Printed-Electronics RFID Tags Debut
Some businesses are starting to use these low-cost tags. While vendors and researches continue to improve the tags performance and add features.
By Mary Catherine O’Connor
June 1 2010- The promise of low-cost radio frequency identification tags made with printed electronics has been circulating for years. RFID journal first wrote about the nascent technology in 2004- at which time analysts predicted functioning RFID tags would be printed in 5 to 10 years-and then reported on significant advances in 2008.
Today, that promise is starting to come true. The Los Angeles Country Metropolitan Transportation Authority is using printed-electronics RFID tags in its disposable, limited-use transmit fare-cards. And a number of end users in other industries are testing printed tags for use in applications such as product authentication and promotions.
There’s still a gap between the performance and read range of conventional silicon-based RFID tags and those made with printed electronics, but the industry has come a long way. Innovations on the horizon could improve the performance of printed RFID tags, and there’s general agreement that they’ll be less expensive-some analysts estimate that printed RFID tags will be one-tenth or less the cost of silicon-based tags.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/purchase/7615
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The tag is unable to respond to simultaneous queries. Systems must be carefully set up to avoid this problem. Tag collision occurs when many tags are present in a small area; but since the read time is very fast, it is easier for vendors to develop systems that ensure that tags respond one at a timeA significant advantage of RFID devices over the others mentioned above is that the RFID device does not need to be positioned precisely relative to the scanner. We're all familiar with the difficulty that store checkout clerks sometimes have in making sure that a barcode can be read. And obviously, credit cards and ATM cards must be swiped through a special reader. RFID technology has been available for more than fifty years. It has only been recently that the ability to manufacture the RFID devices has fallen to the point where they can be used as a "throwaway" inventory or control device. Alien Technologies recently sold 500 million RFID tags to Gillette at a cost of about ten cents per tag. One reason that it has taken so long for RFID to come into common use is the lack of standards in the industry. Most companies invested in RFID technology only use the tags to track items within their control; many of the benefits of RFID come when items are tracked from company to company or from country to country.Radio-frequency identi¬fication (RFID) tags are embedded in a growing number of personal items and identity documents.Because the tags were designed to be powerful tracking devices and they typically incorporate little security, people wearing or carrying them are vulnerable to surreptitious surveillance and profiling.Worldwide, legislators have done little to address those risks to citizens. Tag collision in RFID systems happens when multiple tags are energized by the RFID tag reader simultaneously, and reflect their respective signals back to the reader at the same time. This problem is often seen whenever a large volume of tags must be read together in the same RF field. The reader is unable to differentiate these signals; tag collision confuses the reader.Different systems have been invented to isolate individual tags; the system used may vary by vendor. Upon receiving this signal, each tag consults a random number counter to determine the interval to wait before sending its data. Since each tag gets a unique number interval, the tags send their data at different times.
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