Heyi Li

Heyi Li is a graduate student in mechanical engineering developing practical mechanisms for the next-generation RFID standards. Current UHF RFID systems rely on frame-slotted ALOHA protocols designed in 2004, with core principles unchanged despite emerging applications in ambient sensing and large-scale supply chains. Passive RFID’s resource constraints mean advances from cellular and Wi-Fi systems do not directly transfer. Rather than treating RFID tags only as identifiers, her work explores how reader-tag interactions can reveal richer information through collision behavior, RSSI, phase, frequency response, and raw backscatter signals. As a MathWorks Fellow, Heyi will develop a timing-aware MATLAB simulation platform incorporating state transitions, timing parameters, encoding modes, and protocol constraints for rigorous benchmarking. The platform will enable Heyi to compare the new protocol against current standards under realistic timing conditions. Ultimately, Heyi’s research could enable backward-compatible mechanisms that preserve existing infrastructure while supporting large-scale RFID deployment.