A Survey on Radio Frequency Identification as a Scalable Technology to Face Pandemics

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced mankind to unprecedented global challenges, drastically changing our way of living. To minimize life losses, multi-level strategies requiring collective efforts were adopted, while waiting for researchers and Pharma companies to develop vaccines. The management of so complex processes has partly taken benefit from a network vision and from the rising framework of the Internet of Things (IoT). Among the several technologies converging to IoT, the Radiofrequency Identification (RFID), based on backscattering communication, is probably the approach that is most suitable to both the micro (the user) and the macro (the processes) scale. Accordingly, a single infrastructure can support almost all the logistic and monitoring issues related to the war against a pandemic. Based on the earned COVID-19 experience, this paper is a guide about how state-of-the-art RFID systems can be employed in facing future pandemic outbreaks. The three pillars of the contrast are addressed, namely: 1) use and managing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), 2) access control and social distancing, and 3) early detection of symptoms. For each class, the envisaged RFID devices and procedures are identified and discussed based on the already available technology and on the state of the art of worldwide research. The presented guide tells us that this technology has a real potentiality to play a key role in generating an extraordinary amount of data, so that complementary paradigms of Edge Computing and Artificial intelligence should be tightly integrated to extract profiles and identify anomalous events, in compliance with privacy and security.