research-article

R³: Reliable Over-the-Air Reprogramming on Computational RFIDs

Authors:

Muhammad Jawad Hussain,

Fengli ZhangAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Volume 17, Issue 1

Article No.: 9, Pages 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/3070720

Published: 20 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Computational Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID) tags operate solely on harvested energy and have emerged as viable platforms for a variety of ubiquitous sensing and computation applications. Due to their battery-less nature, these tags can be permanently deployed in hard-to-reach places where the possibility of tag access is eliminated. In such scenarios, maintaining and upgrading the tag’s firmware becomes infeasible because programming tools, including wired interface and PC-based software, are required to erase, modify, or reprogram the microcontroller unit’s memory. Such limitations necessitate the demand for an over-the-air (OTA) scheme, which can wirelessly reprogram or upgrade the firmware in CRFID tags.

In this article, we present R³—a reliable OTA reprogramming scheme that is compliant with EPC protocol and requires no hardware upgrade to RFID reader or CRFID tag. We demonstrate our scheme on three platforms, which include both software-defined as well as chip-based CRFID tags, that is, WISP5.1 and Optimized WISP (Opt-WISP), and Spider tag, respectively. The selection also includes both the FLASH- and FRAM-based microcontrollers. We extensively evaluate our scheme in terms of several metrics, including overall system delay, time and energy overhead, and success rate in line with interrogation range. We foresee our endeavor to offer the viability of OTA reprogramming and firmware upgrade for CRFID tokens under practical situations.

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Cited By

Zhang RWang SLiu HHuang HYu JGuan Y(2024)When Noise Can Help: Anonymous Group Writing in RFID-Enabled Backscatter NetworksIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2024.343902423:12(13760-13772)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2024.3439024
Reymond HBéchennec JBriday MFaucou SPuaut IRohou EGrosser TDubach CSteuwer MXue JOttoni GQuintão Pereira F(2024)SCHEMATIC: Compile-Time Checkpoint Placement and Memory Allocation for Intermittent SystemsProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization10.1109/CGO57630.2024.10444789(258-269)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CGO57630.2024.10444789
Su YChesser MGao YSample ARanasinghe D(2022)Wisecr: Secure Simultaneous Code Dissemination to Many Batteryless Computational RFID DevicesIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2022.3175313(1-1)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2022.3175313
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

R³: Reliable Over-the-Air Reprogramming on Computational RFIDs
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
    1. Embedded systems
      1. Firmware
    2. Sensors and actuators
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Software configuration management and version control systems

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Volume 17, Issue 1

Special Issue on Autonomous Battery-Free Sensing and Communication, Special Issue on ESWEEK 2016 and Regular Papers

January 2018

630 pages

ISSN:1539-9087

EISSN:1558-3465

DOI:10.1145/3136518

Editor:
Sandeep K. Shukla
Indian Institute of Technology, India

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 20 September 2017

Accepted: 01 March 2017

Revised: 01 December 2016

Received: 01 June 2016

Published in TECS Volume 17, Issue 1

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Cited By

Zhang RWang SLiu HHuang HYu JGuan Y(2024)When Noise Can Help: Anonymous Group Writing in RFID-Enabled Backscatter NetworksIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2024.343902423:12(13760-13772)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2024.3439024
Reymond HBéchennec JBriday MFaucou SPuaut IRohou EGrosser TDubach CSteuwer MXue JOttoni GQuintão Pereira F(2024)SCHEMATIC: Compile-Time Checkpoint Placement and Memory Allocation for Intermittent SystemsProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization10.1109/CGO57630.2024.10444789(258-269)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CGO57630.2024.10444789
Su YChesser MGao YSample ARanasinghe D(2022)Wisecr: Secure Simultaneous Code Dissemination to Many Batteryless Computational RFID DevicesIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2022.3175313(1-1)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2022.3175313
Su YGao YChesser MKavehei OSample ARanasinghe D(2021) SecuCode: Intrinsic PUF Entangled Secu re Wireless Code Dissemination for Computational RFID Devices IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2019.293443818:4(1699-1717)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2019.2934438
Yu JLiu JZhang RChen LGong WZhang S(2020)Multi-Seed Group Labeling in RFID SystemsIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2019.293444519:12(2850-2862)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2019.2934445

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