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 semi-passive, 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.

Figure 1. Near-field power/communication mechanism for RFID tags operating at less that 100 MHz. [1]

Operating Mechanism

Operating Mechanism

• Far-field RFID: based on electromagnetic wave capture

- Worked on higher frequency greater than 100 MHz.

- Higher data transfer rate.

Figure 2. Far-field power/communication mechanism for RFID tags operating at greater that 100 MHz. [1]

Operating Mechanism

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.