Qi is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) where he is advised by ECE Professor Gregory D. Durgin. Qi received this award with his co-authors—Durgin and Francesco Amato, a 2017 Georgia Tech ECE Ph.D. alumnus who is now at the University of Rome and who was also advised by Durgin. Three of the last four Best Paper Awards at the IEEE RFID conference have been presented to researchers from Durgin’s research team, known as The Propagation Group.

Qi’s paper, entitled “Breaking the Range Limit of RFID Localization: Phase-based Positioning with Tunneling Tags," presented a radically new way to do ultra-precise localization of a low-powered RFID tag. By using a Georgia Tech innovation—a quantum tunneling RFID tag—and a new algorithm to adjust for radio multiparty, Qi demonstrated centimeter-scale position location of a tag at tens of meters of range. The technique can work at hundreds-of-meters range and through walls as well.

Cutline: Cheng Qi (2nd from left) is the recipient of the IEEE RFID 2019 Best Paper Award. His coauthor, Francesco Amato, is pictured to the right of Qi.