RFID and IoT within the Agribusiness Industries
New technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or the Internet of Things (IoT) communication protocols and hardware embodiments, are rapidly changing production systems within the agribusiness from cattle, pigs, poultry industries, to intensive agriculture, timber industry or fish farms and fisheries. The main technologies and a survey of the state of the art will be presented first. Then, recent industrial developments will be presented from inside, like an ISO11784/85 compliant portable RFID reader connected to a cloud-based cattle information system, a RTU to process acoustic signals for illegal logging detection, or a LoRa based oestrus detection platform for dairy farms. Starting with these examples, the main emerging technologies for the IoT in suburban areas are discussed (LoRa, Sigfox, RPMA, NB-IoT among others) that will allow to address the opportunity and the need for long-range micro-power devices, in large quantity but low bandwidth, for the agribusiness. Agribusiness is an enormous market that yet lacks massive technology adoption; at the present there is a need and an opportunity to extend and update the use of RFID and IoT. We are in a hinge moment where some technologies will be adopted, thus at the end of the presentation we venture to make some predictions about the future of RFID and IoT in farms and other rural production units, as well as to present some trends like the adoption of UHF for animal ID, Chipless RFID for traceability or IoT-based geo-localization and remote sensing.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Alfredo Arnaud received his PhD, and MSc in microelectronics from Universidad de la República, Uruguay, in 2000 and 2004 respectively, and has participated since 1997 in several research and development projects in the field of microelectronics and electronics for the industry, and in the University. Since 2004 he joined Electrical Engineering Department at Universidad Católica del Uruguay, where he started uDIE research group. Dr. Arnaud holds two patents and as an academic he published more than 70 papers in international journals and scientific meetings. He is the co-founder of two technology companies: BQN in 2004 dedicated to electronics & SW for RFID devices & traceability within de agribusiness industry among others, and Chipmate in 2009 aimed at the design of application specific integrated circuits for medical devices and others. For the industry, Dr. Arnaud participated in design and consultancy in the field of electronics for companies in Uruguay, Brazil, Canada, and India including the development of embedded electronics like portable POS equipment, FDA approved medical devices, and a portable RFID reader according to ISO11784/11785 standard, among others (the later product named Baqueano-Pro®, was awarded with Synopsys LA electronic product prize 2016. He is an IEEE Senior Member, a researcher of Uruguay National Research Council, and an experienced lecturer including tutorials at IEEE LASCAS 2016, IEEE I2MTC 2014, EAMTA 2012 and 2015, and invited lectures in Univeristies and workshops in Costa Rica, Panamá, France, Belgium, Argentina, Brasil, etc.
