RFID
Chips
Radio-frequency
identification device, or RFID, is currently one of the most
exciting and furiously debated topics in the technology world. RFID
Chips are being developed to replace the bar code. The owners of
RFID will be able to track anything with an RFID embedded in it.
When Wal-Mart announced plans to require suppliers to included RFID
Chips on all products and soon after the U.S. Defense Department
made a similar announcement, privacy advocates have made a case for
privacy invasions by the government and large corporations into the
lives of the countries citizens.
RFID Chips are
cheap, miniature chips that can be attached, often without notice,
to all sorts of products, like clothing, books, etc. So far they are
mostly used to monitor and control the supply chain. But there are
more and more plans to use them also as ``smart labels'' in articles
in shops and in all sorts of other items. RFID Chips could make your
daily life easier, but they also could let anyone with a scanning
device know what kind of underwear you have on and how much money is
in your wallet.
Currently, RFID
Chips can contain besides their identity (a big number) about 1/2
KByte of additional information, for instance about price, date,
producer, etc. RFID Chips (at least the most common, ``passive''
ones) have no batteries, but receive their power from the
electromagnetic field of the reader. The typical range is about
10-20 meters. They have a long
lifetime.
RFID Chips are
usually attached to antennas. The chip and antenna combination is
called a "tag." RFID tags vary widely in size, shape and color. RFID
Chips beat bar codes by reducing human error and opportunities for
theft, business executives said. Bar codes require a level of human
interaction for scanning that RFID Chips do not. Over the years,
RFID Chips have been used in everything from antitheft devices in
clothing shops to Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Speedpass, which allows
customers to pay for their gas wirelessly. As chips became capable
of storing more information, technologists began exploring even more
uses for RFID.
The RFID Chips,
when triggered by sensors, emit short bursts of identifying data
streamed via radio waves; this system is a significant improvement
over bar coding system for a number of reasons, including:
- RFID Chips
can store much more information than bar codes.
- RFID Chips
are a read/write technology, so more information can be added to
them as needed.
- RFID Chips
don't require line-of-sight proximity (i.e., the information they
store can be read even when products are still encased in boxes or
crates).
- RFID Chips
are more robust (i.e., not subject to problems caused by tearing,
creasing, or alteration) than bar coding
Most important,
perhaps, RFID Chips can enable the tracking of individual pieces of
merchandise. That is, rather than simply identifying an item as a
box of Cheerios (as bar codes do), RFID Chips can uniquely identify
a particular box of Cheerios and enable it to be tracked all the way
through the sales chain, from the warehouse to a consumer's shopping
cart. This level of uniqueness in tracking can, for example, aid in
the removal of expired merchandise from store shelves or assist in
locating items designated as part of a product
recall.
Radio-frequency
identification (RFID) technology represents an invaluable tool for a
wide range of industries, including in industrial, medical, and
military markets. A company often associated with analog and digital
recording technologies, Maxell Corp. of America (Fair Lawn, NJ), has applied its expertise in
data portability to the development of a large-memory-capacity RFID
chip, the ME-Y2000 Series. The new RFID chips offer as much as 32
times more memory than the company's earlier RFID solutions, in a
package measuring only 2.5 × 2.5 mm complete with on-chip antenna.
The ME-Y2000
series chips are available with memory sizes of 1, 2, and 4 KB,
compared to a mere 128 B of memory in the earlier ME-Y1000 product
line. Designed for an operating distance of 3 mm at 13.56 MHz, the
new RFID Chips can be used for more than 100,000 write cycles, at a
data-transfer rate of 212 kb/s. A 32-b key code is used as part of
the write process. The RFID Chips can retain data for at least 10
years, making them well suited for high-performance industrial,
medical, and military applications. These reliable RFID Chips are
already been used in security identification cards, for counterfeit
prevention, for scientific applications regarding management of
chemical reagents, and for medical research for test-tube
identification.
RFID Chips
don't have their own energy source, they are passive. They emit a
signal when specific frequencies of radio energy are used to "paint"
them. RFIDs contain tiny antennas that receive that RF energy and
then re-radiate their encoded information. The main problem to their
widespread adoption is cost (it's too expensive to put them in every
cereal box) and the lack of scanning systems to read them in
stores.
