RFID chips and their applications

Radio Frequency identification device or RFID is recently growing technology that has the potential to drastically change and simplify many aspects of our lives. RFID is an automated identification and data collection technology consisting of tags that contain chips for storing data and an antenna which is used to transmit data through radio waves. RFID has a standard numbering scheme that assigns a unique serial number from 64 to 96 bit to each tag enabled by a system called electronic product code (EPC). This serial number can then be scanned even outside line of sight. RFID could also work in any condition regardless of weather or level of moisture. While you may not have heard about RFID before, chances are that you have used or seen the technology. These 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. 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 use to monitor and control the supply chain. 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. These RFID tags are usually used to store information and respond to readers. The information included in these tags can range from simple identification numbers to statistical information about the object the tag is embedded in.

History

While RFID technology has only really become a commercially usable technology within the past two decades, it has been in development for over half of a century. After the World War II and some major advances in radar and radio technology, Harry Stockman wrote an innovative paper, "Communication by means of reflective power" in 1948 that laid some of the groundwork for RFID. During the 1950s, more work was done exploring the field of RFID and related technologies with papers such as D.B. Harris', " Radio transmission systems with modulatable passive responder. " in the 1960's research in the field increased significantly, with papers such as Robert Richardson's "Remotely activated radio frequency powered devices" published in 1963 and J.H. Vogelman's "Passive data transmission techniques utilizing radar beams" published in 1968.

The 1960's saw some of the first major commercial applications of RFID, the Sensormatic and Checkpoint security systems. The tags used in these systems could be manufactured inexpensively and the systems were able to detect if a tag was present on the item or not. The government was also involved with RFID during the 1960's and 1970's, using the technology as a security measure to protect nuclear materials. In the 1970's, a few large companies started developing and researching RFID systems, including Raytheon, RCA, Fairchild, General Electric, Westinghouse, Philips and Glenayre. While significant work was being done by these large companies, there were also startups working with RFID. Some of the major fields being researched and developed in the 1970's included animal tagging, vehicle related systems and factory technologies. The 1980's started to see many of these technologies being implemented on a modest scale. Toll collection and animal tagging were some of the hot technologies, Electronic toll systems using RFID were set up in Texas, New York and quite a few European countries. Animal tags were being used for keeping track and monitoring information, such as temperature of livestock.

While in the 1980's RFID was primarily used for commercial applications, the 1990s saw RFID enter the consumer market. Toll systems throughout the U.S. And Europe became widespread and started gaining major use. Toll Systems were adopted by Kansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Maine, and New York, Massachusetts, and quite a few other states. Standardization became a big issue with all these systems, leading to the Title 21 standard and the EZ-Pass Interagency Group, both of which were formed in an effort to provide consistent toll standards in different regions of the U.S. Payment and access systems were developed, such as the speedpass payment system used by Mobile gas stations, various skipass systems and gated community access setups. Automobile related RFID systems also were implemented in larger scale including remote entry and ignitions systems.

Beneficial Social Impact

Below are the list of beneficial social impact of RFID technology to the three societal domains, which are the education, family and economics.

For education, the benefits of RFID can be applied in a library. You would think that this is library wouldn't have a problem with theft. But some materials do go missing from time to time. There's also a more mundane problem of misplacing things. So some library like Vatican Library is putting RFID tags in the books in its reading rooms. They are adopting RFID technology for logistics and security reason, their system lets you swipe an entire row of books and tell if one is missing or out of place. You need only to walk in front of a shelf then you can immediately see on the screen a list of all the books and their contents. If books on the library is missing or in a wrong place the computer signals the fact with an alarm sound. An additional objective of this technology for the library is the automatic monitoring of the books, how often they are taken from the shelves, the statistics of their use in order to optimize space, monitoring the various routes they follow by having electronic gateways in the printed books in a reading room.

For family, the benefits of RFID can be applied in a place where most children go, in the amusement park. Deploying an RFID enabled device can use by the parents to locate their children. On entering the park, they need only to place a wristband on their children arms. This wristband has a tiny sender, plus a special kidspotter map of the park so that if parents lose sight of their child, they can send an SMS message to the kidspotter system during their entire visit. They will then automatically receive a return message stating the name of the park area and the map coordinate of their child's position in the park.

For economic the benefits of RFID will grow as they achieve operational integration. Carefully planned, tested in a proof of concept, deployed incrementally and appropriately integrated into the existing business, an RFID deployment can:

1) Provide immediate physical accountability

Radio broadcast at ingress and egress of product allows continuous processing of merchandise receive, staged and shipped.

2) Reduce labor operations and costs

RFID affords further opportunity to automate movement of materials without human interaction (receiving, staging, shipping and access to out of sight stock).

3) Eliminate physical inventory and reduce costs

RFID provides an opportunity for perpetual and real-time inventory that reduces physical labor and operation disruption.

4) Maintain stocking levels

As inventory is moved off the retail shelf, an electronic change of status can be communicated through the supply chain to trigger replenishment and reorder.

5) Optimize the supply chains well-integrated and cooperative supply-chain system based on real time event tracking and status reporting communicated across retailer, distributor and producer could reduce carrying inventory, improve forecasting, eliminate unnecessary delivery segments and shorten delivery cycles.

6) Accelerate actionable status

Operational information is broadcast real-time, providing opportunities to react and adjust appropriately.

7) Prevent loss and track theft

Broadcast of pallet, case and item identification is an improved deterrent within facilities and during transportation.

8) Enabled real-time event management and tracking

Many production operations rely on activity instruction and a response as to status. Real-time broadcasting of both the instruction and response creates timely information status, and an opportunity to fine-tune the operation efficiencies.

9) Initiate dynamic marketing

With knowledge of real-time product location and movement, retail shelf RFID provides a competitive ability to model product placement, offer shopping deals on the spot, test, adjust and fine-tune the benefit to retailers, customers, suppliers and producers.

Deleterious Social Impact or Potentially Dangerous Social Impact

Personal Privacy

Despite of the clear advantages of RFID, there is a concern among privacy activists about the potential spread out of this technology to our society. Because RFID tags can be embedded in any product or article of clothing and even under the skin of a person, the technology could be used to record information about or track anyone with a tag on them. The tags are so small that they can go undetected on products or in clothing and can even withstand being put in a washer or dryer. Additionally, it is possible for business to log purchase information about any of their customers or even track them around the store using RFID tags. This information could be gathered and used for targeted advertising or more malicious purposes.

Those concerned that business may use the technology irresponsibly have not been comforted by some of the early uses of RFID. Example of this is in the Metro Extra Future Store; this was the first store in the world to prominently employ RFID technology to store information about stocked items in embedded RFID tags. These chips store two numbers one to represent the product ID (same with the information that bar codes used) and one to represent the unique tag ID. While this store has claimed in its brochures that deactivated kiosk located at store exists overwritten and could be read days later and hundreds of kilometers away from the store with an inexpensive RFID reader purchased over the Internet. Furthermore, payback cards distributed at this store to give discounts and rewards to frequent customer that contained embedded RFID tags that can transmit the identity of the owner to readers up to five feet away even if the card is in a wallet or pocketbook.

Information Security

Because RFID tags transmit data using radio signals, concern arises from the possibility of these signals being intercepted by a third party. A tag intended to send bank account information to scanners at the local grocery store might instead be signaled by a thief with his or her own scanner. While it can be argued that any information can potentially be stolen, this situation is particularly dangerous because the information can be accessed in public without alerting the owner. Many RFID systems under development and in use currently implement encryption algorithms to help protect sensitive data. However, some groups are concerned data stored on RFID chips may still be susceptible to malicious activities. A couple of the encryption algorithms currently being used for RFID communications include RSA, NTRU. Not only would an eavesdropper need to be able to crack the encryption being used, they would first need to determine the frequency and protocol being used by the targeted tag.

Analysis of Social Impact

Below are some negative and positive impacts of RFID technology to our society:

First, Radio frequency is one of the technology that supermarket are already using in a number of places throughout the store. We now envision a day where consumers will walk into a store, select products whose packages are embedded with small radio frequency UPC Codes, and exit the store without ever going through a checkout line signing their name on a dotted line. This RFID technology also would expand marketers' ability to monitor individuals' behavior to undreamt of extremes. This technology also will help to lessen theft in stores. But the problem here is once you buy, assuming a RFID tagged jeans at the gap with RFID tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID tagged shoes and get into your car with its RFID tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel.

Bar codes are usually scanned at the store but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is numbered, identified, catalogue and tracked. it's possible to destroy a RFID tag. You can crush it, puncture it or microwave it but be careful of fires. Remember that you can't drown it and you can't demagnetize it. Washing RFID tagged clothes won't remove the chips, since they're specifically designed to withstand years of wearing, washing and drying. You could remove the chip from your jeans but you'd have to find it first.

Second, RFID technology can also be used maliciously. By hiding a tag in your clothes, someone could potentially track your movements and records information about you. This has caused significant anxiety for those who are concerned about privacy that has resulted in calls for RFID regulations laws.

Third, Visa is combining smart cards and RFID chips so people can conduct transactions without having to use cash or coins. These smart cards can also be incorporated into cell phones and other devices. Thus, you could pay for parking, buy a newspaper or grab a soda from a vending machine without opening your wallet. This is wonderfully convenient but the specter of targeted personal ads popping up as I walk through the mall a la Minority Report does not thrill me. One reason why is because other people that do not know or have a knowledge about that kind of technology can think of me as a theft in the mall because every time I do a transaction I do not pay any money but instead I just get it and go.

Future Impact of the Technology

RFID developers are still working and expanding the limitations of this technology. As this technology become smaller, less expensive and capable of sending signal over longer distance, more application is possible. In this section, we will explore some of the potential future functions or applications of RFID technology, this are:

RFID technology can be use in smart packaging.

Barcodes, the current standard for product identification may soon be replaced by RFID tags. A barcode is a series of black and white stripes that is usually found on the package of a product and represents an identification number. A scanner can be used to interpret these stripes when the information they represent is required. This information is usually stored as a number that correspond to an entry in a table that stores detailed information about the product. While barcodes requires a line of sight connection between the tag and the scanner, RFID tags can communicate with any reader allow entire stores to reliably and efficiency manage their entire inventories with RFID readers. Another limitation of barcodes is their inability to be changed once they are printed. In contrast, RFID tags can be dynamically changed and updated as needed.

In addition to dramatically improving inventory systems, RFID technology allows for the storing of detailed information on merchandise packages, allowing products to be aware of their attributes. This awareness has a variety of practical applications. For example, customers could use a public in store reader to access personalized nutrition information about their intended food purchase, or get recommendation on how they could better balance their diet. RFID readers set up in homes could give updates on what foods need to replenished or thrown away, saving customers time and aggravation. Additionally, since more information can be stored on an RFID tag, identification information for each specific instance of a product can be stored in addition to information about the product category. Currently, the cheapest tags cost five cents each, a price that will cost Wal Mart, one of the top suppliers, one billion dollars per year. Nevertheless, there is optimism that plastic polymer electronic could replace metals in RFID technology reduce the price to less than one cent per tag.