Passive UHF Location SEnsing (PULSE)

Within the TINA project, Cambridge University has demonstrated the feasibility of using low cost UHF RFID technology in a new way to provide (i) enhanced tag read range (to >10m), (ii) increased (100%) tag reading probability and (iii) the ability to locate the passive tag to approximately 1m resolution. This has been achieved by combining a customised RFID reader with a distributed antenna system. The ability to use the distributed antennas in a collaborative manner acts to remove the effect of radio propagation fades and also has allowed the development of algorithms, which have been implemented on RFID firmware, to take the RF information from the individual antennas and use this to generate the location information. The TINA project resulted in two ongoing patent applications to protect the concepts described above.These enhancements to passive UHF RFID have generated a great deal of interest, both in an academic sense - we have presented the results in invited papers and a keynote at 5 international conferences - but also commercially across a variety of sectors. The PULSE project therefore seeks to further the commercialisation of the technology. It will do this via (i) building a prototype system suitable for demonstration to customers and (ii) working with commercial partners to understand better the market opportunities and, concentrating on the retail sector, develop an application demonstration based on the prototype location system and field trial this approach. This twin pronged approach will allow the identification of the best route to commercialisation and, working in collaboration with MBA students from the Judge Business School, will result in business plans to map this route forward.

We expect the technology development within the PULSE project to have a major commercial impact. Using the four areas of Impact as defined by EPSRC, this will include: Economy: The market for RTLS RFID is expected to grow from $153M in 2009 to $2.6B in 2018 and the PULSE technology will be able to service the majority of this market. A successful commercialisation of the technology will allow UK industry to benefit by (i) the creation of a spin out company from the University of Cambridge, (ii) improved products and markets for the PULSE project partners Herbert Retail and Zinwave and (iii) better and cheaper processes for sectors such as retail, security and travel. Society: The ability to provide real time location services with ultra low cost passive tags where previously expensive active tags were required will open up a wide range of applications with potential to benefit wider society in people's day to day lives. This will include applications within the retail market (as focussed on within this proposal), but also in areas as diverse as security, medical, sensing, crime prevention and travel. Knowledge: We anticipate that the PULSE project will stimulate new areas of research, for example the integration of environmental sensors into passive UHF RFID tags. The resulting knowledge will be disseminated to the research community by journal publication and participation in conferences. Finally, we hope to educate and reach out to the public with the new technology through public seminars, presentations, demonstrations and exhibitions. We believe this is necessary as it is anticipated that this new technology will become part of everyone's daily life in the future. People: The two research staff who will be involved with this project will gain invaluable experience in taking a technology concept from university research into a commercial venture, in the process gaining commercial and entrepreneurial skills. The inclusion of activities such as iTeams and MBA projects will allow a wider pool of students, across the engineering, economics and business departments, to benefit from the project providing experience in finding potential applications and routes to market for a real technology under active commercialisation.