REMOTE MONITORING AND TRACKING OF UF_6 CYLINDERS USING LONG-RANGE PASSIVE ULTRA-WIDEBAND(UWB)RFID TAGS

摘要

An IAEA Technical Meeting on Techniques for IAEA Verification of Enrichment Activities identified"smart tags"as a technology that should be assessed for tracking and locating UF_6 cylinders.Although there is vast commercial industry working on RFID systems,the vulnerabilities of commercial products are only beginning to emerge.Most of the commercially off-the-shelf (COTS)RFID systems operate in very narrow frequency bands,making them vulnerable to detection,jamming and tampering and also presenting difficulties when used around metals(i.e. UF_6 cylinders).Commercial passive RFID tags have short range,while active RFID tags that provide long ranges have limited lifetimes.Considering the shortcomings of commercial RFID systems,in their current form,they do not offer a promising solution for continuous monitoring and tracking of UF_6 cylinders. In this paper,key challenges faced by commercial RFID systems for monitoring UF_6 cylinders are identified,and an ultra-wideband approach for tag/reader communications that addresses most of the identified challenges for IAEA safeguards applications is introduced.