**5. Future applications**

The first experimentations on the Smart Pebble system were carried out in 2009 and this sol‐ ution has been since then employed in several on-site applications on different beaches in Italy. The effective use of the system has roughly confirmed the results recorded in the labo‐ ratory tests: during the localization process, the transponders embedded inside the pebbles

were localized even from distances higher than 50cm.

392 Radio Frequency Identification from System to Applications

**Figure 3.** A Smart Pebble. On its surface is possible to notice the hole housing the transponder

**Figure 4.** A moment of the localization operations

The systems described in the previous sections represent a good starting point for the development of many other possible applications, in the same applicative fields but also in totally new ones.

Starting from the animal tracking application, the extension of this solution to other scenar‐ ios is limited mainly by the reading range, which forces the fish to come close to the reader antenna to be identified. Anyway, the chance to track animals also under water suggests a possible use of RFID technology also in the sector of fish breeding. In this case, the use of such a solution could be used to trace the production process and to guarantee the quality of the final product. On the opposite side, the use of RFID technology to trace the movements of wild fishes is notably more difficult. The RFID reading range makes the possibility to trace fishes in the sea (or even in a lake) virtually impossible because the chances that a fish will come close to some antenna positioned elsewhere are close to zero. On the other hand RFID could be used to monitor the movements of fishes along a river. In this case, antenna arrays could be structured as a sort of RFID barrier in locations where the river depth is low enough to allow the detection of every transponder passing over it. In this case, such a sys‐ tem could be for example useful to study the migration processes of fishes like salmons.

The technique set up for the pipeline monitoring could be easily extended to other typolo‐ gies of industrial monitoring. In particular, it could be applied to monitor the state of har‐ bour infrastructures, ship hulls, oil platforms and all the other offshore industrial plants. In all these scenarios, RFID could be useful to keep trace of the maintenance interventions per‐ formed in specific locations. The operators could use RFID transponders as a sort of elec‐ tronic note where the state of the site could be read and then updated every time that any sort of intervention is performed.

The underwater navigation application could be a good starting point to develop appli‐ cations where RFID is used to manage the movements of boats inside the harbours. In this case, RFID transponders could be used as a sort of electronic trail, with a reader positioned directly on the boat analysing the information stored on them and using it to move inside the harbour. On the other side, it could be possible to deploy transponders directly on the boat, and to use them as a sort of electronic license plate. This could al‐ low the boat to be automatically identified by a reader positioned on the pier without the direct intervention of a harbour operator.

**Author details**

**References**

2009.

2006

EAI Technologies, 2005.

Giuliano Benelli and Alessandro Pozzebon

University of Siena, Department of Information Engineering, Siena, Italy

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The field of environmental monitoring probably opens the way to the widest range of possi‐ ble applications. Together with the geological applications concerning the sediments track‐ ing, RFID could also be useful for the monitoring of biological activities both is rivers and in the sea. The application concerning the tracking of pebbles has in fact suggested a possible extension for this technique. The pebbles recovered at the end of the experimentation pre‐ sented a lot of organic sediments left on them: this fact suggests then their possible use also as probes to analyse the impact of pollution on the biological activity of the portion of littor‐ al under study. This technique could also be extended to be employed in other scenarios where sediments tracking is required: a similar system could be for example deployed in the city of Venice to monitor the condition of the canals. In general, such a solution could be used in those water environments where the dynamics are slow enough to keep the tracers in an area small enough be manually scanned using a reader. In this sense, such a system could be used for example to analyse in detail the dynamics of a glacier.

Together with these possible applications, deriving from the existing systems, other pos‐ sible solutions could be studied every time that an under water monitoring or tracking system is required.
