Vibration Powered Battery-Assisted Passive RFID Tag

Real-time supply chain management, theft prevention, and environmental monitoring motivate the need for RFID systems. Battery-assisted RFID tags increase read range and reliability; however, batteries offer only a finite lifetime solution. Hence, an experiment in powering a battery-assisted passive RFID tag using ambient vibration energy was conducted. A piezoelectric power generator was designed at a resonant frequency of 52 Hertz, with potential power output of 500 μW. Manipulation of the electric signal from the generator through a power circuit produced 8mW pulses to the tag, resulting in successful communication with the reader. Power needs were compared to an earlier experiment in powering a Mica2Dot “Mote” showing a 88% decrease in necessary power supply and 90% decrease in charge time.