Radio Frequency Identification

Agenda

• General Overview• Application Uses

– Real-Time Location Systems– Inventory Management– Pharmaceutical Tracking– Document Management

Government Tracking

• The “Obamacare” RFID chips are currently being given a test run on the proud and patriotic citizens of Hanna, Wyoming.

• Over the last two weeks a special piece of legislation has been passed making it mandatory for anyone who receives welfare or any other form of government assistance to be implanted with these new identification chips.

• Government employees and officials have received the sub-dermal device

• Police officers, military, even garbage men will all be required to have the RFID chip by the end of next month or face termination from their jobs.

RFID Overview

• RFID technology has been around since 1970• Originally, RFID tags were used to track large

items, cows, railroad cars and airline luggage that were shipped over long distances.

• Newer innovations in the RFID industry include active, semi-active and passive RFID tags. 

• Tags can store up to 2 kilobytes of data and are composed of a microchip, antenna and, in the case of active and semi-passive tags, a battery.

• The tag's components are enclosed within plastic, silicon or sometimes glass

RFID Components

• Antenna: The tag's antenna receives electromagnetic energy from an RFID reader's antenna.

• Reader manages the radio communication through the antenna and sends the tag information.

• Middleware communicates with the software systems that manage inventory, accounts receivable, shipping, logistics.

RFID Components

• The RFID tag consists of a chip, integration circuit (IC), embedded in a thin film medium.

• The integrated circuit is used for storing and processing information, modulation and demodulating a radio frequency (RF) signal, collecting DC power from the reader signal, and can include other functions.

Real-Time Location Systems

• RTLS helps companies track, identify and manage important assets, tools, equipment, containers in real-time by putting an RFID tag on them.

• RTLS market is expected to grow by 20.7% and reach a market value of $43.7 billion by 2020.

• RTLS system usually includes battery operated radio tags and a cellular locating system to detect the presence and location of tags

Real-Time Location Systems

• RTLS technologies and systems include:– Wi-Fi, Ultra Wide Band (UWB)– Proprietary and standardized RF systems at

UHF, GHz, Infrared, Ultrasound, Zigbee, GPS, and GSM

Real-Time Location Systems

RTLS Video

Angle of Arrival

• Used with Tri-angulation for the process of determining the position of an object from the bearings of known reference positions.

• Method to determine position based on the angular separation (the difference in bearings) between beacons.

• Other angle of arrival positioning approaches have been developed, including:– Multi-angulation (using subspace methods– Anchor bearing propagation – Semi definite programming

• Bearing estimates can also be useful when anchor positions are unknown.

TDOA Basics

• Measurement made by measuring the difference in received phase at each element in the antenna array.

• Considered reverse of beamforming– Signal from each element is delayed by

some weight to steep the gain of the antenna array

Positioning with TDoA

Inventory Management

Pharmaceutical Item Tracking

Document Management

Questions