Development of UHF RFID tags for traceability and quality control of food products, Application : Cheese production

In the food sector, the use of RFID makes it possible to improve the safety of food while ensuring better traceability and better monitoring of products. The work of the thesis was mainly carried out within the framework of a project in cooperation with several academic and industrial partners in the cheese sector where the main objective of the project is to develop UHF RFID tags adapted to the constraints of food products by ensuring a dual function: a traceability function with unitary identification, and then a sensing function of cheese maturation by indirect measurement of its electromagnetic and physicochemical properties.The first step of the project was the characterization of the electromagnetic parameters of food products during ripening in order to achieve an appropriate design of the tag antenna. Knowledge of these properties is essential to meet industrial requirements and to integrate systems in right conditions. Also, a correlation study is carried out between the variation of the dielectric properties and that of the chemical properties during the period of cheese ripening. This study helps to understand the difference between cheese types and allows determining the main parameters to follow during cheese maturation for the design of the sensor tag.The second step was the design of identification tags for the traceability of food products during the manufacturing process. The primary objective is to create a UHF RFID tag with a performance that meets the needs of manufacturers in the cheese sector regarding the size, memory and reading distance while respecting the health standards at the packaging level as well as the substrate used. Several UHF RFID tag configurations were realized and tested in an industrial environment where the results obtained show the effectiveness of using an RFID system to automate the traceability of products in the cheese sector.The third step is the design of sensor tags to track the degree of maturation of products during the ripening period. A first solution, based on the exploitation of the effect of variation of the dielectric properties on the tag reading distance, shows a lack of performance due to the small variations as well as the difficulties of measurement in a real environment. A second solution based on the analysis of gas evolution rate shows the possibility of estimating the degree of cheese maturation. However, the sensor activation power and the high cost represent significant challenges and thus it was difficult to adopt this solution. Finally, two alternative solutions to measure the effect of gas evolution were presented. The idea is based on monitoring other parameters varying due to the increase of gas release during cheese maturation. The first sensor tag configuration traces the variation of product dimension due to maturation using a resistive sensor. On the other hand, the second sensor tag configuration measures the change of pressure inside the product packaging due to gas production. The results obtained show that these two sensor RFID tag configurations can offer simple and practical solutions for controlling the cheese ripening process.