Transporting and distributing perishable goods such as fresh foods, dried products and pharmaceuticals, while ensuring that they remain in good condition, is one of the biggest challenges in the logistics sector today. There is a huge interest across the logistics and distribution sectors in finding ways to reduce the amount of damaged goods and spoilage. To reach this goal, the CATRENE PASTEUR project has developed an innovative multi-capability wireless sensor platform. Not only is the Pasteur sensor tag able to monitor a wider range of environmental parameters than present solutions, but it can also be used on crates and boxes to follow these parameters during the complete supply chain. The wireless sensor platform is based on a multi-sensor chip which is interfaced to an RFID chip and a low-power microcontroller. This combination of technologies enables autonomous logging of the environmental conditions of products during transport and storage in the cold chain. RFID-based environment monitoring is a technology with the potential to transform the present-day supply and distribution chain. On one hand it will improve cold-chain distribution quality and record-keeping, on the other hand it will also assist in pinpointing problems, assigning liability and ensuring earlier provision of preventive measures. This paper will focus mainly on the technological advances, which if successful, should represent a major leap forward towards the ultimate goal of individual item management in the logistics cold chain.
展开▼
