Assertion based on-line fault detection applied on UHF RFID tag

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new RFID tag monitoring approach, based on adding an infrastructure circuit to simultaneously monitor and save faulty tag behaviour, in order to enable the implementation of advanced RFID diagnosis functions and mainly to reinforce tag security against fault attacks. The added infrastructure circuit is essentially composed of hardware assertions exclusively devoted to on-line fault detection on the tag. Saved information about detected faults can then be read using RFID readers. Our approach is initially evaluated and implemented in a developed tag emulator platform based on an FPGA board, then thoroughly exercised to demonstrate its valuable contribution to diagnosis means. Experimental results, obtained via random fault injection mechanism, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.