Because they rely on external power, CRFIDs need a way to back up their computations frequently so they don't have to start again from scratch if the power is lost. That requires flash memory unaffected by power outages, like that used in memory cards – but the memory systems in such cards are power-hungry, taking the CRFID designers back to square one.
Fu and his colleagues have developed a strategy to sidestep flash memory. They have shown it can be less energy-intensive to back up a computation by sending it back to a reader for storage, even when extra work must be done to encrypt the data first.
The technique "enables long-running computations to make progress despite continual power interruptions", the researchers explain.
New Scientist story, Usenix Paper
The current RFID tag manufacturing and technology tradeoffs allow the choice of 2 of these 3 features: cost, range and functionality. It would be interesting to known how much do these CRFID tags would cost and what would be the requirements for the Reader, so we can see which kinds of application they can be used on.
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