6 CONCLUSIONS
The European project “RFID from Farm to Fork”
activities and objectives have been presented along
this paper, as an application of RFID technologies to
provide traceability along the complete food chain,
from producers to final consumers.
A pilot experience developed in a winery at
Ribeiro area, in Spain, has been also presented, in
order to show a specific installation. Previously to
this development, various tests have been carried out
in both WSN and RFID technologies, and their
results have been also commented.
Related to WSN deployment, propagation
models were defined from the results of large
measurement campaigns. They were useful to define
the distances between nodes in the network, and to
install the complete system.
The readability of RFID tags on metallic tanks
and on full wine bottles has also analyzed, and the
results were valid to determine the better allocation
of tags on such elements. The read distance when
the tag is glued on a metallic tank is reduced in more
than 50% compared to non metallic. And this
reduction also depends on the orientation the tag is
installed.
Related to the readability patterns around wine
bottles, the effect of the wine is very significant in
terms of received power and in terms of the shape of
the pattern. When the bottle is empty, the RFID tag
could be read all around, at enough power levels.
When the bottle is full of wine, the received power
from the tag is reduced significantly, whereas there
are various directions at which it is not possible to
read the tag: the shape of the readability patterns
change.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the European
Commission (CIP-Pilot Actions), under the project
“RFID from Farm to Fork”, grant agreement number
250444. The authors would like to thank the winery
“Vitivinícola do Ribeiro” for their enthusiastic help
along the pilot project.
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