10th International Conference and Exposition on Electrical and Power Engineering (EPE2018)
Multiple Gas Sensing Platform with RFID
Connectivity
Cristian Gyözö Haba
Electrical Engineering Department
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University
Iasi, Romania
cghaba@tuiasi.ro
Olga Plopa
SC Intelectro Iasi SRL
Iasi, Romania
Abstract—The paper presents a multiple gas sensing platform
using different gas sensors built on RFID technology. The RFID
sensor consists of an electrochemical cell for sensing a gas
component, an integrated potentiostat circuit, an energy
harvesting and communication circuit, a voltage monitor and a
coordinating microcontroller. The paper presents a single cell
type and a multiple cell type RFID sensors that can be used with
the sensing platform. The sensors were implemented using the
integrated LMP91000 potentiostat and the Medusa-M2233 RFID
tag which includes the low power MSPG2233IPW20
microcontroller. An application to control the sensing platform
consisting of RFID sensors, RFID reader and a PC was developed
and tested using the gas cells O2-A2 and CO-CF for sensing
oxygen and carbon monoxide respectively.
Keywords— WSN; RFID sensor; electrochemical
integrated potentiostat; gas concentration;
I. In t r o d u c t io n
Numerous applications are designed to measure or monitor
the level of various gases and exceeding limits of these levels
can trigger warning alarms.
One particular method for measuring gas levels is that
based on the use of electrochemical cells and circuits of
potentiostat type [1-3]. The method considers the control of
potential of electrodes in the gas cell by providing an accurate
feedback to compensate changes in cell impedance during the
measurement [4-6]. Methods relaying on electrochemical cells
and potentiostat circuits are extensively used for creating
electrochemical biosensors for detection and measurement of
biomarkers associated with different diseases [7,8].
Development of patient self assessment, ambient assisted living
and electronic healthcare applications has increased the
demand for wearable chemosensors [7,9,10] for which
different architectures have been proposed [7,9,11], including
those for gas sensing [6,12].
Two of the problems raised by these systems are the
transmission of measured values at distance and the provision
of a power supply that allows the system to operate for
978-1-5386-5062-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 European Union
Liviu Breniuc
Electrical Measurements and Materials Department
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University
Iasi, Romania
lbreniuc@tuiasi.ro
Ileana Ursu
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University
Electrical Measurements and Materials Department
Iasi, Romania
extended periods of time, without the need for maintenance
work such as charging or changing batteries.
One solution that can solve these two problems is the use of
RFID technology [13,14] that allows remote communication
and, moreover, the ability to feed the measurement system
through the same electromagnetic field used for
communication.
In the case of a system using RFID technology, we are
talking about two main components: the reader and the tag
being read. Tags can be passive, when all the energy needed
for the reader and the tag to interact is provided by the reader
or, active tags that are provided with a power supply. The tags
initially provided static information stored in the tag. Newer
cell, tags may be of greater complexity, including aside static
information storage components, processing elements
(microcontrollers) that allow reading of sensors, processing of
measured values and transmitting them back to the reader, all
the energy required by the operation being provided by the
reader. If this energy is not enough, the system can be equipped
with a battery to provide the needed surplus energy.
In this paper we present a platform for measuring several
environmental parameters (gases) that are read using RFID
technology. Gas measurements are made by means of
electrochemical gas sensors, via potentiostats, the readings
being transmitted through the RFID connection [15]. To read
data from the platform, a Nordic ID Stix reader from Nordic
ID, compatible with the C1G2 tags, is used. The potentiostats
that were built are using the LMP91000 circuit from Texas
Instruments [16,17]. These are connected to a Farsens Medusa
tag module containing the C1G2 compatible RFID interface
and a Texas Instruments MSP430G2233 low power
microcontroller. In order to reduce power consumption,
potentiostats are sequentially connected to an analog input of
the microcontroller by means of a switch network (SN) also
controlled by the microcontroller.
The advantage of this platform is that sensors can be read
wirelessly, the energy needed for measurements and
communication being provided by the reader. The distance
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 v
Fig. 1. Single cell RFID sensor.
from which the reading is to be made, as well as the number of
sensors on the platform that can be read simultaneously depend
on the characteristics of the RFID interface including the
harvesting and storage circuit, the reader and the environment
in which the system is operating.
II. Si n g l e Ce l l RFID Se n s o r
In order to create a multiple gas sensing platform a single
cell RFID sensor has been developed. The block diagram of the
generic RFID sensor for gas measuring using an
electrochemical cell is given in Fig. 1.
The sensor consists of an energy harvesting and
communication module, a voltage monitor, a microcontroller,
an electrochemical cell and an analogue front end (AFE) to
interface the cell and the microcontroller.
The RFID sensor is made up of already available
components as follows:
• a MEDUSA-M2233 RFID tag from Farsens which
incorporates the harvesting and communication
module, the voltage monitor and the microcontroller.
This tag is an EPC Class-1 Generation-2 (C1G2)
RFID tag based on batteryless sensor technology.
• one LMP 91000 integrated analogue front end for
electrochemical cells (integrated potentiostat);
• one electrochemical cell for gas sensing.
The energy needed for sensor operation is provided by the
energy harvesting circuitry and a cell battery.
Fig. 2. Multiple cell RFID sensor.
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The energy is harvested from the RF field of the reader and
is accumulated in the C capacitor of the sensor.
Voltage monitor assures that there is enough harvested
energy for the sensor to be able to work. It controls the power
supply for the microcontroller and the analogue front end.
The communication part is implementing the EPC Class-1
Generation-2 protocol which allows using standard memory
access commands to control sensor operation.
The sensor includes a low power microcontroller that is
used to interface the RFID part of the sensor with the
electrochemical cell. The microcontroller is in charge with:
• communication with the energy harvesting and
communication module using an SPI protocol;
• configuration of and communication with the
analogue front end using an I2C protocol.
III. M u l t ip l e Ce l l RFID Se n s o r
If the electrochemical cells can be located near one another,
a multiple cell RFID sensor can be designed. The multiple cell
sensor is based on the same operation principle as the single
cell sensor but it uses only one set of energy harvesting and
communication module, voltage monitor and microcontroller
with multiple AFE-electrochemical sensor pairs, as depicted in
Fig. 2. This architecture is possible using the LMP 91000 IC
low power modes and the feature that allows connecting
multiple of these ICs on the same I2C bus and the possibility to
enable or disable this communication.
Cell 1
Cell 2
Cell n
 The communication between the microcontroller and AFEs
is achieved through the I2C interface. The AFE with which to
communicate effectively is selected by activating the
corresponding attached MENB signal. The microcontroller
reads the response of an AFE by acquiring and converting the
voltage Vout generated by it, voltage which is input to one of
microcontroller ADC inputs. Selecting Vout voltages is done
using the control block (Cb ) using microcontroller GPIOs.
A development module based on the LMP91000 circuit
was designed so it can be controlled by a microcontroller with
the schematic given in Fig. 3. Details of these modules are
given in [18].
The Vref reference voltage is generated using the ultralow-
power, low-dropout regulator TSP78001 from TI. The SDA
and SCL pins are polarized with 12kD polarization resistors.
Filtering capacities of 100nF and 10qF are provided for Vm =
3.3V supply voltages, Vref reference and Vout output. Total
consumption for Vref voltage generation is 2.46qA.
During the development of the multiple gas sensing
platform two electrochemical cells have been tested. o ne is the
o2-A2 electrochemical cell manufactured by Alphasense
(http://www.alphasense.com) which is designed to measure the
oxygen level in the air in the range of 0 ^ 25% with a response
time t90(s) <15, output current 80 ^ 120qA for 20.9% O2. The
second sensor is from the same manufacturer, the CO-CF
sensor designed to measure carbon monoxide in the range
0^5000 ppm with sensitivity in the range of 55 ^ 90 nA/ppm,
with response time t90(s)<30.
TPS78001
Fig. 3. Schematic of develpment module based on LMP91000.
Fig. 4. Platform for multiple gas sensing.
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IV. P LATFORM FOR M ULTIPLE GAS SENSING
The overall view of the platform for multiple gas sensing is
given in Fig. 4. It consists of a set of RFID sensors that are read
with a RFID reader connected to a PC, tablet or smartphone.
In our set-up, the RFID sensors are single or multiple cell
RFID sensors based on Farsens RFID tags, LMP 91000
potentiostats and electrochemical cells as described in previous
chapters.
The reader is used to send power to RFID sensors, send
commands and data to sensors and to receive data sent back by
the sensors. The communication between the RFID sensors and
the reader is using the EPC C1G2 protocol.
The reader is connected and controlled by a PC, a tablet or
a smartphone. Depending of the reader, the communication
distance can be over 5 meters. This distance can vary based on
different factors such as the characteristics of the environment,
the consumption of RFID sensor and configuration of the
reader parameters.
An example for computing the power consumption of the
the RFID sensor with one potentiostat (single cell RFID
sensor) and about sensor calibration can be found in [18]. In
present implementation, when using a multiple cell RFID
sensor, each measurement command performs measurement
from only one cell. Multiple cells are read by issuing multiple
corresponding commands. Further work will study if multiple
cells can be read, and how many, using the energy harvested
from only one command.
V. Co n t r o l l i n g M u l t i p l e Ga s Se n s i n g P l a t fo r m .
T h e Se n s o r R e a d e r A p p l i c a t i o n
In order to control the multiple gas sensing platform the
Sensor Reader application was created. The interaction
between the user and the platform implies running several
steps, depending on the state the application is in.
In order for the platform to work, it must be set-up, the
RFID sensors must be configured and the RFID sensors must
be discovered and commanded.
The logic diagram of the program performing these steps is
given in Fig. 5.
After starting the application, we must connect to the
reader. The reader is connected to one of the PC's USB ports.
In the next step, the application must discover the sensors in
the reader area. The sensors found will be put in a list displayed
in the application window.
Depending on the measured environmental parameters, the
platform must be set up first, meaning that the parameters of
the sensors must be set to the desired values. once these
parameters are selected using the GUI, the resulting
configuration can be stored in the user memory of the sensor
RFID tag. This means that if the sensor structure or parameters
are not changed, next time when the platform is used, the
configuration for each sensor can be retrieved from the user
memory (UM) of the RFID tag part of the RFID sensor.
Configuration values set in the UM can be the values needed to
set-up the analogue front end of the sensor but also values for
 Start
Fig. 5. Logic diagram of the application.
configuration of the microcontroller peripherals (ex. A/D
converter). Beside these values, we can store in the UM the
type of electrochemical cell, calibration values etc.
Next step is configuring the sensor with the configuration
values stored in its UM. This configuration will be done at the
beginning of the measuring process and will be done for each
sensor, before starting the measurements. The configuration
values can be modified at any time using the graphical
interface. Measuring process will be stopped before any
configuration step.
Once the sensors are configured, the measuring process can
start. We can select any of the discovered sensors and send
commands for triggering the measurement and recovering the
measured data.
The configuration of the sensor and the requests for
performing the measurements and return the data are
performed using the EPC C1G2 protocol.
Gas parameters can be read in single read mode or in
continuous mode. When the platform is in continuous mode,
reads are performed at equal intervals of time with a maximum
speed depending on the number of sensors which are read,
communication speed between microcontroller and AFE
device (I2C protocol), communication speed between the EHC
device (SPI protocol), RF communication speed etc.
The Sensor Reader application was created based on
application examples from Farsens using the .NET package
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and the C # language and is based on the use of the NUR API
libraries for interaction with the NordicID Stix and oxyPlot
reader for displaying graphical data.
At logic level, the application includes 3 main modules
denoted as Nordic, Medusa andMainWindow.
The Nordic module includes initialization and interaction
functions with the NordicID Stix reader. The Medusa module
features the functions that allow reading and writing tag-type
sensors made based on the Farsens Medusa module. The last
module implements the application's graphical interface
allowing the user to interact with the tag-type sensor through
standard interface elements: simple or radio buttons, text fields,
lists, etc.
The interface of the application is shown in Fig.6. In this
figure the application interface groups are identified in order to
better understand its operation.
These groups and their functionality are:
1. Connection to the RFID reader - establishes the
connection between the reader and the computer on which the
application is running. In our case, the NordicID Stix reader
connects to one of the PC's USB ports.
2. Discovering tags - there may be several tags or tag-type
sensors in the reader's action area. By clicking this button, we
issue the command for getting the list of tags/sensors that the
reader has discovered. This list will be displayed in region 8.
 the selected category, and the scaling to the current size is done
automatically.
Since the representation is one with memory, the scaling for
the largest parameter will kept. To avoid this, data reading can
be interrupted and restarted for the desired parameter; in this
case the scaling is most appropriate for current values.
The values displayed are not function o f time but o f
measurement number. If the computer does not run other
applications that interfere with this application, it can be
assumed that the time interval between two different
measurements is the same. For better accuracy, when saving
data in a file, besides the measured and calculated values, the
timestamp o f the measurement is also recorded.
In the actual version o f the application, data is displayed
Fig. 6. Application interface. only for one sensor at a time. In order to display data for one
sensor, the corresponding sensor must be selected in the
3. Sensor Reading - In this group there is a button for discovered RFID sensor list. One must know the EPC of the
reading a tag or sensor based on tag. sensor in order to select it in the list. In Fig. 7 is depicted the
4. Parameter reading - With this button, the values of the interface of Sensor Reader application after the connection to
configuration parameters can be read. These parameters have a the reader has been done and the command to discover RFID
fixed location in user memory and are set within the tags was issued. There were discovered 4 RFID tags, two
application. The parameter value which is read from UM will corresponding to the RFID sensors (first and the last in the list)
be displayed in the text field labelled "Param Data String". and two static RFID tags.
5. Writing parameters - using this button, is possible to
In Figs. 8-10 are shown screen captures of the interface
write the new values for parameters considered in the
with oxygen sensor selected for the cases when voltage, current
application into the UM. The value o f the new parameter is or O2 concentration respectively were selected for display. In
entered in the text field under the button. Fig. 10 was captured the case when the air from the lungs was
6. Save data to disk - in addition to displaying measured exhaled over the O2-A2 sensor.
data, the application offers the possibility to save them in a
Comma Separated Values (csv) file for later processing or
display. Pressing this button will open a window for selecting
the file where this data will be saved.
7. Tag information display area - this region is initially
used to display the list of tags/sensors discovered by the
reader, in order to allow selection o f the tag or sensor tag to
interact with. This area is also used to display the data in
graphical format.
8. Select the displayed data category - the current
application allows one to display multiple categories of data.
One can display the primary data read from the sensor or
calculated values for data derived from the primary data. As
an example, for the A2-O2 sensor we can display the current Fig. 7. Two RFID sensors have been found (first and last in the list) and two
applied to the WE electrode or the oxygen concentration. static tags.
In the current version, the following information will be
displayed in the text box of the sensor read sensor: read code
from the sensor, the voltage value corresponding to the data
read from the sensor, and the values calculated for the
potentiostat working terminal current and the gas
concentration. The code read from the sensor is displayed to
confirm that the values read from the sensor are correct or that
they correspond to a correct operation. Reading, for example,
the 0xFF-0xFF code on the sensor may indicate a malfunction
o f the potentiostat or a communication problem with the
module microcontroller.
The category o f graphical data is determined using the
radio buttons in region 7. The text indicating the size and unit
o f measure on the ordering changes automatically according to
Fig. 8. Displaying Vout voltage from the first sensor.

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 In actual version of the Sensor Reader application the user
must know the ID o f the sensor for which data should be
displayed. In a future version, the application will identify the
type of RFID sensors based on the information stored in user
memory of the RFID tag. Based on this information, the list of
sensors will be provided to the user which will select the
desired sensor. Multiple graphics will be used to display
simultaneously data from sensors selected by the user.
Fig. 10. Displaying O2 concentration after an exhaling action over the O2-A2
sensor.
VI. Co n c l u s io n s
This paper presents a platform for multiple gas
measurement using RFID tag sensors based on electrochemical
cells coupled to potentiostat type measuring circuits. The
couple electrochemical cell plus potentiostat is connected to an
RFID tag, resulting in an RFID tag type sensor. The
demonstrated platform used O2-A2 and CO-CF
electrochemical cells connected to a measurement system made
with integrated LMP91000 potentiostat and Medusa-M2233
RFID tag. The RFID tag type sensor works with the reader's
electromagnetic field power supply and additionally with
energy from a cell battery. The energy harvested by the
specialized IC in the RFID tag depends on: reader power,
reader-tag distance, operating frequency, propagation
environment, tag antenna design, tag memory capacity,
efficiency o f electromagnetic field conversion, power modes o f
microcontroller and of analogue front end of the gas cell etc.
An application was created to control the gas sensing platform
which can work with single cell sensors. Future version will
include features to allow the control o f platforms based on or
including multiple cell sensors.
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Ac k n o w l edg ment
This research has been supported by the NANO-
ELCHISENS Project/Operational Program of ANCS under
grant ID 1571, SMIS 44011, nr. 620/30.12.2013 and NANO-
IMUNELCHIM-PLAT Project/Competitiveness Operational
Programme 2014-2020, under grant ID P_37_766, SMIS:
103847, nr. 68/08.09.2016.
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