RFid Blog

So, we are now very near to complete yet another year with RFID technology. It is high time for us to evaluate the plus points and minus points of this technology.

The Wal-Mart and US Department of Defenses’ RFID mandate has created a favorable market condition towards RFID market although the decision had led to an uproar situation in USA two years ago.

Now, the situation has been dramatically changed. Despite private concerns, the RFID technology has been accepted by one and all due to its multiple applications.

The use of RFID technology has been intensified this year. The AB Graphic International, Inc pointed out,

Now, smaller label printers have entered the fold, supplying much lower volumes to niche markets. And the future continues to look bright as materials and equipment continue to improve, increasing the reliability of the inlays and finished labels, driving down unit costs.

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It seems that the state government of USA is now more serious on its RFID passports than before. In the backdrop of mounting pressure for the RFID passports, the government has decided to increase the deadline for public comments on the RFID-enabled passports. According to ZDNet news, the US state government has extended the public comment period on the proposal until Jan 7 next year.

Recently the Smart Card Alliance has come down heavily on the State Department for the RFID passports that tracks the travelers crossing the US borders from Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas.

The Smart Card Alliance has insisted the Federal government to introduce the same microprocessor technology used in e-passports. The group argues microprocessors enables for encryption, validation and other security improvements. The radio frequency signals in passports have a shorter range and are therefore less susceptible to interception.

The State Department has explained that the government would issue RF-blocking sleeves to protect the cards and help secure people’s information.

The deputy assistant secretary for consular affairs of the State Department, Frank Moss strongly commented,

There will be all sorts of security features embedded in that card. It will be very difficult to reproduce except in a very sophisticated printing process. We are not talking about drivers’ licenses.

The combination of voice, video and data would propel the growth of business enterprises. The Enterprise Mobility Company, Symbol Technologies has combined these three dynamic forces in its latest RFID device.

Considered as industry’s first radio frequency device, the Symbol RFS7000 RF Switch bridges the gap between WiFi, RFID and other vital RF technologies.

Anthony Bartolo, General Manger and Vice President at Symbol’s Wireless Infrastructure and RFID Divisions quoted,

The convergence of voice, video, and data, effectively pushes the new mobile edge from the wired to the wireless touch point.

Operating on Linux operating system, the RFS7000 RF Switch represents Symbol’s Wireless Next Generation (Wi-NG) architecture and supports WiFi, RFID, VoWLAN (Voice over Wireless LAN) and WiMAX.

The RF Switch is highly useful for supply chain industries, hospitals, manufacturing facilities and government institutions that require high-bandwidth and undertake critical applications. Symbol would market the product during the first quarter of 2007.

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Until now, we know Las Vegas-based Harmon Medical and Rehabilitation Hospital as one the best healthcare units of America for its highly skilled professional staffs. The healthcare unit is now embarking RFID technology for the betterment of patients.

It has adopted RFID-enabled Real-Time Location System (RTLS) from Exavera Technologies Incorporated and Patient Care Technology Systems.

The medical staffs would use the browser-based solution to position almost 300 assets in both clinical and non-clinical areas throughout the entire hospital.

Jan Vinson, clinical director at Harmon comments,

There is a great deal of excitement around here, as this system solves the universal problem in hospitals of finding a particular piece of equipment when you need it.

As part of the RFID program, the healthcare unit would implement Exavera’s eShepherd Location Services solution that consists of RFID tags, readers and intelligent software to evaluate the whereabouts of tagged items.

While, PCTS would provide its Amelior Tracker software to enable the medical staffs to locate a wide range of clinical and non-clinical assets from any computer on the hospital network.

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Blue Vector Systems would provide its sensor networking appliances to Nortel for the use in the next generation municipal wireless solutions.

With sensor networking appliances, Nortel would deliver a wide range of services such as asset tracking, fleet monitoring, automated meter reading, video surveillance and video conferencing via municipal wireless solutions.

As per the joint agreement, the network appliances from Blue Vector would be integrated with Nortel’s solution to control a wide variety of sensors including RFID, global positioning, and video cameras.

Nancy Anderson , CEO of Blue Vector Systems quoted,

This is a really advanced and powerful combination of wireless mesh and wireless sensing that has the potential to change the economics of how a city communicates and manages its utilities, people, equipment, and assets.

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Finish engineering company Elektrobit has finally entered into the crowded RFID market with its two RFID products, Elektrobit RFID Reader and the Elektrobit WLAN Node. These products were officially launched at ID World 2006, Milan, Italy.

Elektrobit RFID Reader: The latest reader operates at UHF frequencies. It is compatible with EPC Gen2 and ISO 18000-6C. The CE marked reader supports rugged modern mechanical design and high reading performance with single static antenna.

Elektrobit WLAN Node: It is one of the high versatile WiFi devices compatible with IEEE 802.11a,b.g. It supports IP based services including VoIP and wireless video applications.

With these products, Elektrobit aspires to become a leading global open RFID system provider.

Elektrobit has associated with RFID world over a decade. It has conducted as series of research and development for the RFID market in the last 10 years. However, it was reluctant to launch its own products due to slow growth of RFID market.

As the RFID technology, gets mass adoption everywhere in the world, the leader like Elektrobit cannot but join the race.

Therefore, the company’s CEO Pertti Korhonen said,

We are standing at the edge of a new era that will transform our corporate, community, and personal spheres. This is the era of wireless sensor networks.

Even though a clear-cut picture is not emerging regarding the current state of RFID passports in most of the developed countries including the USA and UK, Turkey has declared that is going to introduce RFID-enabled passports as per the International Civil Aviation Organization guidelines.

The RFID chips embedded passports are likely to be issued to the citizens beginning of next year. The RFID chips would contain personal information of the holders. These passports would be used in airport gates through optic machines.

The citizens need to submit their national ID cards to secure the RFID passports.

It is quite interesting to note the fact neither the Turkish media nor the security experts of that country have come forward to debate on the security concerns of the RFID passport, which has raised much eyebrows in the USA and UK recently.

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Sybase, the number 2 database company after Oracle has revamped the previous version of its RFID Anywhere Software adding a multiple features with it.

The RFID Anywhere 3.0 version allows users to track assets from passive and active RFID tags, real-time locations systems, barcode, global positioning and environment sensors.

The most vibrant feature of this latest version is that it has the capability to integrate and combine a range of sensor technologies to locate and track assets.

With 3.0 version, the users can now store, query and represent the real position of assets graphically or via reports. It also allows companies to access the data collected through web service applications in a service-oriented framework.

In other words, the companies or business enterprises can collect data from a single reporting and tracking system such as location and environmental information from a range of technologies such as RTLS, Active RFID, Passive RFID and Bar Codes.

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Impinj, a Gen 2 RFID solution developer has provided its latest Speedway reader to NEC Corporation for the development of an advanced RFID system to increase readability of RFID tags in demanding manufacturing and inventory control applications.

As decided by the two RFID giants, NEC Corporation would integrate Impinj’s high-performance RFID readers with its proprietary radio wave reflection technology to develop its RFID gateway system. The newest RFID-enabled inventory control system would be official available by the end of this year.

Dimitri Desmons, vice president of RFID marketing at Impinj quoted,

The tag throughput rates and data accuracy achieved with the combination of Impinj’s proven technology and NEC’s innovation significantly benefits the growing number of RFID-based supply chain management systems.

The gate system that combines a number of RFID tags simultaneously to produce accurate supply chain data, is applicable in different uses including inspection systems in manufacturing lines and inventory control systems.

Impinj’s Speedway reader meets the two significant RFID performance criteria for supply chain environments. These are high tag throughput rates and high read reliability.

It also testifies superior read reliability with throughput beyond 1000 tags per second in challenging supply chain environments and 200 tags per second in dense reader environments.

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Germany-based Metro Group, one of the major retailers of the world with nearly 250,000 employees and more than 2,200 outlets in 30 countries has announced yet another major RFID project collaborating with Savi Technologies.

Entitled as Advanced Logistics Asia, the six-month project will be handled by Metro Group Buying Hong Kong (MGB Hong Kong).

The objective of this project is to monitor the approximate location and boost security of goods shipped from Asia to Europe in real-time.

The project would make use of Savi’s SaviTrak, a web-supported service to track the RFID tags on shipments to Rotterdam and onto distribution centers in Germany.

The retail giant has already announced the undertaking of dock-to-door RFID rollout at its 150 stores last month. The dock-to-door system calls for the deployment of RFID technology at the place where goods are uploaded from a truck and at the point where they enter the warehouse.