The Hindu Business Line : `Radio frequency identification will gain where barcode is not effective'

THE market for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology will grow exponentially, with recent technological improvements yielding larger memory capacities, wider reading ranges, and faster processing.

It is, however, unlikely that the technology will ultimately replace barcode, since the IC (integrated circuit) in a RFID tag will never be as cost-effective as a barcode label, according to Mr N.T. Nair, Vice-President (R&D), CMS Computers, Thiruvananthapuram.

In a lecture on RFID delivered at the Kerala State Centre of the Institution of Engineers here, he said the technology would continue to track growth in its established niches where barcode or other optical technologies are not effective.

A combination of radio broadcast technology and radar, the technology consists of an RFID tag (transponder) that carries data and responds to requests from the reader (interrogator). Communication between tag and reader is wireless. The tag antenna senses interrogating and programming field, and transmits response. The reader/interrogator communicates with tags and facilitates data transfer. Other functions include sophisticated signal conditioning, parity error checking and correction, and programming tags

The USP of the technology lies in its non-contact, non-line-of-sight nature. Tags can be read through a variety of substances such as snow, fog, ice, paint, crusted grime, and other visually and environmentally challenging conditions, where barcodes or other optically read technologies would be useless.

RFID tags can also be read in challenging circumstances at remarkable speeds - responding in less than 100 milliseconds. The read/write capability of an active tag is also a significant advantage in interactive applications such as work-in-process or maintenance tracking. Though costlier compared to barcode, RFID has become indispensable for a wide range of automated data collection and identification applications that would not be possible otherwise.

Even corporates have developed a fancy towards RFID in that the latter facilitates the deployment of "edge computing" in their networks. In other words, when companies install RFID, their enterprise architecture becomes more distributed. Rather than using a data centre at the headquarters to aggregate and process the avalanche of data that will be generated by items, cases or pallets being read throughout the supply chains, that work will be done at the edges of the corporate network- on store shelves, at loading docks or even fork lifts.

RFID also provides an elegant solution in areas like retailing, pharmacogenomics (personalised medicine), courier services, transportation and tolling, where IT implementation may have been hampered due to technical limitations.

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`Radio frequency identification will gain where barcode is not effective'