Radio frequency identification: An apparatus instrumental in smart ID applications

Abstract

Optical Character Groups (OCG), optical character recognition, bar codes, security tags, Electronic Artificial Surveillance (EAS), magnetic stripes: Radio frequency identification (RFID) is also just another form of this technology. The major difference of RFID compared to other technologies is that it does not require a direct line of sight to operate. The distance from which it can be read is also relatively longer. The coverage of nature of data to support the RFID tags is relatively much wider than barcodes and includes environmental factors like humidity and temperature, apart from carrying the product information of what prototype or which manufacturer it belongs to. This technology facilitates real-time positioning and has received interest from numerous sectors such as logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare. The durability of an RFID chip varies and can be effectively used for more than ten years with very lower maintenance expenditure. The memory capacity of current RFID tags is much larger than the traditional barcodes and amounts to 16-64 Kbytes. At the same time, the read/write time is also drastically improved.