RFID: OPPORTUNITIES and
CHALLENGES
Yize Chen
History
• In 1969, Mario Cardullo presented a RFID
business plan to investors. The application areas
include:
- Transportation: automotive vehicle identification,
automatic toll system, electronic license plate, …
- Banking: electronic check book, electronic credit card
- Security: personnel identification, automatic gates
- Medical: identification, patient history
History
• In 1971, Mario Cardullo built a first passive
device and demonstrated it to potential users.
• In 1973, Mario Cardullo invented the first true
modern RFID system with his U.S patent
3,713,148
History
• In 1973, Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle and Robert
Freyman demonstrated early RFID tags at the
Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- The portable systems, both passive and semipassive, detected the modulated reflect power
and operated at 915 MHz.
- This technique is used by majority of today’s
RFID tags.
Operating Mechanism
• A RFID system is composed of readers
and tags.
- Readers send out signals that provid
power for a passive tag.
- A tag captures the signals from a reader to
generate its own power, and send back an
unique digital ID
Operating Mechanism
• There are two fundamentally different
RFID design approaches:
• Near-field RFID: based on magnetic
induction
- working distance is inversely proportional
to the frequency(d = c/2πf).
- Works well at low frequency.
Operating Mechanism
Figure 1. Near-field power/communication mechanism for RFID tags
operating at less that 100 MHz. [1]
Operating Mechanism
• Far-field RFID: based on electromagnetic
wave capture
- Worked on higher frequency greater than
100 MHz.
- Higher data transfer rate.
Operating Mechanism
Figure 2. Far-field power/communication mechanism for RFID tags operating
at greater that 100 MHz. [1]
Current Users
• Passports
- In 1998, the first RFID passports were issued by
Malaysia.
-- personal information.
-- travel history: time, date, and place.
- In 2006, RFID tags were included in new US
passports.
-- the same information as on the passport.
-- digital picture of the owner.
Current Users
• Transportation Payments
- In 1999, the SmarTrip card was introduced for
urban mass-transit system in the Washington
D.C.
- In 1995, The RFID passes were used for public
transport systems throughout Europe.
- In 1997, the Octopus Card was used for mass
transit payment in Hong Kong
- The EZ-Link cards are used for bus’ and train’s
toll system in Singapore.
Current Users
• Libraries
- Singapore was one of the first to introduce
RFID in libraries.
- Rockefeller University in New York is the
first academic library in the United States
to utilize this technology.
- Farmington Community Library in
Michigan is the first public institution.
Opportunity
• Barcode
- There are five billion bar codes being
scanned every day.
- It becomes an essential part of modern life.
Opportunity
• RFID’s advantages over the barcode
- Combines ID recognition with supply chain
management applications.
- Unique code.
Challenges
• Orientation
- The alignment between reader’s and tag’s
antenna is critical for an effective
communication.
• Solution
- multiple readers in different angles
- one reader with many antennas (cost
effective)
Challenge
• Reader Coordination
- more than one reader operates in a close
range, signal “collision” could happen that
generate noisy data.
• Solution
- Define a protocol to allow these systems to
share the available bandwidth.
- Enhanced signal processing to intelligently
filter out noise.
Challenges
• Multiple Standards
- Several frequencies and standards have
been used for current RFID.
• Solution
- the RFID reader can be built for multiple
standards
Challenges
• Manufacturing Costs
- Current tag’s manufacturing costs are still
too high
• Solution
- Technological innovations and new
process development will reduce the
manufacturing cost.
Challenges
•
•
-
Privacy and Consumer Concerns
Leaking personal information
Tracking the consumer’s activities.
Solution
Kill function: disable the tag after
purchases.
- Smart tags: rewritable memory in the tag
circuit.
Conclusion
• The technical issues mentioned above will
be resolved as more R&D is spent in this
field.
• The next major barrier is software system.
Powerful software system is needed to do
sophisticated real-time data processing.
• With advances in all these fields, RFID will
one day significantly change our modern
life.