RFID Special

Working of the RFID Technology

In its simplest form a product tag, made of a microchip with a tiny antenna, is attached to a product. An associated tag reader puts out electromagnetic waves. The tag antenna receives the waves and the tag itself draws power from the field generated by the reader, powering the chip, and then modulates the reader signal, sending it back where it is converted into digital data. The electromagnetic waves are harmless at the low end of the spectrum and no more dangerous than a car radio.

RFID tags come in a wide range of flavors including the passive type described above, battery-powered, multi-frequency and tag-talks-first. RFID antenna types can vary too. What’s more, not all RFID systems use low-frequency EM waves. There are read-only tags and read-write tags. There are tags holding up to 2K of product data and tags that contain only a single product ID. Tags can also be used for more than product IDs; they can be used in environmental monitors, security devices, and product integrity mechanisms.

Puneet Mehrotra is a columnist for HindustanTimes.com and a web strategist at www.cyberzest.com You can email him on puneet@cyberzest.com