LECTURE UNITS WITH LOW COST EQUIPMENT SET FOR A HIGH SOPHISTICATED RFID LABORATORY TUTORIAL

This paper describes the composition for a comprehensive RFID laboratory tutorial with cheap devices and license free software tools. It consists of four different units which take approximately four hours each. The prerequisite knowledge of the students should be on a basic level of bachelor in electrical or telecommunication engineering. But with some simplifications the laboratory tasks can also be performed in high schools as practical assistance in the informatics and physics lessons.

The required devices are a cheap and small RFID reader operating in the high frequency range together with a small number of RFID transponders. The second device is a simple computer with free mathematics software packages. In this work the software GNU Octave is shown and enables all necessary steps for automated calculations of RFID typical signals. Finally, an oscilloscope would complete the equipment set, but there are cheaper alternatives by using USB-scopes including software drivers and usual free signal acquisition programs.

The presented laboratory setup can be used in every RFID related lecture even in education institutions with small budget for equipment investments. Due to the low cost character, it is also possible to hand out the components to every interested student for solving the homework or motivate to further RFID investigations.