IT Convergence Technology Research Laboratory

areas for Research & Development

  USN Application Technologies

USN application technologies constitute a body of convergence technology that can be used to create useful services by applying core USN technologies to major traditional industries such as automobiles, distribution/logistics, textiles/clothing, food/medical supplies, electronic/electric home appliances, machinery, steel, petrochemistry, aviation, and ship-building, as well as public industries such as agriculture/fisheries, healthcare/medical services, national defense, culture/tourism, safety, environment, and energy.

USN-based real-time asset tracing technology is designed to improve the utilization of expensive equipment and human resources by tracking their positions and movements.
Its technical feasibility was proven by the model emergency room asset management service of certain local hospitals.

This technology has also been put to practical use in the fields of prisoner management and human resource management. In addition, smart grid AMI core technology based on wireless communication has been developed via joint research by power system development organizations, in order to keep pace with the efforts of various countries around the world to develop a smart grid.

Currently, this technology is being utilized to reduce costs and CO2 emissions through efficient energy management, by developing building energy management systems and proving the technology in the field. Also, technology development aimed at achieving tangible results for green IT and green growth, which includes renewable energy production and linkage in the future, is being accelerated.

As part of the USN technologies for national defense and major facility surveillance, surveillance and reconnaissance sensor network technology capable of detecting and tracing intrusions by an enemy or outsider, using multiple sensors, is being developed. In addition, u-city ground and underground facility management technology is being developed.
Other application technologies such as smart environment management technology, smart growth management technology, and smart social safety net management technology, etc. will also be developed continuously.

  RFID/USN Middleware & Service Platform Technology

RFID/USN middleware and service platform technology area covers from RFID/USN middleware and service platform, to the intelligent software modules for RFID/USN application service. ETRI reserved as the following technology:

• RFID Middleware, ‘REMS(RFID　Event Management System)’
• SSI (Software System Infrastructure) Platform
• USN Middleware Platform, 'COSMOS'

In the future, we would contribute to invigorate RFID/USN market through several technology development and activity such as RFID-based Logistics Information Synchronization, USN-based Winery Growth Management Common Platform for the Pharmaceutical, Logistics/Distribution Management.

Connecting the RFID-based infrastructure facilities built at the logistics hubs in the world, and capturing any failures or error conditions in real time by remote sensing, and then autonomously performing the correction or recovery process about the logistics information error caused by any abnormal conditions.

Through all stages from the pharmaceutical manufacturers to the end consumers, ensuring both transparent information providing and sharing among the market participants, in pursuit of 1) accurate product distribution and recovery, 2) avoiding any disturbing activities in the market, and 3) strengthening supervision for the market.

For improving quality as well as production increase for both the value-added fruit grown outdoor (e.g., grape) and the fruit grown in a facility (e.g., tomato), developing 1) the low-power growth environment sensing technique and optimum control technique, 2) integrated processing about the growth (aging) information, and 3) data analysis and visualization about the growth (aging) data.

  USN Basic Technology

USN Basic Technology focuses on development and standardization of technologies related to sensor network infrastructure areas such as PHY, MAC, Network, OAM to support S-MoRe (Scalable Mobile Reliable) sensor network.

The various USN Protocol stack technologies are developed such as ZigBee-Pro Stack, ZigBee Security Enhanced Stack, ZigBee Profile Platform, ZigBee Commissioning Platform, ZigBee Portable Commissioning & Partial Downloading Module, and also USN Bridge/Gateway technology. Also 900MHz band IEEE802.15.4-2006 based sensor node chipset and IEEE802.15.4-2006 based multi-platform MAC S/W and the distributed synchronized multi-hop networking technology.

S-MoRe sensor network is designed to provide increased reliability in real commercial environments. It is capable of supporting large and dense configurations. It supports sensor node mobility and offers QoS guaranteed service for the sensing control and delivery of multimedia sensing information.

It has developed the Distributed Channel-hopping TDMA MAC which improves the current IEEE 802.15.4-2006 MAC. This technology was standardized at IEEE802.15.4e TG. Moreover, the team is developing Multiplexed Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (M-DSSS) which was adopted as a standard by IEEE802.15.4g TG. M-DSSS is an energy-saving technology for mid-distance wireless transmission that can be used in Smart Utility Network.
In addition, the team provides S-MoReOS and 900MHz M-DSSS wireless module technologies that can establish an energy-saving wireless sensor network both indoor and outdoor. These technologies make it possible to build a stable sensor network even in a jamming environment.

  RFID Basic Technology

RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology has been forced to send ID of products to which RFID tag attached. When a RFID tag entered into correspondence with RFID interrogator, it sends unique identification (ID) number to RFID interrogator. Recently RFID technology has been widely spreaded over item-level tagging (ILT) applications such as apparel, pharmacy, miscellaneous goods, and groceries. In order to meet the needs of the RFID market, We have been developing the advanced RFID technologies as follows:

ILT RFID technology is more advanced technology to identify tags with item level such as apparel, pharmacy, miscellaneous goods, and groceries. To apply ILT RFID to markets, we have developed several technologies such as RFID smart shelf system, long range RFID system, and mobile RFID system.
As another application, an active RFID based real-time locating systems (RTLS), operating at an internationally available 2.4-GHz band, has been developed to locate the position of an item anywhere in a defined space (local/campus, wide area/regional, global) at a point in time that is, or is close to, present time. And we have been developing a security-enhanced passive RFID technology applies security module to an existing passive RFID tag.

As the other applications, battery-assisted passive (BAP) RFID tag for which passive tag is combined with sensor and battery has been developed to expand identification range and acquire an environment information. Lastly we have been in aggressive activity for ISO/IEC international standard for RFID and tried to design CMOS based chip for commercialization.

In the future, we would contribute to invigorate RFID market through several technology development and activity such as RFID smart shelf, HF Gen2 RFID system, BAP RFID tag, RTLS interrogator/tag chip, security-enhanced passive RFID system, ISO/IEC international standard activity.

  RFID/USN Device Technology

Recently, the RFID and USN technique have been studied very intellectually. The technical ripple effect is great, and thus it is expected to establish as the core areas of business in the future. RFID tag and USN node sensors are based on the silicon-based semiconductor device for RFID tag and memory production. The RFID tag have been developed using the printed electronics to satisfy the low price and mass production. In addition, the RFID tag, memory, display, sensor, and solar cell have been giving a try to convergence in one card.

Printed electronics implies electronics devices is meaning of the electronics products fabricated by the printing process. The products of the printed electronics includes 2D/3D shaped printing pattern, conduction line, passive devices (resistor, capacitor and inductor), and active device (TFT) as well as its aggregative products such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag, e-Paper, solar cell, printed sensor, and flexible display. The advantage processing of the printing method is the innovative cost reduction in production by use of thin plastic substrate instead of Si wafer and mass production.

On the one hand, the nano-imprint lithography is considered as the next generation lithography technology to substitute current phtolithograpy technology owing to its possibility of sub 100 nm nano-structure with low cost process equipment.

Smart card platform technology converged with printed electronics is accomplished by developing printing and imprinting processes and one stop solution packaging system of design, material, device, process, and equipment. We are working to implement the integrated platform of converged electronics devices such as RFID for signal detection, LED signage for information display, and solar cell for no battery power.

The representing detailed technologies with the printed electronic devices are;

• Development of silicon device technology (CMOS, BiCMOS, EEPROM, TFT, all sensor of thing, solar cell)
• Development of design library for printed devices, circuit design, and platform development for the green smart card (RFID tag, memory, signage drive)
• Development of sub-um transistor (Si transistor, OTFT), signage (OLED), and solar cell based on the printing/imprinting process.
• Research of materials and production processes for the fabrication of the printed/imprinted devices.

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