Welcome Message from the TPC Chairs

Dear friends and colleagues,

welcome in the beautiful city of Pisa, welcome to Italy! Our city is one of the best place to host an international conference, giving all the participants the chance to enjoy the beauty of the Tuscany region.

On behalf of the Technical Program Committee, we would like to welcome all the participants of the 10th IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology and Applications 2019 (IEEE RFID-TA 2019). It is an honor for us to welcome researchers and scientists coming from all around the world, with the aim of sharing their project results and experience in the field of RFID technology. After ten years from the first IEEE RFID-TA conference, it is apparent that the number of RFID-based applications has been rapidly increasing, especially in logistics and retail management. The RFID community is vibrant and enthusiastic, as clearly reflected in the conference program.

This year, 124 papers were submitted to the conference by researchers coming from 35 different countries. What a remarkable result! Among them, 108 papers have been accepted and included in the conference proceedings, which corresponds to an acceptance rate of 87%. Such a great result has been possible thanks to the hard work of 27 Session organizers who convened 13 Special Sessions, inviting experts in the field of novel antenna design, localization systems, sensing, biomedical applications, wireless power transfer and energy harvesting, RFID emerging applications. Each paper has been reviewed by at least two members of the Technical Program Committee composed by more than 50 esteemed researchers and experts in the RFID sector. The accepted papers have been divided in 13 Special Sessions and one Regular Session. A Poster Session is also foreseen and dedicated to the students who applied for the Best Student Paper Award. We personally express our gratitude to the Special Session Organizers and Reviewers who spent a considerable amount of their precious time and energy to invite esteemed speakers and to select high-quality contributions. Without their effort and dedication, organizing such a successful IEEE RFID-TA 2019 edition would not have been possible.

The program of the IEEE RFID-TA 2019 is tight but lively, and some novelties have been introduced to make the event more attractive for both academia and industry representatives. In the first day, a Workshop entitled “News from the RFID Industry” has been scheduled before the Opening Ceremony, giving the participants the opportunity to meet industrial exponents and share their vision on the future of RFID technology. In particular, RFID experts will present their activities and projects in which RFID represents a key enabling technology. In the same day, we’ll celebrate the first Italian edition of the IEEE RFID-TA Conference with a Special Session dedicated to “RFID for the Made in Italy”, where well-known Italian brands will discuss the RFID application in the wine, fashion and food sectors. During the other two days, the Special and Regular Sessions are scheduled. Among others, we are happy to announce the first edition of the session entitled “RFID Ladies: spotlight on recent scientific and industrial advances of Women Engineers”, aimed to pay homage to the “female” contribution that is, from the very beginning, one of the most distinctive features of the RFID Community. Two outstanding Keynote speakers will deliver a plenary talk during the second and third day of the conference. On Thursday, Prof. Smail Tedjini (Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble-iNP/LCIS Lab, Valence, France) will present a talk entitled “Advances in RFIDs” focusing on recent development of such a technology. On Friday, Prof. Nuno Borges Carvalho (University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal) will give a talk entitled “A Wireless World Without Batteries”, discussing future wireless paradigms that will be changing soon with 5G and beyond. We all did the best to build a technical program of great scientific relevance, highest quality standards, which we hope will meet the interests of RFID community.

Once again, we warmly thank the keynote speakers, the reviewers, the special session organizers, the session chairs and all the researchers and scientists who contributed in the organization of the conference with their time and efforts. But above all, we thank the authors and presenters for making the IEEE RFID-TA 2019 conference a great success!

We look forward to seeing you in Pisa!
Prof. Giuliano Manara
IEEE RFID-TA 2019 TPC Chair
Dr. Andrea Michel
IEEE RFID-TA 2019 TPC Vice-Chair