Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 24-3 - 53

Fig. 1. Typical applications of RFID technology in agriculture.

Fig. 2. Typical applications of the RFID sensing technologies in smart
agriculture.

The RFID sensing technologies have shown great potential in
smart agriculture, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
This section evaluates the application of RFID sensing
technology in four key aspects of smart agriculture, including environment, soil condition, plant growth, and harvest
quality.

planar dipole and optimized through CST Microwave Studio. Another study [66] presented a passive UHF chip-based
RFID temperature sensor that could measure the temperature
between 0.3-59.6 °C with a resolution of 0.058 °C. The chip includes two built-in external sensor front ends (SFE), and the
detection range for the sensing system was reported as 1.1
m [66]. Recently, Frequency Modulated (FM) backscattering
principle are integrated with RFID sensing technologies to develop temperature sensor for leaves [67]. The RFID sensing tag
comprises a micro-controller, a sensor board to sense the plant
(MSP-EXP430FR5969), and an RF-based front-end switch and
antenna for communication. The results from the study depicted that the proposed RFID sensor requires very low power
(290 μW) to communicate between the reader and the tags. Fig.
3 presents an illustration of this application case.
One of the main aims of smart agriculture is to create an
optimum environment for the healthy growth of plants. Nowadays, RFID based environmental monitoring systems for
greenhouse plants/crops are getting popular [68]. The system takes the input from multiple chip-based sensors, such as
LM35 (temperature sensors), DH11 and DH22 (temperature
and humidity sensors), and soil moisture sensors. The RFID
system collects the information and feeds them to the controlling system in the pesticide spraying vehicles.
With the advent of smartphones and the android operating
system (OS), the RFID-based monitoring platforms are developed into an android interfaced application system. Based on
the environment monitoring system, an application named
" agri-app " was developed to monitor the temperature, humidity, and water for the plant growth. A camera sensor is also
attached to capture the plant condition from time to time [69].
All the information is then processed in real-time and appears
on the farmer's mobile phone. In other words, this RFIDbased android application acts as a decision-making tool for
the farmers regarding irrigation, fertilization and pesticide usages [69].
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is also an important factor for the healthy growth of plants as it is directly
involved in the photosynthesis process for the plants/crops.
One such study was presented in [70], which included an

Environmental Monitoring
To ensure the healthy growth of the plants/crops, environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, light
intensity, carbon dioxide level, and oxygen level etc. need to be
monitored accurately. A recent study [65] presented an RFID
based, leaf-compatible, integrated temperature sensing system. The sensor was constructed on a 0.29 mm poly-lactic acid
substrate and operated within 865.7-867.5 MHz. In this study,
several temperature sensors are integrated with the RFID microchip (add-on sensors) and placed at the roots and tops of the
plants. To improve the detection range, the sensor tags are designed to operate in semi-active mode, and additional power
was supplied via solar cells. The antenna is designed with a
May 2021

Fig. 3. Monitoring the environmental parameters with RFID sensors

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