Why RFID is so popular these days?

Filed in archive Technology on March 20, 2006

RFID has been around since the 1940s. So why is it just now being so widely heralded? Why is Wal-Mart Stores, the largest company in the United States, using RFID technology to improve its inventory management operations? Why is the U.S. Social Security Administration using RFID to supplement (and, in some cases, replace) the handheld bar code scanning system it's been using for data acquisition in its warehouse management operations?

Perhaps the most important reason, however, for the increasingly broad acceptance of RFID technology-particularly in the industrial automation sector-is standardization. This standardization includes the frequencies over which RFID systems operate, as well as the codes and protocols they are able to recognize and utilize. For example, the electronic product code (EPC)-which evolved from the UPC (Universal Product Code)-has now become the de facto standard for retailers.

Moreover, significant progress continues to take place toward integrating EPC and ISO standards. This standardization is what will continue to make RFID a popular and effective technology and much more viable for solutions in industrial application. For example, there are many manufacturing applications where bar code systems help move products down an assembly line. At each successive stage of production, a bar code reader scans a serial label, and that information is sent to a computer that determines what the next step of assembly is.


By comparison, RFID is able to facilitate this type of data collection and delivery much more effectively. In many instances, RFID systems' antenna-to-tag communication method is superior to that of bar codes. The latter utilizes an interrogating beam of light that needs to be physically manipulated to pass over the linear bar code. Not only does RFID eliminate this need for line of sight, but it's also capable of reading multiple tags simultaneously, as well as selected tags based on a query requesting certain criteria.

(I got the idea from an article from RFID Journal)