Development of a Smart RFID-Based Corrosion Sensor

The development and test of a smart RFID-based corrosion sensor is presented. The sensor has a small size (5 cm x 3 cm x 1.8 cm) allowing it to be embedded in concrete or other construction materials. The corrosion sensor is built around a low-power microcontroller which enables multiple and complex measurements to take place. The sensor is totally passive and it does not require batteries. Its power supply is derived from an electromagnetic field transmitted by an external RFID reader. This field is also used for data communication. The sensor contains a potentiostat that is used to perform linear polarization measurements on a corrosion cell. The sensor can also measure temperature and its own supply voltage. Unlike existing embeddable corrosion sensors, the developed sensor can acquire full polarization curves with a resolution of 10 bits. The sensor can communicate with ISO-15693 compliant RFID readers.