Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology: Overview, Benefits, And Limitations

Introduction to RFID Technology

Question:

Discuss about the Radio Frequency Identification for Wireless Communications.

The report will discuss in detail about radio frequency identification which is also called as RFID. A technology that can incorporate the overall usage of electromagnetic coupling in the RF portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This will raise the usage of the same in the industry as an option to the bar code. The benefits of RFID are that it does not need any kind of direct contact or scanning (Landt & Melville, 2013). The system of RFID consists of three elements like an antenna, transceiver and transponder. The use of antenna in radio based frequency waves is to transmit a signal that helps in activating the transponder. While activating it, the tag also transmits the current data back to the antenna.

The technology can be used in so many kinds of schemes within the hospitals. Particularly, it can also be applied to track the patient along with pharmaceutical tracking and many other usages. As the potential of every application context to have its own set of advantages and limitation to execution and rate of adoption, it was determined that the overall scope of the study must be restricted to the device and supply based tracking (Zheng & Li, 2013). At the time of implementing the search, there were number of terms that were used here like Radio Frequency Identification or management of inventory. It is actually a mix of database and varied online sources which was used to compile a set of different references and cover academic and peer reviewed research.

The basic RFID system consist of two parts which can be called as the tag and the reader discussed in details as below: –

Tag: the concept of RFID tag gas an embedded set of transmitters as well as receiver. The real RFIS elements consist in a tag and cover the two parts which can be defined as in two parts which are an integrated circuit to store and the processing the right data in the form of information and an antenna to get and transmit a signal (Varadhan et al, 2013). The tags of RFIS is also highly non-volatile by nature along with memory based storage and consist of either the fixed logic for the sake of processing transmission as well as sensor data. It is important to understand that tags by nature can be passive, active or battery based assistive and passive.

Benefits of RFID Technology

It is important to understand that a passive tag is actually the cheapest form of option and characterize no battery. The tag also uses radio energy which is transmitted by the readers. Then there is an active tag which characterize a battery which is onboard where it can be transmitted periodically and its credentials (Palaniswamy, 2013).

A battery based assistive passive tag can also be characterise a small battery which onboard however is only activated when in the presence of an RFID based reader. In addition, a tag can be read only or sometime read/write. The read only tag on one hand has a factory based serial number which is used for the sake of identification in a database while the features like read/write tag can have particular custom data written to the tag by present users.

Reader: the RFID reader characterize a two-way process radio transmitted-receiver and can be referred to as an interrogator. The transceiver also transmits an encoded form of radio signals to investigate the tag. Also, the tag transponder further converts the radio signals into used power and answers to the reader (Nikitin et al, 2017).

Following are some of the important challenged that RFID can help the organization address are discussed as follow: –

1. Improved level of IT based asset usage by properly tracking the servers, lab tools and notebooks.
2. Improved level of documents based management by properly tracking the location, chain and status of custody of the legal documents (Liu et al, 2015).
3. Check-out and rental cases, such as techniques or at a tool rental outlet.
4. Reduction in inventory by giving a right picture of the present inventory and removing the need for ordering more than required along with the backup inventory.
5. Improved level of inventory based accuracy eliminates the non-value which helps in adding labour needed to cycle the count to find as well as verify where the certain items are exist (Chen et al, 2016).
6. Removing the repetitive kind of data entry like they situation in which the shipments can be tracked by hand on a present clipboard only to become a part of computer database.
7. Keeping the track on many high-value assets or products for instance calibration tools or medical devices.
8. Tracking of the high-turnover range of products like clothing or hundreds of books at the book shop or tires on the rack.
9. Tracking the consigned level of inventory like eyeglasses at the office of doctor.
10. Recognizing and tracking the returnable racks and bins like plastic bags, beer kegs and many more at a medical supply store (Bekkali et al, 2015).

Following are the limitation of the RFID: –

System of RFID can be easily disrupted: – the reason RFID systems uses of the electromagnetic spectrum like WiFi network, are comparatively easy to fix using the energy at the right frequency. At the same time, this can only create inconvenience for the customer in stores and it can be quite disastrous in other areas where RFID is used more and more like military fields and hospitals. In addition, active RFID based tags can be interrogated constantly to wear the battery down and disrupting the system (Zheng & Li, 2013).

RFID Reader Collision: The Reader collision happens specifically when the signals from two or even more readers is able to overlap. The current tag cannot respond to simultaneous doubts. The systems must be carefully established to avoid the issue and there are many systems that can be used as an anti-collision protocol.

RFID based tag collision: the tag collision actually happens when there are many tags that are existing in small place, but the overall read time is rapid. It is also easy for the vendors to grow the systems that make sure that tags can respond one at a time (Zheng & Li, 2013).

Limitations of RFID Technology

There are so many organization that are taking up this technology to make the process more easy and comfortable. The one organization which has implemented the technology is BJC healthcare. When RFID is just used at one step of the current supply chain and it can also have a major impact on every aspect around it. With the usage of RFID inventory management methods like smart kind cabinets, hospitals like BJC can have complete visibility into the inventory and know exactly about how many to order (Liu et al, 2014). The concept of BJC also states that they can be reduced the current amount of stock on hand by twenty three percent which further means buying less tools then in turn just setting on the shelves since there is miss-counts.

The development in the RFID related market will continue to drive because of the security and further access the control based application like e-identification and other government sponsored security projects like passport safety, and border crossing cards, development of penetration of RFID technology into other set of application areas in production, transport, animal tracking, commercial segments and aviation like retail and textile is expected to save the future of the present RFID market. Tagging of different animals is further expected to develop in strong manner since laws and regulation governs livestock, wildlife and pet care become stringent by nature (Liu et al, 2014). There is epidemic level of outbreak like bird flu and issues over the health of animals and safety of food which further make traceability and origin of animal meat a critical importance will also boost the market prospects for RFID in the food based safety sector. The consumer level awareness on safety of food on the rise and RFID devices can provide traceability of the food products over the complete food supply chain and is further expected to see a significant development in demand in safety of food based applications.

Conclusion

In the present time, organization worldwide are using RFID technology for the managing of effective Supply Chain Management. There are some organization which only uses RFID technology in specific aspects and there are other companies using RFID system throughout the complete supply chain procedure. This further enable visibility from one point to the other. (Dwivedi et al, 2013).

Reference

Bekkali, A., Zou, S., Kadri, A., Crisp, M., & Penty, R. V. (2015). Performance analysis of passive UHF RFID systems under cascaded fading channels and interference effects. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 14(3), 1421-1433.

Chen, M., Luo, W., Mo, Z., Chen, S., & Fang, Y. (2016). An efficient tag search protocol in large-scale RFID systems with noisy channel. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), 24(2), 703-716.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Kapoor, K. K., Williams, M. D., & Williams, J. (2013). RFID systems in libraries: An empirical examination of factors affecting system use and user satisfaction. International Journal of Information Management, 33(2), 367-377.

Landt, J., & Melville, M. G. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 8,432,255. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Liu, X., Li, K., Min, G., Lin, K., Xiao, B., Shen, Y., & Qu, W. (2014). Efficient unknown tag identification protocols in large-scale RFID systems. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 25(12), 3145-3155.

Liu, X., Xiao, B., Zhang, S., & Bu, K. (2015). Unknown tag identification in large RFID systems: An efficient and complete solution. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 26(6), 1775-1788.

Nikitin, P. V., Spiess, G. N., Leland, H. M., Hingst, L. C., & Sherman, J. H. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,704,002. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Varadhan, C., Pakkathillam, J. K., Kanagasabai, M., Sivasamy, R., Natarajan, R., & Palaniswamy, S. K. (2013). Triband antenna structures for RFID systems deploying fractal geometry. IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters, 12, 437-440.

Zheng, Y., & Li, M. (2013). Fast tag searching protocol for large-scale RFID systems. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), 21(3), 924-934.

Zheng, Y., & Li, M. (2013, April). ZOE: Fast cardinality estimation for large-scale RFID systems. In INFOCOM, 2013 Proceedings IEEE (pp. 908-916). IEEE.