A review of passive self-sensing tag

Purpose - Radio frequency identification tags for passive sensing have attracted wide attention in the area of Internet of Things (IoT). Among them, some tags can sense the property change of objects without an integrated sensor, which is a new trend of passive sensing based on tag. The purpose of this paper is to review recent research on passive self-sensing tags (PSSTs). Design/methodology/approach - The PSSTs reported in the past decade are classified in terms of sensing mode, composition and the ways of power supply. This paper presents operation principles of PSSTs and analyzes the characteristics of them. Moreover, the paper focuses on summarizing the latest sensing parameters of PSSTs and their matching equipment. Finally, some potential applications and challenges faced by this emerging technique are discussed. Findings - PSST is suitable for long-term and large-scale monitoring compared to conventional sensors because it gets rid of the limitation of battery and has relatively low cost. Also, the static information of objects stored in different PSSTs can be identified by a single reader without touch. Originality/value - This paper provides a detailed and timely review of the rapidly growing research in PSST.