What is an RFID Tag?

What is an RFID Tag?

An RFID Tag is an electronic device that contains information and communicates with an RFID reader. It consists of two main parts: an antenna and an integrated chip.

RFID tags do not require direct line of sight to function, enabling you to read product labels from several meters away – driving efficiency and visibility in your workflow.

Identifying Objects

RFID technology is used to identify objects by capturing the unique information encoded in smart tags and transmitting it using radio waves. This allows the technology to be used for a variety of business processes including inventory control, tracking shipments in logistics and access control.

RFID is often used in retail to protect against theft by customers (shoplifting) and to prevent loss of stock through shrinkage. It can also be used to track shipments, improve customer service and optimize inventory levels.

Unlike barcodes, RFID takes advantage of the fact that information can be read from long distances, up to 30+ meters away, without physical contact or line of sight. This feature makes it very useful in areas with poor lighting, limited space or cluttered environments. It is also able to function in a wide range of environmental conditions, such as high or low temperatures, dust or liquids.

Some businesses are starting to use RFID technology to replace traditional paper-based methods of payment. For example, some highways in the United States have E-Z pass systems that allow drivers to pay their toll using an RFID tag on their car or truck instead of stopping at a toll booth. RFID is also being used in passports to store personalized information for the holder. This can be helpful in reducing the number of people required to process visas and passports for foreign travelers.

Tracking Objects

With the help of RFID tags, items can be tracked and monitored in real time. This information can be used to track inventory and ensure that goods are where they should be at RFID Tag any given point in the supply chain, as well as provide better customer service through improved product availability.

Unlike barcode scanners, RFID systems do not require line-of-sight communication to read an item. This allows employees to spend less time locating items and more time focusing on other tasks. It also prevents the need to unload, unpack, and scan products individually, saving valuable labor resources.

Passive RFID chips are very small, making them easy to conceal or incorporate in objects. They operate by absorbing energy from the interrogating radio waves, or receiving power through an inductive coupling with a reader antenna. Active RFID chips have an onboard battery, which slightly increases their size, but enable them to operate at a greater distance than passive tags.

As the technology continues to develop, RFID tags are becoming smaller and more versatile. For instance, scientists at Bristol University glued an RFID micro-transponder to live ants, which enabled them to track their movements in the wild. This type of tracking could be useful in a number of ways, including preventing theft and providing medical professionals with individual identification of patient equipment.

Detecting Objects

The RFID system detects objects using radio signals transmitted by the tag. The signals are received by a scanning antenna and transceiver, together known as a reader, or interrogator. The reading range depends on the frequency of the RF signal used, with passive tags having a maximum reading distance of a few meters. Active tags use internal power and can transmit a response even when the tag is not commanded to do so by the reader.

Aside from making inventory management much simpler, RFID technology also enables you to track and analyze real-time product movements. This makes it easier to improve efficiency by eliminating unproductive manual labor in the warehouse, and it can help you reduce overhead costs by allowing you to store data digitally instead of manually.

In retail settings, tagging products with RFID can provide both protection against theft by customers (shoplifting) and theft by employees (shrinkage). When a customer goes to checkout, the RFID scanner will identify any items that have not been paid for, alerting staff and sounding an alarm.

This can help you prevent unauthorized purchases, and it can also enable you to offer better returns for customers who have made a mistake. Moreover, the RFID technology allows you to monitor each item’s journey throughout your supply chain and delivery to your customers. The tracing capability is an important advantage over current bar code technologies, which only allow a single type of code to be assigned to each item.

Managing Objects

RFID is part of a larger group of technologies called Automatic Identification and Data mifare desfire ev1 Capture (AIDC). These are methods that identify objects, collect data about them and enter that information directly into computer systems without any human intervention. RFID uses radio waves to accomplish this task.

RFID tags have an integrated circuit with an antenna that broadcasts data to RFID readers (also called interrogators). The reader converts the radio waves into digital data for use in applications such as inventory management and tracking objects.

The Add operation lets the user set up a mapping between the object-name-tag-id, known as an object-list or registry in the interrogator. This is similar to an address book in a smart phone. When the interrogator receives a query in the addressed mode, it checks the UID to see whether the tag is registered as the object-list member – if it is, the system responds to the request. If not, the system ignores the query.

There are three designs of object locator: Room-level Agents, Interrogator and Tags (RAIT), Desk-level Agents, Interrogator andTags (DAIT) and a hybrid design, referred to as DRAIT-DRAIT. The names indicate the ranges of the RFID readers used by these designs.