RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION TECHNOLOGY. By Twesige Richard

CONTENTS Brief History on Barcodes. Barcodes. Brief RFID History. RFID Components. Types of Transponders. RFID Operating Frequencies. RFID Security. RFID Applications.

BRIEF HISTORY 1920’s most complex business existed in the grocery store. The U.S Census of 1790, happened to be the solution to the General Managers problems. Based on Jacques Jacquard weaving device, Herman Hollerith built the “Hollerith Machine.”

HOLLERITH MACHINE

FROM CENSUS TO GROCERIES 1932 Wallace Flint’s masters thesis described an inventory intensive retail business. Consumers would get there cards punched depending on selected products. Pay for their selection at counter. Customer would receive groceries on a conveyor belt. Because the country was in a stranglehold, the idea was ahead of time. Though it lead to the development of barcodes that are used in the modern supply chain.

BARCODE UPC (Universal Product Code) -1 st broadly accepted. -Succeeded well in the marketplace resulting in the creation of EAN(European Article Numbering) and JAN (Japanese Article Numbering).

OTHER BARCODES

BARCODES Limited in terms of information capacity. Easily damaged or lost. Physical contact is required. Need for human in the loop, lead to a development of better technology to be used in the modern supply chains.

RFID HISTORY Acronym for; Radio Frequency Identification. Technology innovation in early 1940’s. Harry Stockman’s paper, “communication by means of reflective power.” D.B.Harris’s Transmission systems with Modulatable Passive Responder. F.L Vernon’s Application of the Microwave Homodyne

RFID HISTORY Both Harris and Harry spoke of systems that could yield information from a return signal. The same technique that was being used in the radio detection and ranging system (radar).

RFID COMPONENTS Transponder; is affixed in the tag to be tracked or identified. Reader; it powers the transponder, reads, writes and communicates data collection application. Link

PASSIVE TRANSPONDERS Don’t have power supply. Operate in close proximity, which helps prevent inadvertent turning on. Small and can be unobtrusively installed.

ACTIVE TRANSPONDERS Have in internal power source. Have a great range as far as 50 feet. Larger Often used for automated toll-payments, or for tracking large items in the ware house.

OPERATING FREQUENCIES Low frequencies ( KHz) usually in passive tags. Average frequencies( KHz) High frequencies(3 - 30MHz) usually used in baggage tracking. Very High frequencies(300Mhz – 3GHz) found in highway systems.

RFID SECURITY Encryption and authentication procedures; by scrambling the transmitted message, in away that only the receiver with the right key can decode it. Nonrepudiation; is a technique that makes it a possibility for the receiver to be satisfied that the message transmitted came from a specific source.

RFID SECURITY Symmetrical Secret Key Cryptography, which relies on a pair of mathematically linked keys for encryption and decryption. Doesn’t matter what key is used first, and one key cannot be used to derive the other.

RFID SECURITY

RFID APPLICATIONS Access Control. Transportation and Ticketing. Personnel Identification. Fleet Management. Logistics.

RECAP Brief History on Barcodes. Barcodes. Brief RFID History. RFID Components. Types of Transponders. RFID Operating Frequencies. RFID Security. RFID Applications.

CONCLUSION RFID technology is a tracking asset technology that is booming in playing a role in the supply chain of goods and services. It is one of the hottest wireless technologies being used at the producers end, but will soon be common on the consumer’s side. For example RFID technology is soon going to hit shopping centers and recreational activities. All on all RFID is a cool technology, and I would recommend a lot of computer scientist to explore it.

WORKS CITED Shepard, Steven. RFID Radio Frequency Identification. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York: Mc- Graw-Hill, Print.