Term Paper on "RFID Chips"

Term Paper 12 pages (3462 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Radio Frequency identification device or RFID is recently growing technology that has the potential to drastically change and simplify many aspects of our lives. RFID is an automated identification and data collection technology consisting of tags that contain chips for storing data and an antenna which is used to transmit data through radio waves. RFID has a standard numbering scheme that assigns a unique serial number from 64 to 96 bit to each tag enabled by a system called electronic product code (EPC). This serial number can then be scanned even outside line of sight. RFID could also work in any condition regardless of weather or level of moisture. While you may not have heard about RFID before, chances are that you have used or seen the technology. These RFID Chips are being developed to replace the bar code. The owners of RFID will be able to track anything with an RFID embedded in. RFID Chips are cheap, miniature chips that can be attached, often without notice, to all sorts of products, like clothing, books, etc. So far they are mostly use to monitor and control the supply chain. RFID Chips are usually attached to antennas. The chip and antenna combination is called a tag. RFID tags vary widely in size, shape and color. These RFID tags are usually used to store information and respond to readers. The information included in these tags can range from simple identification numbers to statistical information about the object the tag is embedded in.

History

While RFID technology has only really become a commercially usable technology within the past two decades, it has been in development for over half of a century. After the World War II and some major advances in radar and radio technology, Harry Stockman wrote an innovative paper, "Communication by means of reflective power" in 1948 that laid some of the groundwork for RFID. During the 1950s, more work was done exploring the field of RFID and related technologies with papers such as D.B. Harris', " Radio transmission systems with modulatable passive responder. " in the 1960's research in the field increased significantly, with papers such as Robert Richardson's "Remotely activated radio frequency powered devices" published in 1963 and J.H. Vogelman's "Passive data transmission techniques utilizing radar beams" published in 1968.

The 1960's saw some of the first major commercial applications of RFID, the Sensormatic and Checkpoint security systems. The tags used in these systems could be manufactured inexpensively and the systems were able to detect if a tag was present on the item or not. The government was also involved with RFID during the 1960's and 1970's, using the technology as a security measure to protect nuclear materials. In the 1970's, a few large companies started developing and researching RFID systems, including Raytheon, RCA, Fairchild, General Electric, Westinghouse, Philips and Glenayre. While significant work was being done by these large companies, there were also startups working with RFID. Some of the major fields being researched and developed in the 1970's included animal tagging, vehicle related systems and factory technologies. The 1980's started to see many of these technologies being implemented on a modest scale. Toll collection and animal tagging were some of the hot technologies, Electronic toll systems using RFID were set up in Texas, New York and quite a few European countries. Animal tags were being used for keeping track and monitoring information, such as temperature of livestock.

While in the 1980's RFID was primarily used for commercial applications, the 1990s saw RFID enter the consumer market. Toll systems throughout the U.S. And Europe became widespread and started gaining major use. Toll Systems were adopted by Kansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Maine, and New York, Massachusetts, and quite a few other states. Standardization became a big issue with all these systems, leading to the Title 21 standard and the EZ-Pass Interagency Group, both of which were formed in an effort to provide consistent toll standards in different regions of the U.S. Payment and access systems were developed, such as the speedpass payment system used by Mobile gas stations, various skipass systems and gated community access setups. Automobile related RFID systems also were implemented in larger scale including remote entry and ignitions systems.

Beneficial Social Impact

Below are the list of beneficial social impact of RFID technology to the three societal domains, which are the education, family and economics.

For education, the benefits of RFID can be applied in a library. You would think that this is library wouldn't have a problem with theft. But some materials do go missing from time to time. There's also a more mundane problem of misplacing things. So some library like Vatican Library is putting RFID tags in the books in its reading rooms. They are adopting RFID technology for logistics and security reason, their system lets you swipe an entire row of books and tell if one is missing or out of place. You need only to walk in front of a shelf then you can immediately see on the screen a list of all the books and their contents. If books on the library is missing or in a wrong place the computer signals the fact with an alarm sound. An additional objective of this technology for the library is the automatic monitoring of the books, how often they are taken from the shelves, the statistics of their use in order to optimize space, monitoring the various routes they follow by having electronic gateways in the printed books in a reading room.

For family, the benefits of RFID can be applied in a place where most children go, in the amusement park. Deploying an RFID enabled device can use by the parents to locate their children. On entering the park, they need only to place a wristband on their children arms. This wristband has a tiny sender, plus a special kidspotter map of the park so that if parents lose sight of their child, they can send an SMS message to the kidspotter system during their entire visit. They will then automatically receive a return message stating the name of the park area and the map coordinate of their child's position in the park.

For economic the benefits of RFID will grow as they achieve operational integration. Carefully planned, tested in a proof of concept, deployed incrementally and appropriately integrated into the existing business, an RFID deployment can:

1) Provide immediate physical accountability

Radio broadcast at ingress and egress of product allows continuous processing of merchandise receive, staged and shipped.

2) Reduce labor operations and costs

RFID affords further opportunity to automate movement of materials without human interaction (receiving, staging, shipping and access to out of sight stock).

3) Eliminate physical inventory and reduce costs

RFID provides an opportunity for perpetual and real-time inventory that reduces physical labor and operation disruption.

4) Maintain stocking levels

As inventory is moved off the retail shelf, an electronic change of status can be communicated through the supply chain to trigger replenishment and reorder.

5) Optimize the supply chains well-integrated and cooperative supply-chain system based on real time event tracking and status reporting communicated across retailer, distributor and producer could reduce carrying inventory, improve forecasting, eliminate unnecessary delivery segments and shorten delivery cycles.

6) Accelerate actionable status

Operational information is broadcast real-time, providing opportunities to react and adjust appropriately.

7) Prevent loss and track theft

Broadcast of pallet, case and item identification is an improved deterrent within facilities and during transportation.

8) Enabled real-time event management and tracking

Many production operations rely on activity instruction and a response as to status. Real-time broadcasting of both the instruction and response creates timely information status, and an opportunity to fine-tune the operation efficiencies.

9) Initiate dynamic marketing

With knowledge of real-time product location and movement, retail shelf RFID provides a competitive ability to model product placement, offer shopping deals on the spot, test, adjust and fine-tune the benefit to retailers, customers, suppliers and producers.

Deleterious Social Impact or Potentially Dangerous Social Impact

Personal Privacy

Despite of the clear advantages of RFID, there is a concern among privacy activists about the potential spread out of this technology to our society. Because RFID tags can be embedded in any product or article of clothing and even under the skin of a person, the technology could be used to record information about or track anyone with a tag on them. The tags are so small that they can go undetected on products or in clothing and can even withstand being put in a washer or dryer. Additionally, it is possible for business to log purchase information about any of their customers or even track them around the store using RFID tags. This information could be gathered and used for targeted advertising or more malicious purposes.

Those concerned that business may use the technology irresponsibly have not been comforted by some of the early uses of RFID. Example of this is in the Metro Extra Future Store; this was the first store in… READ MORE

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