Sealed inside a metal tray, the robust UHF
passive RFID tag is durable enough to be used in a wide range of metal-tagging applications.
However, the use of
passive RFID tags applied to pallets, boxes, containers, and ultimately individual items for the warfighter, still only holds a promise of meeting the confidence metric.
While the cost of the cameras were comparable to the cost of RFID readers, there have been ongoing operational savings from printing 2D bar code labels versus the purchase price of the
passive RFID tags used to track pallets.
The most recent Defense Department policy, released in late July, will require suppliers to attach
passive RFID tags on cases and pallets by January 2005.
With a low cost platform, the contactless
passive RFID tag is an ideal tool for tracking applications, such as industries, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing railway and warehousing solutions.
The antenna that reads the
Passive RFID tag resembles a solar panel.
'It's fair to say the supply chain market started out with some unrealistic expectations around technology and adoption,' says Scot Stelter of Alien Technology (www.alientechnology.com ), one of the leading providers of EPC-type
passive RFID tags. 'Instead of trying to layer RFID across their entire supply chain in one fell swoop, they're using the technology to solve a specific business problem.'
The advantage of the
passive RFID tag is that it is disposed of at the end of the passive tag's shipping cycle, saving the expense of tag recovery and repair.
"An active or
passive RFID tag is only identified when it passes by a reader," explains Matt Armanino, senior vice president of corporate development for WhereNet (408-845-8500, www.wherenet.com ).
Luong, "A
passive RFID tag embedded temperature sensor with improved process spreads immunity for a -30[degrees]C to 60[degrees]C sensing range," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, vol.
* NFC tag: which is an industrial
passive RFID tag, easy to use, and able to store a little amount of data in addition to an exclosive identification number [7], [11].
With iTRAK, cases now have a
passive RFID tag affixed to them in the plant, making the receipt of finished goods into the warehouse an almost instant process as finished goods pass through a RFID portal-style reader station.