Radio frequency identification (RFID) is widely used in several contexts, such as logistics, supply chains, asset tracking, and health, among others, therefore drawing the attention of many researchers. This paper presents a review of the most cited topics regarding RFID focused on applications, security, and privacy. A total of 62,685 records were downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus core databases and processed, reconciling the datasets to remove duplicates, resulting in 40,677 unique elements. Fundamental indicators were extracted and are presented, such as the citation number, average growth rate, and average number of documents per year. We extracted the top topics and reviewed the relevant indicators using a free Python tool, ScientoPy. The results are discussed in the following sections: the first is the Applications Section, whose subsections are the Internet of Things (IoT), Supply Chain Management, Localization, Traceability, Logistics, Ubiquitous Computing, Healthcare, and Access Control; the second is the Security and Privacy section, whose subsections are Authentication, Privacy, and Ownership Transfer; finally, we present the Discussion section. This paper intends to provide the reader with a global view of the current status of trending RFID topics and present different analyses from different perspectives depending on motivations or background.

In the present, many organizations grow on a daily basis, using many assets to perform their activities and generate profit. In large organizations, all of these assets must be managed, occasionally leading to challenges depending on the organization’s size. For this reason, the role of asset custodian is needed. This role entails assigning the fixed assets to one person for their care, maintenance, and safekeeping. In this process, it is necessary to update information in the central system, leading to further administrative processes, which, in the majority of cases, are carried out through traditional methods. This involves time to obtain wet signatures, a great deal of paperwork, and time for the person or people in charge to update the information. Due to these reasons, the process can be updated partially or entirely to use digital means in order to solve the mentioned inconveniences. This paper presents a proof-of-concept system to offer a modernized and practical solution to this problem using the advantages of blockchain technology, and speeding up the process by using assets identified with UHF RFID technology to permit the reading of many tags that can be embedded and hidden with no need for line-of-sight, allowing fast ownership transfer, using smart contracts in the Ethereum private blockchain.