Using Radio Frequency Identification Technology to Track Individual Wine Bottles

摘要

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been tested and it is now proposed to be used in applications as food traceability, instead of the traditional barcode, as that could get advantages of its inherent characteristics: automatic management and distance readability. Among food industries, wine production represents an added value sector and so it would be a target to implement RFID. Wine bottles present some problems to the radio propagation, as liquids are not electromagnetically friend materials. Thus, a large radio electric measurement campaign has been performed in order to deal with the possible mismatches in using this technology to trace wine bottles from the wine cellars to the final consumer. The performance of different RFID tag models, as well as the effect of the wine content within the bottle, is analysed along the paper, trying to identify the better technological solution. The tests indicate that the use of RFID methods would be suitable to allow the consumer to obtain complete traceability information from each wine bottle, and the producer to track its products. The proposal opens the door to new possibilities in the relationship between consumer and producer, by demonstrating the possibility of using a new technology in a traditional market.