains according to the laws of their peculiar
individuality, and the preciousness of all art expression seems
precisely to consist in this rare flavour which the artist’s self
impresses on nature outside himself. This priceless quality which we
call style is as inseparable from the genuine artist as the shape of his
nose. It clearly differentiates a peasant woman by Millet from any
ordinary peasant woman we may chance on in a field, and is as
marked in his simple pourtrayal of rustic subjects as in the most
sublime compositions by Michael Angelo.
These few inadequate remarks may not be entirely out of place
when speaking of the æsthetic views of our day; or of an artist who is
peculiarly representative of them. For the new scientific spirit which
has revolutionized our views of nature, has also penetrated the
realms of literature and art, and impelled artists to attempt a perfectly
unprejudiced reproduction of life. For the present this has led them to
a grim realism, which loves to dwell exclusively on the material side
of existence, scouting the romantic and ideal as figments of man’s
fancy to be relegated into the limbo of unrealistics along with the
dragons and griffins of the world’s childhood. The same movement
which has produced the extremely powerful but one-sided novels of
De Goncourt, Zola, and Guy de Maupassant may also be studied in
the works of the realistic French painters in their almost fierce
insistence on what is natural even to the pitch of repulsiveness.
Impressionism was in the air when Marie Bashkirtseff entered on
her artistic career in 1877. It would amount to a truism to give any
fresh account of her birth, parentage, and early life at this time. All
the world has read her famous journal. All the world knows that she
was born at Poltava, in the south of Russia, in 1860. That her
parents were separated after a few years of marriage; that her
mother and aunt came to the West of Europe with the two children—
Paul and Marie, and a cousin Dina; that they travelled about after the
fashion of their kind, afterwards settling down first at Nice, and later
on in Paris. As Marie often bitterly laments, her education was
carried on in a rather desultory fashion. But her faculty for acquiring
knowledge was so surprising, her intellect so extraordinary, that she
became an admirable linguist, a skilled musician, a splendid singer,
a fair mathematician with a rapidity that seemed to amount to
intuition. Her powers of observation had probably been much
developed by all that she saw and heard on their travels. She had an
early opportunity of seeing the master works of all time in Florence
and Rome, and was an indefatigable frequenter of museums and
picture galleries. At the age of fifteen, her judgment was already so
independent that she had the audacity to speak of the “cardboard
pictures of Raphael” and the “stupid if glorious Venuses of Titian.”
She had never as yet lived in Paris, mixed with artists, or heard the
talk of the studios, yet in many respects she seems already a full-
fledged art student, with the last phrase of the hour on her lips.
Already she sought in pictures that scrupulous resemblance to
nature which was her chief aim when she herself took to painting.
But though deeply interested in art, it did not at that time occupy the
chief place in her thoughts. Music attracted her more, and the desire
to be a singer was her greatest ambition. In fact, she laboured under
the disadvantage of an embarras de richesses in regard to her
natural gifts, and for several years she found it difficult to make a
choice.
However, one day in October, 1877, there entered M. Julian’s now
famous life-school in the Passage des Panoramas two very tall
ladies, all in black, accompanied by a young girl dressed in pure
white from head to foot, as if she were a lily of the field. This strange
and striking trio made quite a sensation. M. Julian himself, with his
happy picturesqueness of phrase in describing the first appearance
of Marie Bashkirtseff in his studio, spoke of her as une blancheur—
something bright and startling, which seemed to have little in
common with the severe work-a-day routine of studio life.
Nevertheless, she had come, accompanied by her mother and aunt,
to be entered as a pupil; and in the letter which she brought him from
an eminent physician, he found this curt word by way of introduction:
“I have sent you a monster.”
All this was very unlike the usual order of things. But it was there
and then settled that Marie Bashkirtseff was to attend his classes,
and every morning found her duly at place, working away as if her
life depended upon it. At first, her master took this wish to paint for
the caprice of a spoilt child, which would soon pass when confronted
by the difficulties of execution. Before long, however, he recognized
his mistake; he felt that she was a power; that there was something
which lifted her out of the ranks and placed her apart among her
fellow pupils. Something which gave to her first efforts, however
crude and tentative, a vigour and spontaneity which were truly
astonishing. And he discovered, too, that so far from playing at art
she was in deadly earnest. Instead of being less regular in her
attendance than the other art students, she flung herself into her
work with the passionate zeal of an enthusiast. Morning, noon, and
night found her either at her easel, or else taking private lessons in
anatomy and modelling, or haunting sales and picture galleries—
always, on the alert to improve herself. Indeed, Julian found her a
little monster of energy, of talent, of ambition, of concentrated will.
Whatever she took into her head to do, she did and accomplished
the seemingly impossible.
In a surprisingly short time she had mastered the elements of art,
and her studies from the nude were considered wonderful by her
masters. By the intensity of her attention and fever of work joined to
her native endowment she managed after only two years of study to
produce a picture of a woman reading, which was hung in the Salon.
It evinces all her characteristic qualities—masterly vigour of drawing,
and a vivid and striking manner of painting human faces. Her
extreme sensitiveness to impressions gave her a peculiar facility for
catching likenesses and bringing out the salient and personal traits in
her models.
After some few years devoted to painting in the studio, Marie
Bashkirtseff began to feel very unhappy about her work as a
colourist. It fell so far below her own standard as to plunge her into
fits of despair. In the midst of this profound dissatisfaction, in the
autumn of 1881, she went to Spain, and there she seemed to
awaken to a new sense—for the first time to awaken to the full,
glorious significance of colour in the painter’s sense.
In reading those pages of her journal which describe the
picturesque Moorish palaces, the gloomy Gothic cathedrals, the
dark, crooked streets with their groups of gipsies and the treasures
of art stored away in museums and churches, it seems as if they
were illumined by a mellower light than the rest of the book.
Velasquez and Goya opened her eyes, and she “raised herself on
tiptoe,” as she says, to master the secret of their unique method.
Day after day she steeped herself in those glowing canvasses, and
on her return to Paris she began to reap the benefit of this
enthusiastic absorption. Soon afterwards she painted The Umbrella,
in which she made a great leap forward.
Her method and style of painting now placed her definitely in the
same school to which Bastien-Lepage belonged, or of which he was
the master. It was the school which said: “We will let the open air into
our pictures. Let us paint light just as it is out of doors, not the
artificial studio effects from north aspects and skylights.” The Plein
Air movement of the painters was precisely the same as that which
Zola inaugurated in literature. It was nature taking the citadel of art
by storm—at least, what these particular men and artists understood
by nature.
At the head of this school stood Bastien-Lepage, the young
painter who so early became what the French call Chef d’École. His
pictures taken fresh from the country—his Haymakers, and
Harvesters, and Potato Gatherers, and Rustic Lovers filled Marie
Bashkirtseff with boundless delight. “He is not only a painter,” she
says, “he is a poet, a psychologist, a metaphysician, a creator.” His
perfect imitation of nature, the quality which ranked highest in her
judgment, was beyond all praise in her eyes.
Many of the French critics called her the pupil of Bastien. But she
had of course never been his actual pupil, having been trained in
quite a different school, and it always gave her much annoyance to
be called so. But in spite of the striking contrast between the origin
and early associations of these two young painters they were
singularly alike in their love of realism, their early fame, and
premature end.
Look, on the one hand, at Marie, this offspring of Tartar nobles,
with savage instincts lying like half-tamed wild beasts in the
background of her consciousness. She was descended from owners
of lands and serfs, and the instinct of command, the pride of power,
the love of all things splendid became part of her inheritance. She
was the idol of two women, her “two mothers,” who, in her master
Julian’s incisive phrase, “would have burned down Paris to please
her, or had themselves cut into a thousand pieces to satisfy one of
her caprices.” Nature had endowed her with such lavish gifts that her
very talents turned into a stumbling-block, threatening to divert her
efforts into too many channels. Music, literature, sculpture, the stage,
were successively the goal of her ambition; and each one of these
arts was in her eyes only the means to an end—the one burning
desire for fame. However, as the deep meaning of work, of the
artist’s simple and disinterested absorption in what he is fashioning,
became familiar to her she began to forget herself more and more in
the things she did. Her devotion to art, her love and delight in it, grew
steadily with her increasing mastery over its technical difficulties.
She says truly: “Outside of my art, which I commenced from caprice
and ambition, which I continued out of vanity, and which I now
worship; outside of this passion—for it is a passion—there is
nothing.”
Little by little—with many outcries, it is true, and kickings against
the traces—Marie Bashkirtseff had begun to discover that there is no
royal road to art. That to him only is given who is ready, also, to give
up much. She found out that however great her natural gift might be,
it would remain a diamond in the rough, unless she regularly applied
herself to the task of acquiring technical mastery. After some years’
intense but interrupted application she would have admitted that no
work of first-rate talent can be produced without the expenditure of
as much courage, perseverance, and self-control as might have
made a hero. For, as Schumann truly says: “The laws of morality are
also the laws of art.”
What a widely different lot was that of Bastien-Lepage. He, the
son of French peasant proprietors, came of people who are perhaps
the most thrifty and industrious class in existence: people punctual to
their daily task as the sun himself in his rising and down-going;
clinging to the soil they till with the tenacity of rocks and trees;
working much and wanting little, asking no joy of life except rest.
Just as Marie’s parents lived apart in painful disunion, those of
Bastien were united by the tenderest family affection. The shrewd,
caustic, clear-headed old grandfather—a sort of village Nestor—the
thoughtful father, the devoted mother, were helpful influences which
unobtrusively helped in developing Bastien’s faculties. He began to
draw as naturally as another child learns to talk; and his father,
noticing his aptitude, very wisely set him to copy some object or
other every evening from the age of five. Country life, with its
primitive simplicity and its regular succession of daily tasks, sank
deeply if unconsciously into the little fellow’s mind: it sank as the
seed does, without question or self-analysis, to hide its time in
silence and shoot up strong and vigorous when the appointed hour
had come. Bastien probably never asked himself whether he should
be a painter, a poet, a psychologist, or metaphysician. He became
one very likely because he could not help painting. And I suppose he
never asked himself whether in his pursuit of art he was sacrificing
something that might be more precious. But he was not dazzled and
enchanted by the sight of Italian cities and Carnival festivities and
ball-room flirtations. Toil and hardship were the rule of life around
him, and in his love for art he was willing to undergo any amount of
it. Instead of rushing in express trains from Berlin to St. Petersburg
and from St. Petersburg to Paris, he remained stationary in his low-
roofed country home, seeing the same round of occupation going on
year after year: the labourer following the plough; the haymakers in
the mowing grass with the light beating on their sunburnt faces, or
stretched in the shade of full-leaved trees in the luxury of repose;
reapers reaping the orange-coloured corn; summer evening in the
village, with the cattle coming home to their stalls, as their shadows
deepen on the bright green meadows. Such were the impressions
which graved themselves always afresh on the lad’s receptive
memory, to turn themselves one day into those pictures of rural life
which may truly be called “the harvest of a quiet eye.”
Though Bastien-Lepage’s lot—who had to make his living by
turning post-office clerk while studying at the École des Beaux Arts—
may appear so much harder than that of Marie Bashkirtseff, it was in
reality more favourable to the development of an artist. For,
according to Goethe, “Character is formed by contact with the world,
while talent develops in seclusion.” Marie Bashkirtseff, with her
penetrating intelligence, was quite aware of this. She, for whom
nothing was ever sufficiently fine, would sometimes quite seriously
envy her fellow-students’ their poverty, their humble way of life, their
cares and hard work shared in common in a Paris garret. A stern
necessity seemed to lend dignity to their art work, while hers was so
often patted on the back by her fashionable friends as the pastime of
a charming young Mondaine.
I was particularly fortunate this year in finding in Marie
Bashkirtseff’s studio a picture by Bastien-Lepage, L’Annociation au
Bergers, which he painted in 1875 to compete for the Prix de Rome.
It was interesting to compare these two artists in their likeness in
unlikeness. The same uncompromising realism applied in different
ways, and the same power of catching expression and pinning it
down as you would a butterfly without losing any of the delicate
shades. This picture of a “far-off, divine event” is treated by Bastien-
Lepage in a surprisingly naturalistic way, and yet without sacrificing
that mystical element which sometimes belongs to the simplest
aspects of life. Here is none of that conventional treatment of
religious subjects against which Marie rebelled in those “old dusky
pictures in the Louvre.” Here was real atmosphere, there were real
shepherds, rough, homely, unsophisticated men, brown as the soil;
and yet, in spite of the reality, this picture gave you a sense of
unfamiliar awe. Sitting there in the twilight before the fire lit in the
open air, they seem to have been more or less overcome by
drowsiness. The first, an old man, an expressive, rugged figure, has
bowed his head in adoration and is kneeling before the angel whose
sudden apparition has taken the shepherds by surprise. Bewildered
and amazed the second leans forward with gaping mouth and
outstretched hands as if to assure himself by touch of the reality of
what he sees. Hardly able to rouse himself from sleep the third one
sits huddled together in the distance. It is as true as can be to simple
shepherd life. The apparition itself has nothing supernatural. It might
be purely human with only the angel light of tenderness beaming
from the face. The grace of the figure is suggestive of the “eternally
feminine” as the celestial messenger shows the shepherds the way
to Bethlehem visible in the distance by the luminous haze encircling
it like a halo.
This picture with its effect of gloaming light is an idyl of shepherd
life. It breathes that simplicity of nature which invests the calling of
the herdsman, the ploughman, the mower, the reaper, with the
poetry of primitive existence, I shall never forget the impression once
produced on me by a Highland shepherd and his flock slowly
winding along the solitary road of an upland moor. The long white
line of the wavering sheep with that sombre figure of the solitary
shepherd was thrown into relief by the smouldering purple of the
barren hillsides. It was a scene which seemed to carry one back to
remote ages. Even so in the mythic East might the flocks and their
shepherds have passed along similar roads in the vast silence of
deepening twilight. This same feeling of nearness given to what is
dimly remote appeared to me one of the chief attractions of Bastien-
Lepage’s work.
As Bastien by the country, so is Marie Bashkirtseff inspired by the
town. The boulevards and squares of Paris became to her what the
hay and harvest-fields had been to Lepage. Her pictures were
imbued with the atmosphere of Paris—those delicate, pearly greys
which strike one as its keynote of colour. She caught that misty light
which you see clinging to masses of architecture as you look from
one of the bridges along the blue-grey Seine to the picturesque old
Cité with the iron-grey towers of Notre Dame outlined against the
clouded azure above. Effects of roofs and clusters of buildings half
seen through the confusing haze of early morning; drab-coloured
walls enlivened by black and white placards and the flashy tints of
rival advertisements; narrow streets with masses of shadow
emphasizing the value of light on wall and pavement—these became
the dominant note in Marie Bashkirtseff’s work as a colourist.
Her subjects, too, are usually taken from the every-day life of the
French capital as you may meet it round every street corner. The
blouse of the artisan, the cap of the milliner, the rags of the gamin
appeared better adapted to Marie Bashkirtseff for pictorial treatment
than the thousand freaks of fashion with which society annually
delights to astonish the world. As a painter she preferred the
Boulevard de Batignolles or Avenue Wagram to the Champs Élysées
and the Bois de Boulogne. The faces of weary people sitting on
public benches casually seen in passing or caught sight of across
the counter of a shop had hints and suggestions of meaning which
she missed in the sleek features of the swells whom she met in the
drawing-rooms of her friends.
So it happens that instead of painting the pretty, neat, carefully
brushed children marshalled by stately bonnes in the Parc
Monceaux, she chose in preference the unkempt ragamuffins
running wild in the streets. She found more scope there for the
exercise of that scrupulous and powerful realism which was the
secret of her strength. In the Jean and Jacques, The Girl with the
Umbrella, Le Meeting, she has vividly rendered some of the
incidents in the town life of children. The faces of these little boys
and girls, so pathetic in their premature maturity, in their shrewd or
sad or pathetic outlook on the world, are extraordinary in their truth
to life. With most of the childhood taken out of their childish features,
they look at us, if we consider them well, with eyes where experience
has already taken the place of innocence—the experience taught
them by the teeming streets, those books of the poor, for ever
unfolding fresh pages before their inquisitive eyes.
A Meeting.
(By Marie Bashkirtseff.)
They cannot be called beautiful, these pictures, in the sense that
fine forms, nobility of outline, charm of expression are beautiful. But
they are interesting, vivid, quick with life. Take that little piteous figure
clutching the big, gamp-like umbrella, while she draws her battered
shawl more closely around her. With what a look of stolid, inarticulate
suffering she seems looking through the rain on the life that is dark
and dreary as the prospect before her. You see the hair actually
blown back from the forehead, and one mesh has got caught round
the handle of the umbrella as she meets the force of the wind with
tight-shut lips—a humble subject, but remarkable for the solidity of its
handling. Indeed there is a Holbeinesque quality in the vigour of the
drawing and the truth of the pose.
Jean et Jacques, the picture of two boys, of seven and four years
old, is an equally striking work. They stand so naturally on their legs,
these little fellows, their attitudes are so unstudied, their expressions
so admirably true to life. The eldest has already that responsible look
which the offspring of the poor acquire so early. With his cap at the
back of his head, a shabby umbrella tucked under his right arm, he
steps along in his clumsy boots with the resolute air of a little man;
the handkerchief tied cravat-wise, but all on one side, the leaf stuck
between the lips as a make-believe cigar, show Marie Bashkirtseff’s
close observation of the ways of his kind. With one hand he grips the
unwilling Jacques, dawdling obstinately on his way to school, while
with the other in his pocket he pensively fingers the seductive
marbles that invite him to play.
Le Meeting, her most important work, is a fine, powerfully painted,
vividly realized picture. Just a group of Paris gamins met in council at
a street corner, discussing the use to which a piece of string is to be
applied, with the excitement of stockbrokers buying and selling
shares on the steps of the Bourse. It is a triumph of realism. The
faces speak, the limbs are informed with life; it seems as if any
moment their legs and arms might begin to move quite naturally.
There is nothing conventional about these figures, so fresh in their
unstudied attitudes and gestures. These faces, bathed in the pale air
of a Paris back street, breathe quite as much of town life as the
discoloured walls and palings in the background. How pert, how
Parisian, how wide-awake they are, with their thin, sharp-edged
features and their gimlet eyes which allow nothing to escape them.
The biggest of the six, with his back to the spectator, is eloquently
holding forth to his intently listening comrades, even as he may one
day hold forth to quite a different kind of audience, when, after due
graduation in the philosophy of rags, he shall begin to practise the
lessons which the stony streets have taught him. Quite a different
lesson from that which Bastien-Lepage’s shepherds have learnt on
the hillsides of the wooded Meuse. The execution of this picture,
hung in a place of honour at the Luxembourg, is extremely good.
There is a genuine feeling for colour in the grey and sombre tones in
harmony with the nature of the subject. The open-air effect is happily
caught, and the faces stand out in brilliant light. The powerful
realism, scrupulous technique, and excellence of the painting, make
a great success of Le Meeting, and it is a performance which at once
secured a wide recognition for Marie Bashkirtseff, not only in artistic
circles, but from the general public.
Marie loved to recall Balzac’s questionable definition that the
genius of observation is almost the whole of human genius. It was
natural it should please her, since it was the most conspicuous of her
many gifts. As we might expect, therefore, she was especially
successful as a portrait painter, for she has a knack of catching her
sitter’s likeness with the bloom of nature yet fresh upon it. She
seems to me equally good in her men and women and children, the
contrast of many of her heads showing the range and variety of her
power. Her portraits are noticeable for that absence of family
likeness which is often seen even in the works of great painters, as if
the artist had some ideal head before his mind’s eye to which he was
unconsciously trying to assimilate the faces of his models.
Marie Bashkirtseff’s impressionable nature was a safeguard in
that respect. All her likenesses are singularly individual, and we
realize their character at a glance. Look, for example, at her portrait
of a Parisian swell, in irreproachable evening dress and white kid
gloves, sucking his silver-headed cane, with a simper that shows all
his white teeth, and then at the head and bust of the Spanish
convict, painted from life at the prison in Granada. Compare that
embodiment of fashionable vacuity with this face, whose brute-like
eyes haunt you with their sadly stunted look. What observation is
shown in the painting of those heavily-bulging lips, which express
weakness rather than wickedness of disposition—in those coarse
hands engaged in the feminine occupation of knitting a blue and
white stocking. Again, take those three heads expressive of different
kinds of laughter. And nothing is perhaps more difficult than to paint
laughing or singing faces: the open mouth being apt to give a foolish,
strained, and unnatural look to the face. But Marie Bashkirtseff
evinces great skill in painting a natural effect of laughter. The little
smiling boneless baby face is a delightfully realistic study of an
infant, and equally good is that of the pert little girl whose mouth
bubbles over with a child’s artless laugh. Much more knowing is the
wicked laughter of the young woman with the stylish hat and bunch
of violets fastened coquettishly in her sealskin cape. She surely must
be laughing at somebody—at some lovelorn swain, whose antics
make all her features twitch with amusement.
One of Marie Bashkirtseff’s first portraits, and an admirably
painted one, is that of her cousin Dina. It was her first work exhibited
at the Salon, and shows a young woman with her elbow resting on a
table and her face in her hand. Her loose gown of light blue damask,
white muslin fichu and soft, pale golden hair harmonize very happily
with the green plush of the table-cover, the white of the book, and
the flowers beside the bare arm. The delicate flesh tints of a buxom
blonde are admirable in tone, and the face extremely characteristic.
It has the unmistakable Tartar type in the low brow, slightly oblique
eyes, flattened nose, and broad lips with their expression of
sensuous indolence. Here there is nothing of that vivacious charm
which is so marked an element in the portrait of Mdlle. de Canrobert.
This sketchy portrait looks as if the painting had been done at the
first stroke. The round hat, the well-fitting clothes, the plants in the
background seem dashed in with the facility of a master. The face
sparkles at us from the canvas as if about to utter a witticism. This
cleverly-painted figure is all life, all movement, and in its style of
treatment and freedom of pose is suggestive of Mr. Whistler’s
manner.
Her portrait of herself, palette in hand, painted in the last year of
her life, is extremely interesting. It is a three-quarters length, and she
is standing looking straight in front of her with a harp a little behind to
the left. She is done in that becoming black studio uniform with the
broad white frills and jabot which has been so often described, and
the gown fits as if moulded on the body. Her deep blonde hair, thickly
coiled on the top of the head, ends in a fringe over her forehead. Her
features are more refined and spiritual than we know them from the
photographs. It seems as if the invisible presence of death had
already laid a finger on her fair body and fined it down to a greater

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