Monitoring snowpack SWE and temperature using RFID tags as wireless sensors

Abstract

Abstract. This work shows that passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used as low-cost contactless sensors, to measure the variations in snow water equivalent (SWE) of a snowpack. RFID tags are produced massively to remotely identify industrial goods, hence are available commercially off-the-shelf at very low-cost. The introduced measurement system consists of a vertical profile of RFID tags installed before the first snowfall, interrogated continuously by a 865–868 MHz reader that remains above the snowpack. The system deduces the SWE variations from the increase of phase delay induced by the new layers of fresh snow which slows the propagation of the waves. The method is tested both in a controlled laboratory environment, and outdoors on the French national reference center of Col de Porte, to cross-check the results against a solid reference dataset (cosmic rays, precipitation weighting, temperature monitoring, and snow pit surveys). The technical challenges solved concern multipathing interferences, snowmelt acceleration during reheats, measurement discontinuity, and wet snow influence. This non-contact and non-destructive RFID technique can estimate the SWE of dry snow, with the accuracy of ±3−30 kg/m2 depending on the number of tags and antennas. In addition, the system can monitor the snow temperature with 1 °C accuracy and spatialization, using dedicated sensors embedded in the tags.

RFID Landslide Monitoring: Long-Term Outdoor Signal Processing and Phase Unwrapping

“…Notably in outdoors scenarios, long-term RFID monitoring (months to years) in complex environments that generate high measurement noise, is a current and growing research field. In diverse application domains such as infrastructure monitoring [7], agricultural monitoring [8], [9], social insects behavior monitoring [10], ice formation [11] or snow depth monitoring [12], and of course earth surface processes monitoring [1], robust and synthetic RFID information is needed to ensure optimal data continuity and exploitation. Although not focused on displacement monitoring, these applications would clearly benefit from a data availability increase.…”

“…With the combined perspectives of long-term RFID measurements and of data redundancy exploitation, RFID landslide monitoring experiments represent unique candidates for providing long-term, real-life noisy and redundant signals. This method has already proven its centimeter-scale accuracy through multiple works [12], [22], [25], [26]. The feedback offered by the past years of monitoring is of great use for understanding real-application scenarios, especially concerning the process of phase unwrapping.…”

RFID landslide monitoring : long-term outdoor signal processing and phase unwrapping

“…Notably in outdoors scenarios, long-term RFID monitoring (months to years) in complex environments that generate high measurement noise, is a current and growing research field. In diverse application domains such as infrastructure monitoring [7], agricultural monitoring [8], [9], social insects behavior monitoring [10], ice formation [11] or snow depth monitoring [12], and of course earth surface processes monitoring [1], robust and synthetic RFID information is needed to ensure optimal data continuity and exploitation. Although not focused on displacement monitoring, these applications would clearly benefit from a data availability increase.…”

“…With the combined perspectives of long-term RFID measurements and of data redundancy exploitation, RFID landslide monitoring experiments represent unique candidates for providing long-term, real-life noisy and redundant signals. This method has already proven its centimeter-scale accuracy through multiple works [12], [22], [25], [26]. The feedback offered by the past years of monitoring is of great use for understanding real-application scenarios, especially concerning the process of phase unwrapping.…”

Exploiting Polarization Mismatch to Estimate the Orientation of Rotating UHF RFID Tags

“…It consists in measuring the effect of the propagation environment on the RFID signal to estimate changes of properties in the propagation channel [4], [5], [6]. As an example, [7] exploits RFID signals to measure the variations in snow water equivalent (SWE) of a snowpack, [4] exploits depolarization of RFID signal to detect the presence of a scattering body E. Di Giampaolo is with the Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy (e-mail: emidio.digiampaolo@univaq.it) F. Martinelli and F. Romanelli are with the Department of Civil Engineering and Computer Science, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy (e-mail: francesco.martinelli@uniroma2.it, fabrizio.romanelli@uniroma2.it)…”