Radio frequency identification or RFID is an old concept that has quietly become a large part of everyone’s life. RFID has been around for at least 90 years and was initially put into practice about 70 years, but not many people realized it. These days, you yourself are most likely scanned every day by an RFID reader and the things you purchase are certainly scanned at least once a week.

So what is RFID? Well, you can think of it as the update of the bar code although in fact, it is older than the bar code by 50 or 60 years. Bar codes were invented in order to combine stock control with point of sales processing.

Everyone has witnessed this and is used to it: the sales clerk at the till takes the goods from your trolley one at a time, looks for the bar code, flashes a light or a bar code reader over it and the cost of the item is added to your receipt.

What you do not see is that the computerized stock records for that item are lowered by one and the sales price is noted along side it. That procedure worked well for 40 years, but now there is a need for more information to be recorded than a bar code can accommodate and there is requirement for more stock control and even more speed at the check out. Nobody has any time any longer.

Enter RFID, an old technology revamped. RFID is the expertise that they used to put in Second World War aircraft in order to distinguish friendly aircraft to the RADAR-controlled anti-aircraft guns. The same equipment, fundamentally, that they still use in aircraft today to identify it to air traffic control. The difference is that until pretty recently, these radio signal emitters or transponders were as big as a suitcase and cost a great deal of money.

These days they are the size of the tiniest coin in your change and cost about five cents. They win over the bar code because they can hold masses of data, such as where and when and by whom an item was made; how much it cost and how much it should be sold for; its colour, weight and description; which shelf and in which shop it should be kept on …. ad infinitum. The shop owner can write anything on that chip using an RFID printer.

And when it comes to the check out… No more reading each separate item by hand, because each RFID chip or tag, as they are called in the industry, sends out its own data on its own exclusive radio frequency, so as long as the RFID scanner is within three or four feet of the trolley, it knows what is in there instantaneously. No more unloading, scanning and refilling the trolley.

In fact, no more check out clerk. Most shoppers pay with a credit or debit card these days anyway, so as you walk past the scanner with your trolley, you are scanned; you swipe your credit card through another scanner; if you are satisfied with it, you authorize the payment and the barrier raises for you to carry on to your car. You only have to have a check out clerk for the shoppers who want to pay in cash. Cheques are being done away with soon anyway.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID (radio frequency identification) chips or tags as they are better known are the size of the smallest coin in your pocket, but they can store huge amounts of data that can be manipulated in methods that can do incredible things.

For instance, RFID tags are in most office identity tags and in some passports, enabling the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country secure.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop keeper had to type prices into the cash register, correct mistakes and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but imagine a teenager typing in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the supermarket every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Superstores have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers – no-one could remember that lot.

No-one can, but bar codes make it simple and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags send out their information on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not need to be able to see the tag to be able to read it.

The scanner can read what is in your trolley without you having to unload it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are subtracted from stock immediately so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wishes to buy. So, if one brand of cat food sells better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thus keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in inventory control or asset management to give it its more official title, can translate itself into other uses too. An RFID tag can be placed under your cat’s fur or in its collar so that you can find him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, big cats and other endangered species for years. Now you can have it done with your pets also.

Company vehicles, as assets of the business, often carry RFID tags and you can have one placed in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to avoid mislaying luggage.

The US government insists that RFID tags be placed on all vehicles carrying ammunition or hazardous substances and have done for nearly ten years. The US military is in fact the principal user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as armaments, battle tanks, fuel, containers, artillery, you name it.

Some people worry about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For example, they do not like getting junk emails from people that have been able to track the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID (radio frequency identification) chips or tags as they are better known are the size of the smallest coin in your pocket, but they can store huge amounts of data that can be manipulated in methods that can do incredible things.

For example, RFID tags are in most office identity tags and in a few passports, allowing the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country safe.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop assistant had to key prices into the cash register, correct errors and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but imagine a teenager typing in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the supermarket every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Superstores have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers – no-one could remember that lot.

No-one can, but bar codes make it straightforward and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags send out their information on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not need to see the tag to read it.

The scanner can read what is in your trolley without you having to unload it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are subtracted from stock immediately so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wishes to buy. So, if one brand of cat food sells better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thus keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in inventory control or asset management to give it its more official title, can translate itself into other uses too. An RFID tag can be placed under your cat’s fur or in its collar so that you can find him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, big cats and other endangered species for years. Now you can have it done with your pets also.

Company vehicles, as assets of the business, often carry RFID tags and you can have one placed in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to avoid lost luggage.

The US government requires RFID tags be used on all vehicles carrying ammunition or hazardous substances and have done for nearly ten years. The US military is in fact the biggest user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as weapons, battle tanks, fuel, containers, guns, you name it.

Some people worry about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For instance, they do not like getting junk emails from people that have been able to track the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

In order to illustrate how RFID tags can really influence the fortunes of a company for the better, we shall take a look at a theoretical case below. Let us take the example of a furniture maker that specializes in the supply furniture to a hotel group.

This may sound like an example with no relevance to typical small businesses, but in fact, hotel chains are awfully choosy and have no loyalty, so if you can please these people, you can satisfy anyone.

The main requirements of the hotel chain are that orders are met and on time, the quality of the supplier’s goods has already been determined by means of compulsory ISO 9000 quality control and factory visits.

The hotel furniture producer decides to introduce passive RFID tags to track its items from the point of manufacture to the point of delivery, that is the hotel or its storage area.

Under previous circumstances the producer had employed a few personnel to walk around with bar code readers and clip boards carrying out quality control and following the fulfillment of orders.

The problem was that the arrangement was still subject to human error and goods still went missing, which lead to management compensating by over producing and over stocking ‘just in case’.

That is a common enough scenario., but the difficulties are multiplied when you think of all the different articles of furniture that are implicated in a hotel room, bathroom or lobby and if they are kept in a 200,000 square foot warehouse. Things get lost, forklift drivers make errors, people forget to fill in inventory forms, get sick and have holidays.

In short, administrating a storehouse like this is a nightmare with too much stress on important employees. It sometimes leads to imperfect deliveries or worse, incomplete delivery tickets. Sometimes the order might be complete but the hotel would think it was not because the delivery ticket was wrong.

If this company were to initiate RFID asset control they could affix an RFID tag to completed sticks of furniture. The tag would say where it is, what it is, whom it is for, when it has to be delivered and what else makes up part of the order. The tag is being read continuously by the warehouse’s RFID readers forewarning when orders are running late or are still incomplete.

Not only that but the tag can say what else has to be manufactured and whether the object itself has passed quality control. It can also tell you which defects someone has found with it. In short, instead of a couple of people traipsing around the stockroom hoping that they have covered everything, you could have radio sensors reading every tag in a warehouse the size of a football pitch, reporting back to a central computer where the storehouse manager can have access to real time intelligence, not just the state of affairs at close of business the previous day.

This should enhance the manager’s chance to manage, cut down on waste, ensure complete orders delivered on time and so higher levels of customer satisfaction, which should lead to more repeat orders.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

All RFID tags are used to store and ultimately send data. They can best be thought of as the replacement for the bar code. However, they have significant advantages over bar codes. For instance: RFID tags can hold much more data than bar codes; they can be scanned from further away and they can in point of fact send data, not only store data.

There are three kinds of RFID tags: passive, active and hybrid. Passive RFID tags are the least expensive, because they are less complex. They have to be asked to disclose their information by taking power from an RFID reader. When the reader’s radio waves hit them, they echo back their information. This is the sort of tag used in goods in a retail outlet or on crates in a warehouse.

On the other hand, active RFID tags have a battery, a transmitter and an aerial so that they are always transmitting. These devices are obviously a lot more expensive and so are used only on more expensive items such as a container, a battle tank, an aircraft, on criminals ankle bands or on an animal of an endangered species.

The hybrid RFID tag is capable of sending, but it needs to be told to transmit; it has to be turned on by a signal. This signal could be a satellite passing over head. These hybrid RFID tags are also expensive, but the battery lasts longer because they are not ‘always on’. These tags have the same applications as the active tags, but are suitable for use where it is not vital to know where something is every minute of the day: for example cows in a field or goats on a mountain.

Passive tags can be attached permanently by sewing them into linings or putting them under skin because they do not have their own power source and do not wear out. This is a cause of anxiety to some people who worry about an invasion of their privacy or the erosion of their human rights.

Active and hybrid tags are most frequently plainly visible so that the batteries can be changed as and when required. If this is going to be unlikely to take place, as in the case of wild animals, the tag can have a biodegradable clasp which will break sometime after the probable expiry of the battery.

Some uses for RFID tags are on season tickets so that the owner can pass through the style more quickly than a customer paying by cash. It has applications in security; most of the ID badges you see pinned to shirts have RFID built into them so that security guards do not have to stop and query everybody.

They can be put into trucks that repeatedly cross frontiers so that they do not have to stop for identification. They can be placed on windscreens so that, as you drive through a motorway toll post, either your credit card is debited or the charge is added to your company’s monthly account.

Hospitals use them on patients so that they do not lose anyone or mis-identify them. RFID tags are useful in our daily lives but people are worried about criminals being able to read all this information too easily as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID is the acknowledged acronym for Radio Frequency IDentification. The core of RFID technology is that every RFID chip or tag is capable of emitting a radio signal on a frequency totally unique to itself.

Therefore, every RFID tag must have its own identifying frequency and the RFID tag readers have be sensitive enough to be able to distinguish between frequencies that are only a very minute bit different from its neighbouring tags. The disparity can be infinitesimal.

Therefore, the technology needs to be sensitive and discriminating, but not fragile, because the equipment has to be used on the shop floor and by people who are often in a hurry and in weather that may be inclement.

In order for RFID to have the desired result, you have to have a tag, which is an upmarket kind of bar code and a radio receiver, often called a (tag) reader. However, whereas a bar code can only hold a small quantity of information and the bar code reader has to be pointed at it, an RFID tag can hold much more information and can be read from a hundred yards or more – even out of line of sight.

Passive tags will only divulge their details when asked to by a reader, whereas an active tag is constantly broadcasting its contents. Clearly, active RFID tags are more expensive than passive tags, because they have to have a long life battery.

These tags can be utilized to track goods from the moment they leave the manufacturer of the items they describe to the in-bay of the vendor. The tags can then be up-dated or renewed and put in the warehouse. Once there, RFID readers can keep management up to date about what goods are where and if the sell-by-date is approaching.

This has ramifications for the amount of stock that a company needs to hold, the amount of goods sold cheap because the sell-by-date is too near and for theft, all of which should boost company profits more than funding the cost of the tags, the readers, the printers and the software.

At the click of a mouse, managers will be able to read how much stock they have in real time and if this is all linked to the checkout cash registers, which are the most and least profitable articles. This makes reordering simple . Easy to the point of computerization. For example, when stocks of the top ten percent of the best selling items falls below 1,000 order 10,000 more. Automatically, no questions asked.

RFID has many other applications too. The ideas mentioned above can be applied to farm animals, a call centre’s IT hardware, a fleet of commercial vehicles, an record of household items, your pets, your car and even your garden furniture. Some people who work over a border are even having them put under their skin so that they do not have to wait at customs.

And bear in mind that criminals on early release are also tagged. It is the same technology.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

If your pet is prone to venture far from home then you should think about putting an identity tag on it. The ID tag can be as simple as you like, but the most modern way is to use ‘radio frequency identification’ or an RFID tag.

If you have a very young cat of dog, there is perhaps no need to tag it yet, but as the animal gets older, ID tags can become critical. If your pet gets lost, anyone finding it can then return it. If you have a cat or a dog, then a straightforward collar could be enough.

Some collars have a metal tag attached to them so that you can have your address or phone number engraved on it, others have a ring, so that you can attach a small canister with your details inside it. Some just write their address on the inside of the collar with a felt tipped pen or a marker pen. This is more risky though because you might not be aware if it rubs off.

It is necessary to think about water damage if you are ID tagging a dog. Cats try to keep out of water, rain and snow, but most dogs love playing in it. If your dog’s tag is not waterproof, it will soon become illegible. On the other hand, cats often lose their collars.

If your pet is a horse, then it is simpler to have it branded and the brand registered, so that anyone locating your lost horse can reference the brand and discover your contact details. If your pet is a tortoise, then you can write your phone number around the edge of its shell in a non-toxic fluid like nail varnish, but keep it small or you may poison the creature. Birds can have leg rings fitted. These leg bands have a unique number which can be referenced like a brand.

These are the conventional ways of ID tagging your pets, but the most modern method is to RFID tags them. These RFID tags can be affixed in several different ways. The simplest way is to have a plastic passive RFID tag made up and hang it from your pet’s collar. This works well, until your pet loses its collar or unless someone removes it in order to take your pet.

Another technique of attaching an RFID tag, is to have your details imprinted on a chip and have the chip installed under your pet’s skin by a vet. Some people are disgusted by this idea others do not mind. However, it does not hurt, is not unpleasant and cannot be mislaid.

When the police or the pound officials are passed a stray, they scan it for a chip as part of their routine these days. Even people have them inserted so that they can move across international borders more rapidly.

The RFID tag is read by a scanner and can be read from distances of several feet to several hundred yards, which makes locating a lost pet a much simpler task if it has an RFID tag installed.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with researching What to do if your dog eats chocolate. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at http://whattodoifyourdogeatschocolate.com.

How does one go about taking care of one’s property – one’s worldly possessions? Well, the majority of people put their money in the bank, put the jewellery in a safe and insure the rest. But insurance is not really taking care of your possessions, is it? It is taking care of yourself so that you do not have renew them with your own money.

In the old days, and even now, I presume in some places, you would employ a boy to watch over your sheep or cattle or bring them in at night for fear of big cats, wolves or rustlers. These were an early kind of security guard and indeed rich people had and frequently still do have personal body guards.

What if you had a large office with a hundred laptop computers – laptops because employees had to do field work as well? How would you keep track on all those? A car is another good example and construction site plant is being stolen all the time even from under the watchful gaze of (or with the help of) private security firms.

So what can you do? Get dogs? That works sometimes, but they can be poisoned. Get video cameras and passive infra-red movement sensors linked to a control centre? That works and many firms and private houses have it, but it is very expensive.

As a low-priced alternative, the police were giving out free pens in the UK, which wrote in invisible ink. The idea was to write your postcode and house number. This ink became visible under a certain type of light. That is fine if you have a suspect or found goods.

Bar codes are not practical, the pen is better. It all comes back to insurance or security.

However, there is another way that is becoming reasonably priced. The idea has been around for approximately 85 years, but it was too pricey to use on anything smaller than an airplane or a battle tank.

I am talking about radio frequency identification or RFID for short. The idea is the same one that aircraft have been using since during the Second World War – a transponder emits precoded information in answer to a demand from an RF reader.

Details regarding ownership and particulars of what the item is can be written to an RFID chip also called a tag and the tag can then be glued inside the item that it is to protect.

There are two varieties of tag: the passive and the active. Passive tags will only reply if information is requested by a reader, whereas an active tag is always broadcasting.

Many entrepreneurs use RFID tagging to keep track of their assets. In the instance of livestock, most cattle are tagged these days. Most big offices have their IT devices tagged as well and we all know that clothing stores have been tagging garments for years, although maybe you did not know what that button was that they were taking off at the checkout.

Individuals are already tagging their dogs, cats and cars and it will not be long before these asset management techniques will be used extensively at home as well. Insurance companies may demand on it.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID is certainly not a new technology. It has been around for decades and it has by no means stopped broadening its use ever since the 1940s. Radio Frequency Identification or RFID is really a multi-component application. Equipment consist of micro transponders, readers, as well as modern day computer applications that set off a reliable feed of information.

An internal circuit and antenna happen to be crucial in each and every RFID transponder. The IC is implanted with an electronic product code (EPC) making it distinct among the remaining tagged items all over the world. When the label is located in range of an RFID scanner, information concerning the tagged piece is sent out over the antenna to the scanner, providing records to a processing device.

RFID strategy was formerly utilized by military use in World War 2. Since that time, it has been exploited in various fields of study and commerce. It became a really effective device in business, travel, & in the tracing of packaged articles.

Even though it was thought of as some sort of wireless bar coding system, RFID is better by far. Scanning with RFID transponder stays efficient even if obstacles stand somewhere between the item and the detector. In addition, these types of transponders can easily start reading an item as far as 90 feet away.

RFID is an autonomous determination system. This determination approach functions without the need of human supervision. It’s also able to understand numerous IDs at the same time and continues to be accurate in identifying the items.

Generally, RFID systems are categorized in 2 ways. The very first category springs from its storage and recovery benefits: Read-only or Read-write and Passive or Active land sources. The following is based on the frequency it utilizes: Ultra-high Frequency, High Frequency, or Low Frequency.

Read-only labels are only able to attain stored information such as a product description and stuff like that. Most of these systems can easily simplify fabrication and distribution methods. Read-write tags alternatively are purposefully designed to both interpret and input data.

Passively, a RFID reader delivers energy for the tag to become functional. Without a scanning device in close proximity, the ID couldn’t provide any info. Essentially, a passive scheme is inferior compared to an active system.

An active system offers electric packs included in tags to trigger transfer of data between tag and scanning device. These systems tend to be more urbane and are able to scan larger ranges. Latest models of these scanners may also come with thermal scanners.

Learn more about Automatic Identification Systems at RFID