RFID-powered, wire-and-battery-free sensor monitoring system for data centers.
Powercast Corporation announced that RFID Journal LIVE! has honored Powercast’s RFID-powered, wire-and-battery-free sensor condition monitoring system customized for data centers as its Best New Product 2025.
The judges, led by founder and former RFIDJournal.com editor Mark Roberti, evaluated the six Best New Product finalists onsite at the RFID Journal LIVE! conference held May 6 – 8 in Las Vegas, NV, with the winner announced on May 8. As winner, Powercast will present a one-hour webinar later in 2025, and will also do a 40-minute conference session during the 2026 edition of RFID Journal LIVE!
Roberti noted that all of the finalists had innovative products, but the judges were unanimous in selecting Powercast’s energy harvesting, passive light, temperature and humidity sensor as it will open up new applications in health care, pharma, and the food supply chain, as well as managing data center assets.
Powercast collaborated with Asset Vue to customize its RFID sensing technology – known for maintenance-free monitoring because it can power itself perpetually from RAIN RFID inventory readers instead of wires and batteries – to monitor the temperature and humidity of mission-critical equipment stored on metal server racks without adding to the complexity of a data center.
Customizations included halving the size of Powercast’s existing RFID sensors to fit into server racks, and redesigning the RF receiving antenna to avoid interference from the metal racks while still providing long range wireless power to the sensors. The system is currently in beta testing at Asset Vue’s data center, and Powercast plans to roll it out later this year.
RAIN RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology leverages the RFID readers used in inventory management, logistics and retail applications to connect to the internet any item bearing an RFID tag, allowing users to identify and locate all such items. Adding Powercast’s wireless RF-energy-harvesting chips and sensors (temperature, humidity, light, etc.) to these RFID tags elevates their functionality beyond identification to enable real-time smart monitoring that results in smarter supply chains capable of locating live shipments, tracking the state of perishable goods and more, all without wires and batteries.
How Powercast’s RFID Condition Monitoring Technology Works, Leveraging RFID Readers as its Power Source:
Since standard RAIN RFID readers emit an RF signal that’s similar to that of Powercast’s RF wireless power transmitters, these readers can substitute for the transmitters, becoming the source of wireless power that perpetually powers the sensor tags without wires or batteries, eliminating the need/expense for hardwiring sensors, ongoing battery maintenance, or installing custom readers or RF transmitters.
Powercast’s Powerharvester PCC110 receiver chip embedded in the RFID sensor tags harvests RF and data sent over the air from any RFID reader within range, which can be up to 40 meters depending on the application. A single RFID reader can power many tags at once located over a large area as long as they’re within range. Readers can be fixed infrastructure installed in the ceiling, or handheld readers used by employees.
The Powerharvester chip then converts the RF to usable DC to both power the tags and communicate data. A microcontroller and sensors receive power, measure conditions, and report that data back to the reader.
Peel-back adhesive on the backs of the RFID sensor tags make them easy to install anywhere.
For more information, visit powercastco.com.
