RFID Technology for Food Industry 4.0: a review of solutions and applications

The emerging fourth industrial revolution is revolutionizing the food industry, which has historically been plagued by food waste and contamination. Several internet-of-things (IoT) technologies have been proposed for optimizing processes and reducing costs while improving health conditions and safety in food consumption. Among them, radiofrequency identification (RFID) has been considered from the beginning a key instrument, especially in food logistics and management. Many contributions and case studies from academia and industry demonstrated the strategic role and the impact on existing and future paradigms of food. The literature analysis in the present work suggests a growing interest in RFID to implement optimization procedures for food management and control. This review describes RFID employment in three pillars of the Fourth Generation of the Food Industry (FI4.0): Logistics, Sensing, and Green RFID. The logistics one comprises the most mature applications for RFID, such as cold-chain monitoring or product tracking. Food sensing, instead, is currently the most attractive research area for both industry and academia, so researchers are focusing their attention on detecting physical and chemical parameters through direct and indirect sensing approaches. Furthermore, the ever-increasing amount of electronic waste motivated the research community to provide sustainable tags to establish Green RFID devices. According to this literature review, RFID can foster the fourth industrial revolution in food, especially considering the emerging synergy with artificial intelligence and biodegradable/resorbable materials.