Food spoilage estimation using a sensing RFID tag

To provide more information about the food product and to indicate its freshness status, we propose to add to the package a passive RFID sensor operating in UHF and HF band. It is based on a conventional RFID antenna associated with an interdigitated capacitor. This planar structure has a sensitive layer made of biopolymer. This layer senses variations of environmental parameters, which depend on spoilage of packaged foods. The sensitive layer is made of proteins extracted from the residues of food industry, and it is therefore, intrinsically biocompatible. In this paper, we have demonstrated the proper functioning of the system on several packaged beef samples.