September 2, 2005
Philips demonstrates photonic textiles that turn fabric into intelligent displays
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Berlin, Germany -- At the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 2005, Philips is demonstrating photonic textiles—fabrics that contain lighting systems and can therefore serve as displays. With the development of this new and unusual technology, Philips Research is pointing the way toward a new age in the long history of textiles. At first glance, objects such as clothing, towels, upholstery, and drapes would seem unlikely places on which to place intelligent and interactive systems. Yet these low-tech objects figure prominently in our lives. By integrating flexible arrays of multicolored light-emitting diodes (LEDs) into fabrics—and doing so without compromising the softness of the cloth—Philips Research is bringing these inert objects to life.To meet the challenge of creating light-emitting cloth objects that retain their softness, Philips Research and textile institute TITV Greiz have developed an interconnecting substrate made entirely of cloth. Researchers from Philips have also created flexible and drapable substrates from plastics and films.On these substrates, the researchers have placed passive matrices of compact RGB LED packages. The pixelated luminaires with relatively large distance between the RGB pixels have been embedded in such everyday objects as cushions, backpacks, and floor mats. Since the fabric material covering the miniature light sources naturally diffuses light, each pixel seems bigger than it actually is. The LEDs, therefore, remain small and unobtrusive, while the fabric retains its soft look and feel.Photonic textiles can also be made interactive. Philips has achieved interactivity by incorporating sensors (such as orientation and pressure sensors) and communication devices (such as Bluetooth, GSM) into the fabric.The results of these innovations are as various and promising as they are novel. Photonic textiles open up a wide range of applications in the fields of ambient lighting, communication, and personal health care. Photonic textiles are still a young business. Even at this early stage, however, Philips envisions partnerships with interior and apparel brands that see the potential of photonic textiles to revolutionize the very concept of fabric. The demonstration at IFA is also meant to show the opportunities offered by this technology and to gain customers’ and visitors’ feedback on these options.
An interconnecting, flexible substrate with a matrix of red, green and blue LEDs is the fundamental building block of application prototypes of photonic textiles.
Applied in soft fabric, the light from the small pixels diffuses, resulting in more or less continuous light-emitting soft surface.
More information:+ Video on Photonic Textiles
Download high-resolution pictures:
+ Pictures on Photonic Textiles
For more information, please go to:
+ www.lumalive.com
2007년 12월 15일 토요일
Thin film-like display which bends
Mr.Morin introduced many links to us in last class. One of them is the following article and the related video.The thin film-like display which Sony developed bends even while showing full-color video.Sony said plans for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided. I think it is worthwhile to commercialize it because it is very light,unbreakable and portable.
innovator like Sony is giving us unlimited dream and chance.How about paying attention to this display?
=================================================================
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Sony develops film-thin display that bends in full color
By Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) -- In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all -- a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.
Sony Corp. posted video of the new 2.5 inch display on its Web page Friday. In the video, a hand squeezes the 0.3 millimeter (0.01 inch)-thick display, which shows color video of a bicyclist stuntman, a picturesque lake and other images.
Sony will present the research and video at an academic symposium in Long Beach, California, for the Society for Information Display this week, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said in a release.
The display combines Sony's organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display, it said.
The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market -- liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels.
Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.
Sony said plans for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided.
''In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing,'' said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. ''Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper.''
Tatsuo Mori, professor at Nagoya University's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said some hurdles remained, including making the display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs.
But the display's pliancy is extremely difficult to imitate with LCD and plasma screens, he said.
''To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking,'' Mori said in a telephone interview. ''You can drop it, and it won't break because it's as thin as paper.''
Other companies, including LG. Philips LCD Co. and Seiko Epson Corp. are also working on a different kind of ''electronic paper'' technology, but Sony said its technology using the organic electroluminescent display delivers better color images and is more suited for video.
Sony President Ryoji Chubachi has said a film-like display is a major technology his company is working on to boost its status as a technological powerhouse.
In a meeting with reporters more than a year ago, he boasted Sony was working on a technology for displays so thin it could be rolled up like paper, and that the world would stand up and take notice.
Some analysts have said Sony, which makes Walkman portable players and PlayStation 3 video game machines, had fallen behind rivals in flat-panel technology, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and Sharp Corp. of Japan.
But Sony has been marking a turnaround under Chubachi and Chief Executive Howard Stringer, the first foreigner to head Sony, including reducing jobs, shuttering unprofitable businesses and strengthening its flat TV offerings.
On the Net:
Video of Sony's new display:mms://station.streaming-tv.net/sonypr/OLED070524--750kbps.wmv
innovator like Sony is giving us unlimited dream and chance.How about paying attention to this display?
=================================================================
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Sony develops film-thin display that bends in full color
By Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) -- In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all -- a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.
Sony Corp. posted video of the new 2.5 inch display on its Web page Friday. In the video, a hand squeezes the 0.3 millimeter (0.01 inch)-thick display, which shows color video of a bicyclist stuntman, a picturesque lake and other images.
Sony will present the research and video at an academic symposium in Long Beach, California, for the Society for Information Display this week, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said in a release.
The display combines Sony's organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display, it said.
The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market -- liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels.
Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.
Sony said plans for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided.
''In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing,'' said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. ''Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper.''
Tatsuo Mori, professor at Nagoya University's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said some hurdles remained, including making the display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs.
But the display's pliancy is extremely difficult to imitate with LCD and plasma screens, he said.
''To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking,'' Mori said in a telephone interview. ''You can drop it, and it won't break because it's as thin as paper.''
Other companies, including LG. Philips LCD Co. and Seiko Epson Corp. are also working on a different kind of ''electronic paper'' technology, but Sony said its technology using the organic electroluminescent display delivers better color images and is more suited for video.
Sony President Ryoji Chubachi has said a film-like display is a major technology his company is working on to boost its status as a technological powerhouse.
In a meeting with reporters more than a year ago, he boasted Sony was working on a technology for displays so thin it could be rolled up like paper, and that the world would stand up and take notice.
Some analysts have said Sony, which makes Walkman portable players and PlayStation 3 video game machines, had fallen behind rivals in flat-panel technology, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and Sharp Corp. of Japan.
But Sony has been marking a turnaround under Chubachi and Chief Executive Howard Stringer, the first foreigner to head Sony, including reducing jobs, shuttering unprofitable businesses and strengthening its flat TV offerings.
On the Net:
Video of Sony's new display:mms://station.streaming-tv.net/sonypr/OLED070524--750kbps.wmv
2007년 12월 14일 금요일
Fairly realistic flying car offered for 2009 delivery
One of our favourite notions here at Vulture Central is that of the flying car. Ideally this would be a true sci-fi-style job, backed up by an equally puissant automated air-traffic infrastructure. In such a machine you could simply jump into your car outside your house, quietly lift off vertically, fly somewhere even in bad visibility and congested airspace, and set down again equally vertically. Then you could drive/taxi your astounding hover vehicle into the garage, underground carpark or wherever - or simply park it on the street.
Sadly, the nearest approach offered by current technology is the helicopter. Whirlybirds are noisy, dangerous, expensive and difficult to fly. They take up a hell of a lot of room, too, in the contexts both of airspace and manoeuvres near/on the ground. They aren't going to turn into flying cars any time soon.
'But honey, your mom doesn't have a runway'
- it won't wash any more. Credit: Benjamin Schweighart
Jump-jets like the Harrier are even worse, in that they can't at present get airborne vertically with a useful load. Ducted fans sometimes seem to offer hope, but the idea has been around for a long time without much in the way of credible kit appearing. The large thrust-disc diameter which a rotorcraft can offer - which is what makes helicopters and tiltrotors a going proposition - doesn't seem feasible for ducted fans, and in any case leads to an undesirably large ground footprint.
Even once you've dealt with all that, there are still the inevitable safety and certification issues that would come with a many-orders-of-magnitude increase in numbers of aircraft over densely-populated areas.
So we probably aren't getting a real flying car any time soon. Current technology could, however, offer something a bit more exciting than the ordinary light aircraft which have been flying almost unchanged since the 1950s. In fact, various inventors and engineers have been working on so-called "roadable" aeroplanes for a long time.
The idea here is that you still have your trusty flying vehicle parked in your driveway or garage, taking up no more room than a regular motor. You stroll out, fire it up and drive it away to a nearby airstrip. Here you extend/attach the wings, prop etc., and it's up, up and away. When you get to your destination strip, you land, convert back to roadgoing configuration, and trundle along to where you're going.
Under NASA's Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) concept, this relatively realistic idea gets some hard-to-achieve bells and whistles added on. A proper NASA PAV is also very quiet and can take off from very short runways, which could permit handy little airstrip-laybys to be scattered all over the place: at shopping-mall carparks, suburban housing estates, major road junctions etc. Better still, the PAV's amazing "synthetic vision" autopilot would be able to interface with a super-duper airtraffic network of the future so as to handle the plane nigh-on autonomously. This would mean that learning to fly a PAV would be no more demanding than getting a regular driver's licence. The PAV could laugh at bad weather and controlled airspace too.
These tough tech hurdles have meant that the NASA PAV doesn't exist, and probably won't in the foreseeable future. But that doesn't necessarily mean that more basic roadable aeroplanes can't be built.
One such notion is the Terrafugia Transition®, reported on today by the MIT Tech Review. Terrafugia Inc is a startup founded by a group of MIT engineers and flying enthusiasts in 2006. It completed an initial funding round in December.
The Transition isn't a PAV; it's a normal light aircraft which can fold its wings at the touch of a button and become a car, and which runs on unleaded. That's pretty much it. The only extra touch is that a Transition® is intended to qualify as an FAA "Light-Sport Aircraft", which means a somewhat less onerous regulatory regime. A "Sport pilot" licence is easier and cheaper to get than an ordinary private pilot's licence, requiring only 20 hours logged; and there are breaks on maintenance, medical checks etc. An existing pilot's licence is also fine.
The Transition® in bad-weather mode. Credit: Benjamin Schweighart.
The Terrafugia people reckon that the advent of the Light-Sport category, combined with recent advances in materials and aero engines, mean that an airworthy and road-legal plane can now be built affordably. They say the market for it is there, with 600,000 licenced pilots who could already fly the Transition® in the States.
"The Transition® is for pilots," says the company.
"It is not intended for use by short-distance commuters, by people running errands, or for any trip through city traffic or under 100 miles. Instead... if you travel between 100 and 500 miles at a stretch, particularly if your trip is either starting or ending in a more suburban or rural area, then the Transition® is for you. If you don't already have a pilot's license, you will need to get one... The Transition® is for pilots, businesspeople [and] weekend travelers..."
Most of the target market pilots don't have instrument qualifications allowing them to operate in bad weather. This means that they often fly somewhere, then get trapped on the ground by poor conditions. They also find the hassle of getting to and from airstrips a problem, according to Terrafugia; not to mention the faff attendant on aviation fuelling, tiedown places and so forth.
None of that applies to the Transition. You drive it to the airport from home, filling up at an ordinary petrol station. You fly wherever you're going. Once there, you aren't bothered about a place to tie down, or about a ride onward to the ultimate destination. You simply fold wings and drive away. If the weather closes in before your return flight, no hassle about hire cars or getting the plane back home again - just drive back home on the ground. It'll take a bit longer, but you'll get there. Likewise, if your flight runs into bad weather and you can't carry on, divert to an open airfield and drive from there.
All in all, this sounds a lot more realistic than a ducted-fan flying saucer from the endlessly written-up Dr Paul Moller (who was busted by the SEC in 2003 for flogging fraudulent "Skycar" stock on the internet and other financial misdeeds). It also sounds a lot more feasible than a silent, super-efficient short-takeoff NASA PAV with accompanying automatic air-traffic miracles.
Terrafugia reckons there are two main tech hurdles to jump before the Transition is ready to fly and drive. The first of these is the one-touch folding wings, which the company believes it has cracked. A demonstration wing has been built and tested successfully.
The remaining trick is not the engine - the Terrafugia mob reckon an existing Rotax job can do everything they need - but the transmission, which must be able to switch easily between driving the propeller and the wheels. It also has to be light, in order to keep the Transition within the FAA limit of 1320 pounds for a light-sport aircraft.
Anna Mracek Dietrich, Terrafugia engineer and COO, spoke to Tech Review.
"Going into this, we knew our two biggest design challenges to make it practical would be the wings and the power train," she said.
"By validating the durability of the wing's construction and engineering, we've checked one major design challenge off of the list, and now our focus is on the second."
One might also suspect that there will also be major challenges in getting the Transition certified as road-legal. This is traditionally a big stumbling block for flying-car inventors, who are often FAA-savvy but less well acquainted with the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
"We've made inroads with both [regulators], especially the FAA," says Dietrich.
The company expects to begin flight testing next year, and deliveries from "late 2009". The business plan calls for production of between 50 and 200 Transitions annually, selling for $148,000 a pop. Terrafugia says that all its anticipated production through Q2 of 2010 has been reserved already (the refundable reservation deposit is $7,400, held in escrow) though it won't say exactly how many that is. However, the investor sheet (pdf) quotes customer number 29, so presumably at least that many orders have been placed.
For your $148k you get two seats, cruising speed of 115mph in the air (or normal motorway performance on the ground), 25 miles per gallon flying on super unleaded, and 460 miles flight range.
One of the weaker stats on the spec sheet (pdf) is the useful load - just 550lb. Up to 120lb of that will be taken up by fuel, so the Transition won't get airborne freshly topped up with two heavyish people. It certainly won't carry much baggage, unless flown solo or with very little fuel.
Budding secret agents or master criminals should also note that you can't just pop the wings out during a high-speed chase and take off: the button will only work with the vehicle stationary. There's no air-con, either.
Despite these limitations, the Transition looks very wantable indeed to your correspondent*. Regrettably, the Vulture Central scriven-remuneration package doesn't permit the purchase of £74-grand conveyances.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/10/transition_flying_car_quite_realistic/page3.html
Sadly, the nearest approach offered by current technology is the helicopter. Whirlybirds are noisy, dangerous, expensive and difficult to fly. They take up a hell of a lot of room, too, in the contexts both of airspace and manoeuvres near/on the ground. They aren't going to turn into flying cars any time soon.
'But honey, your mom doesn't have a runway'
- it won't wash any more. Credit: Benjamin Schweighart
Jump-jets like the Harrier are even worse, in that they can't at present get airborne vertically with a useful load. Ducted fans sometimes seem to offer hope, but the idea has been around for a long time without much in the way of credible kit appearing. The large thrust-disc diameter which a rotorcraft can offer - which is what makes helicopters and tiltrotors a going proposition - doesn't seem feasible for ducted fans, and in any case leads to an undesirably large ground footprint.
Even once you've dealt with all that, there are still the inevitable safety and certification issues that would come with a many-orders-of-magnitude increase in numbers of aircraft over densely-populated areas.
So we probably aren't getting a real flying car any time soon. Current technology could, however, offer something a bit more exciting than the ordinary light aircraft which have been flying almost unchanged since the 1950s. In fact, various inventors and engineers have been working on so-called "roadable" aeroplanes for a long time.
The idea here is that you still have your trusty flying vehicle parked in your driveway or garage, taking up no more room than a regular motor. You stroll out, fire it up and drive it away to a nearby airstrip. Here you extend/attach the wings, prop etc., and it's up, up and away. When you get to your destination strip, you land, convert back to roadgoing configuration, and trundle along to where you're going.
Under NASA's Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) concept, this relatively realistic idea gets some hard-to-achieve bells and whistles added on. A proper NASA PAV is also very quiet and can take off from very short runways, which could permit handy little airstrip-laybys to be scattered all over the place: at shopping-mall carparks, suburban housing estates, major road junctions etc. Better still, the PAV's amazing "synthetic vision" autopilot would be able to interface with a super-duper airtraffic network of the future so as to handle the plane nigh-on autonomously. This would mean that learning to fly a PAV would be no more demanding than getting a regular driver's licence. The PAV could laugh at bad weather and controlled airspace too.
These tough tech hurdles have meant that the NASA PAV doesn't exist, and probably won't in the foreseeable future. But that doesn't necessarily mean that more basic roadable aeroplanes can't be built.
One such notion is the Terrafugia Transition®, reported on today by the MIT Tech Review. Terrafugia Inc is a startup founded by a group of MIT engineers and flying enthusiasts in 2006. It completed an initial funding round in December.
The Transition isn't a PAV; it's a normal light aircraft which can fold its wings at the touch of a button and become a car, and which runs on unleaded. That's pretty much it. The only extra touch is that a Transition® is intended to qualify as an FAA "Light-Sport Aircraft", which means a somewhat less onerous regulatory regime. A "Sport pilot" licence is easier and cheaper to get than an ordinary private pilot's licence, requiring only 20 hours logged; and there are breaks on maintenance, medical checks etc. An existing pilot's licence is also fine.
The Transition® in bad-weather mode. Credit: Benjamin Schweighart.
The Terrafugia people reckon that the advent of the Light-Sport category, combined with recent advances in materials and aero engines, mean that an airworthy and road-legal plane can now be built affordably. They say the market for it is there, with 600,000 licenced pilots who could already fly the Transition® in the States.
"The Transition® is for pilots," says the company.
"It is not intended for use by short-distance commuters, by people running errands, or for any trip through city traffic or under 100 miles. Instead... if you travel between 100 and 500 miles at a stretch, particularly if your trip is either starting or ending in a more suburban or rural area, then the Transition® is for you. If you don't already have a pilot's license, you will need to get one... The Transition® is for pilots, businesspeople [and] weekend travelers..."
Most of the target market pilots don't have instrument qualifications allowing them to operate in bad weather. This means that they often fly somewhere, then get trapped on the ground by poor conditions. They also find the hassle of getting to and from airstrips a problem, according to Terrafugia; not to mention the faff attendant on aviation fuelling, tiedown places and so forth.
None of that applies to the Transition. You drive it to the airport from home, filling up at an ordinary petrol station. You fly wherever you're going. Once there, you aren't bothered about a place to tie down, or about a ride onward to the ultimate destination. You simply fold wings and drive away. If the weather closes in before your return flight, no hassle about hire cars or getting the plane back home again - just drive back home on the ground. It'll take a bit longer, but you'll get there. Likewise, if your flight runs into bad weather and you can't carry on, divert to an open airfield and drive from there.
All in all, this sounds a lot more realistic than a ducted-fan flying saucer from the endlessly written-up Dr Paul Moller (who was busted by the SEC in 2003 for flogging fraudulent "Skycar" stock on the internet and other financial misdeeds). It also sounds a lot more feasible than a silent, super-efficient short-takeoff NASA PAV with accompanying automatic air-traffic miracles.
Terrafugia reckons there are two main tech hurdles to jump before the Transition is ready to fly and drive. The first of these is the one-touch folding wings, which the company believes it has cracked. A demonstration wing has been built and tested successfully.
The remaining trick is not the engine - the Terrafugia mob reckon an existing Rotax job can do everything they need - but the transmission, which must be able to switch easily between driving the propeller and the wheels. It also has to be light, in order to keep the Transition within the FAA limit of 1320 pounds for a light-sport aircraft.
Anna Mracek Dietrich, Terrafugia engineer and COO, spoke to Tech Review.
"Going into this, we knew our two biggest design challenges to make it practical would be the wings and the power train," she said.
"By validating the durability of the wing's construction and engineering, we've checked one major design challenge off of the list, and now our focus is on the second."
One might also suspect that there will also be major challenges in getting the Transition certified as road-legal. This is traditionally a big stumbling block for flying-car inventors, who are often FAA-savvy but less well acquainted with the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
"We've made inroads with both [regulators], especially the FAA," says Dietrich.
The company expects to begin flight testing next year, and deliveries from "late 2009". The business plan calls for production of between 50 and 200 Transitions annually, selling for $148,000 a pop. Terrafugia says that all its anticipated production through Q2 of 2010 has been reserved already (the refundable reservation deposit is $7,400, held in escrow) though it won't say exactly how many that is. However, the investor sheet (pdf) quotes customer number 29, so presumably at least that many orders have been placed.
For your $148k you get two seats, cruising speed of 115mph in the air (or normal motorway performance on the ground), 25 miles per gallon flying on super unleaded, and 460 miles flight range.
One of the weaker stats on the spec sheet (pdf) is the useful load - just 550lb. Up to 120lb of that will be taken up by fuel, so the Transition won't get airborne freshly topped up with two heavyish people. It certainly won't carry much baggage, unless flown solo or with very little fuel.
Budding secret agents or master criminals should also note that you can't just pop the wings out during a high-speed chase and take off: the button will only work with the vehicle stationary. There's no air-con, either.
Despite these limitations, the Transition looks very wantable indeed to your correspondent*. Regrettably, the Vulture Central scriven-remuneration package doesn't permit the purchase of £74-grand conveyances.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/10/transition_flying_car_quite_realistic/page3.html
Amazing magic applications of iPhone
Wow~! Georgeous! Apple's iPhone provides amazing magic applications. I want to have that one.How about going and experiencing fantastic features?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcB8CKa73B0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcB8CKa73B0
deliver the best WiMAX solution to the world
POSDATA supplies Mobile WiMAX Terminal to KT
POSDATA FLYVO(CEO Yoo Byung-chang), which is developing and supplying system equipment such as base stations and ASN-gateways based on core Mobile WiMAX technologies, concluded a contract to supply USB-type Mobile WiMAX terminal (model KWP-U1600) that is connected to a notebook computer to enable access to Mobile WiMAX.
POSDATA FLYVO completed a terminal certification test with Korea Telecom last month and is ready to supply the USB-type terminal to KT. KWP-U1600 is a USB-type modem that has a sleek exterior with an internal antenna. A 45-degree hinge allows for free movement of the terminal for better signal reception when it is weak. Two LED indicators have been applied to the exterior, enabling the user to frequently check the unit’s operation status.
POSDATA FLYVO reached an agreement with KT during the second half of this year on mutual cooperation on the Mobile WiMAX terminal business. Both companies are jointly carrying out marketing activities, such as Mobile WiMAX terminal planning and shared distribution networks.
In addition to the USB dongle, POSDATA FLYVO is developing various types of terminals, including a specialized terminal for games and a gateway modem. The company is planning to expand sales in the domestic market as well as overseas markets, where the company is now moving forward with exporting system equipment. Also, the company is building and improving relations with various content providers to be supplied with portal, game, video, music, and educational content, to boost usage of the terminals.
http://www.flyvo.com/WiMAX/about/news_view.jsp?searchKey=title&searchWord=&onPage=1&press_seq=112
POSDATA FLYVO(CEO Yoo Byung-chang), which is developing and supplying system equipment such as base stations and ASN-gateways based on core Mobile WiMAX technologies, concluded a contract to supply USB-type Mobile WiMAX terminal (model KWP-U1600) that is connected to a notebook computer to enable access to Mobile WiMAX.
POSDATA FLYVO completed a terminal certification test with Korea Telecom last month and is ready to supply the USB-type terminal to KT. KWP-U1600 is a USB-type modem that has a sleek exterior with an internal antenna. A 45-degree hinge allows for free movement of the terminal for better signal reception when it is weak. Two LED indicators have been applied to the exterior, enabling the user to frequently check the unit’s operation status.
POSDATA FLYVO reached an agreement with KT during the second half of this year on mutual cooperation on the Mobile WiMAX terminal business. Both companies are jointly carrying out marketing activities, such as Mobile WiMAX terminal planning and shared distribution networks.
In addition to the USB dongle, POSDATA FLYVO is developing various types of terminals, including a specialized terminal for games and a gateway modem. The company is planning to expand sales in the domestic market as well as overseas markets, where the company is now moving forward with exporting system equipment. Also, the company is building and improving relations with various content providers to be supplied with portal, game, video, music, and educational content, to boost usage of the terminals.
http://www.flyvo.com/WiMAX/about/news_view.jsp?searchKey=title&searchWord=&onPage=1&press_seq=112
2007년 12월 13일 목요일
Violin Playing Robot
Toyota shows off a violin playing robot and a two-wheeled human transporter -- the latest products of its robots program that seeks to develop a practical human assistance robot by the early part of the 2010s.
http://www.pcworld.com/video/id,651-page,1-bid,0/video.html
http://www.pcworld.com/video/id,651-page,1-bid,0/video.html
Surface computing
When we saw the video of surface computing,all the same reaction was "Wow~!". After the last class was over,the very surface computing was the focus of conversation.Who in the world has thought of that gorgeous technology? I don't know the limit of innovation.Here is an introduction to the surface computing.
Microsoft Surface
Fact Sheet
May 2007
Name of Product: Microsoft Surface™
Category: Surface computing
Product
Overview: Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp. It turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.
Description: Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. Surface can simultaneously recognize dozens and dozens of movements such as touch, gestures and actual unique objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes.
Surface will ship to partners with a portfolio of basic applications, including photos, music, virtual concierge and games, that can be customized to provide their customers with unique experiences.
Surface
Computing: Surface computing breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology, changing the way people interact with all kinds of everyday content, from photos to maps to menus. The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information by using their hands and natural movements. Users are able to access information either on their own or collaboratively with their friends and families, unlike any experience available today. Surface computing features four key attributes:
· Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content through touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
· Multi-touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
· Multi-user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
· Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.
Features: Multi-touch display. The Surface display is capable of multi-touch interaction, recognizing dozens and dozens of touches simultaneously, including fingers, hands, gestures and objects placed on the surface.
Horizontal orientation. The 30-inch display in a table-sized form factor allows users to share, explore and create experiences together, enabling a truly collaborative computing experience.
Dimensions. Surface is 22 inches high, 21 inches deep and 42 inches wide.
Materials. The Surface tabletop is acrylic, and its interior frame is powder-coated steel.
Requirements: Standard American 110–120V power
System: The Surface custom software platform runs on Windows Vista™ and has wired Ethernet 10/100 and wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity.
Availability: Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, restaurants, retail establishments and public entertainment venues.
Microsoft Surface
Fact Sheet
May 2007
Name of Product: Microsoft Surface™
Category: Surface computing
Product
Overview: Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp. It turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.
Description: Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. Surface can simultaneously recognize dozens and dozens of movements such as touch, gestures and actual unique objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes.
Surface will ship to partners with a portfolio of basic applications, including photos, music, virtual concierge and games, that can be customized to provide their customers with unique experiences.
Surface
Computing: Surface computing breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology, changing the way people interact with all kinds of everyday content, from photos to maps to menus. The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information by using their hands and natural movements. Users are able to access information either on their own or collaboratively with their friends and families, unlike any experience available today. Surface computing features four key attributes:
· Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content through touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
· Multi-touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
· Multi-user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
· Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.
Features: Multi-touch display. The Surface display is capable of multi-touch interaction, recognizing dozens and dozens of touches simultaneously, including fingers, hands, gestures and objects placed on the surface.
Horizontal orientation. The 30-inch display in a table-sized form factor allows users to share, explore and create experiences together, enabling a truly collaborative computing experience.
Dimensions. Surface is 22 inches high, 21 inches deep and 42 inches wide.
Materials. The Surface tabletop is acrylic, and its interior frame is powder-coated steel.
Requirements: Standard American 110–120V power
System: The Surface custom software platform runs on Windows Vista™ and has wired Ethernet 10/100 and wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity.
Availability: Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, restaurants, retail establishments and public entertainment venues.
2007년 12월 9일 일요일
BioSense Program and Korea
Information systems can help prevent a public health crisis. To do so, systems integration is necessary. As we can see from our textbook, BioSense can summarize and present analytical results by source,day,and syndrome for each zip code,state,and metropolitan area using maps,graphs,and tables. Registered state and local public health agencies as well as hospitals and health care providers are allowed to access data.
In case of Korea there can be difficulties we can think of.
The first one is standardization. We must also integrate systems among small-sized clinics, medium-sized clinics and large general hospitals. But who can be willing to participate in the transition process that would be burdensome and time-consuming without any benefits? Furthermore,we should consider herb doctor’s offices as well as western-style hospitals.There are many differences such as terminologies,concept,
prescription between the two.
The second one is systemization itself. But some individual doctors still have their medical records as a form of paper. I have visited an ENT doctor two years ago in Seoul. There were three to four nurses who are busy in doing something like supporting the doctor, looking for medical reords, and answering questions. A nurse asked me my resident registration number, and then started to look for my medical record from the piles of paper files.The doctor and CEO of a small clinic seemed not to need any help or support. What can the central government give them while he just wants staus quo?
The third one is privacy. Even in any cases and situations,it is inevitable that privacy problems may occur. What we should do to prevent moral hazard of insiders and invasion of outsiders is just to do our best to bulid firewall, educate and punish evil-doers.
If these problems were solved, I think IS will be able to prevent a public health crisis.
But we have a long way to go.
In case of Korea there can be difficulties we can think of.
The first one is standardization. We must also integrate systems among small-sized clinics, medium-sized clinics and large general hospitals. But who can be willing to participate in the transition process that would be burdensome and time-consuming without any benefits? Furthermore,we should consider herb doctor’s offices as well as western-style hospitals.There are many differences such as terminologies,concept,
prescription between the two.
The second one is systemization itself. But some individual doctors still have their medical records as a form of paper. I have visited an ENT doctor two years ago in Seoul. There were three to four nurses who are busy in doing something like supporting the doctor, looking for medical reords, and answering questions. A nurse asked me my resident registration number, and then started to look for my medical record from the piles of paper files.The doctor and CEO of a small clinic seemed not to need any help or support. What can the central government give them while he just wants staus quo?
The third one is privacy. Even in any cases and situations,it is inevitable that privacy problems may occur. What we should do to prevent moral hazard of insiders and invasion of outsiders is just to do our best to bulid firewall, educate and punish evil-doers.
If these problems were solved, I think IS will be able to prevent a public health crisis.
But we have a long way to go.
2007년 11월 25일 일요일
Loyalty Doesn't Come From a Program
Many companies such as hotels and airliners get the information about their guests from guests to sign up for customer loyalty program. In fact, their loyalty programs supported by CRM are surely important means to manage customer relationship and attract them,but not a competitive differentiator any longer.For example, point systems have now become a commodity because everyone has one. So companies must leverage the one thing that can't be duplicated about their company: brand and customer service. Here is an article.
Loyalty Doesn't Come From a Program
By Jack Aaronson, The ClickZ Network, May 20, 2005 Sponsored by Omniture View print-friendly versionSend this article to a colleagueArticles by Jack AaronsonSend Feedback Read Feedback Contact Jack Aaronson Last time,
I wrote about warring trends in customer self-service, and the need for human interaction to generate loyalty. Based on feedback I received, today I'll explore that column's central conceit, which mainly went unspoken: loyalty shouldn't rely solely on a program. If it does, you've already lost the game.Way back when, loyalty programs were a really good idea. They rewarded high-value customers and built loyalty among customer bases. Then, everyone built one. Loyalty programs became synonymous with point systems, in the same way personalization was confused with collaborative filtering in the '90s.There are lots of problems with this. I'm (perpetually) writing a book called "The Unconscious Consumer," which explores various forms of loyalty, including loyalty programs. One of the major research topics is reward schedules and their effects on consumers.There are many kinds of reward schedules beyond the point program. SUBWAY, for instance, has a punch card that acts as a "buy X, get one free" card. Retail stores such as Barneys have special invitation-only sale days for high-value customers. Other retailers offer premium clubs that give members free shipping or a percentage off purchases.Airlines and hotels use what's technically called a "token economy." Points are accrued like money and can be spent on various services. Token economies operate a bit differently from other reward programs. They have a variable nature, and points can be equated to dollars. Due to their prevalence, token economies have become a commodity in a way other reward systems haven't.Nearly every airline and hotel has a point reward system. The system itself is no longer a differentiator. I belong to every reward program known to humanity. So it doesn't really matter where I stay or what airline I use. I accrue points all over the place. If I use one airline for a long time and accrue a lot of miles, my loyalty to that airline diminishes after I cash in the points. The playing field is again leveled against all other programs. Many hotels and airlines wish they could get out of point systems altogether.Unfortunately, they can't. Point systems have become a cost of doing business for those industries. Having one isn't a differentiator, but not having one is a detractor. One thing's for certain: they're no longer the most effective loyalty builders.I stay at the Fairmont Hotels because of their excellent customer service. Another hotel chain, Wyndham, doesn't have a point system in its loyalty program (it does partner with airlines, though). Its program is based on customer service and tailoring your stay. The staff makes sure your refrigerator is stocked with your favorite foods, your favorite beverages are waiting in your room, and everything is just as you like it. This correctly instills loyalty based on premium customer service.As point systems become a commodity (because everyone has one), companies must leverage the one thing that can't be duplicated about their company: brand and customer service. W Hotels can charge whatever they want for their hotel rooms. No one can compete, because no one can duplicate their brand.Mid-level companies can learn something valuable from these boutique hotels. If nothing differentiates mid-level hotels from one another because they all have the same price point, offer a reward program, and look and feel the same, who has a competitive advantage? No one.Likewise with the major airlines. United, Delta, and US Airways feel the same and offer point programs. JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, and Song compete on price and style. JetBlue's brand, like Virgin Atlantic's, can't be easily copied. People fly on those airlines because the brand experience is unique.Real Loyalty Comes From the Brand ExperienceThese loyalty programs cost a lot to maintain. They've become so common they're just a cost of doing business, not a differentiator. Customer loyalty must revert back to the brand experience and the intrinsic desire we have to be loyal to a brand we like. That brand must somehow be differentiated so it sticks in our mind. Anyone who's flown Virgin Atlantic or stayed at one of Ian Schrager's hotels understands this. Mid-market brands (which don't cater to the luxury set) must figure out how to make their brand proposition stand out among their competitors.Brand is just as important online as off-. Companies such as hotels and airlines tend to have boring Web sites. Their brands are boring. Their design firms build traditional hotel or airline sites.Even the most boring Web pages are spruced up by a strong brand. Registration pages, for instance, all look the same: boring and brandless. JetBlue, however, inserts its brand into its registration page:Please enter your email address and a password that you're likely to remember (Don't worry, if you forget your password, we'll help you find it. If you forget your email address, we're both out of luck).Loyalty programs are running amok. Companies are mired in point systems. Those that will prevail rely on their brand differentiation. Brand experience loyalty will prove more important than any reward schedule or token economy.
Loyalty Doesn't Come From a Program
By Jack Aaronson, The ClickZ Network, May 20, 2005 Sponsored by Omniture View print-friendly versionSend this article to a colleagueArticles by Jack AaronsonSend Feedback Read Feedback Contact Jack Aaronson Last time,
I wrote about warring trends in customer self-service, and the need for human interaction to generate loyalty. Based on feedback I received, today I'll explore that column's central conceit, which mainly went unspoken: loyalty shouldn't rely solely on a program. If it does, you've already lost the game.Way back when, loyalty programs were a really good idea. They rewarded high-value customers and built loyalty among customer bases. Then, everyone built one. Loyalty programs became synonymous with point systems, in the same way personalization was confused with collaborative filtering in the '90s.There are lots of problems with this. I'm (perpetually) writing a book called "The Unconscious Consumer," which explores various forms of loyalty, including loyalty programs. One of the major research topics is reward schedules and their effects on consumers.There are many kinds of reward schedules beyond the point program. SUBWAY, for instance, has a punch card that acts as a "buy X, get one free" card. Retail stores such as Barneys have special invitation-only sale days for high-value customers. Other retailers offer premium clubs that give members free shipping or a percentage off purchases.Airlines and hotels use what's technically called a "token economy." Points are accrued like money and can be spent on various services. Token economies operate a bit differently from other reward programs. They have a variable nature, and points can be equated to dollars. Due to their prevalence, token economies have become a commodity in a way other reward systems haven't.Nearly every airline and hotel has a point reward system. The system itself is no longer a differentiator. I belong to every reward program known to humanity. So it doesn't really matter where I stay or what airline I use. I accrue points all over the place. If I use one airline for a long time and accrue a lot of miles, my loyalty to that airline diminishes after I cash in the points. The playing field is again leveled against all other programs. Many hotels and airlines wish they could get out of point systems altogether.Unfortunately, they can't. Point systems have become a cost of doing business for those industries. Having one isn't a differentiator, but not having one is a detractor. One thing's for certain: they're no longer the most effective loyalty builders.I stay at the Fairmont Hotels because of their excellent customer service. Another hotel chain, Wyndham, doesn't have a point system in its loyalty program (it does partner with airlines, though). Its program is based on customer service and tailoring your stay. The staff makes sure your refrigerator is stocked with your favorite foods, your favorite beverages are waiting in your room, and everything is just as you like it. This correctly instills loyalty based on premium customer service.As point systems become a commodity (because everyone has one), companies must leverage the one thing that can't be duplicated about their company: brand and customer service. W Hotels can charge whatever they want for their hotel rooms. No one can compete, because no one can duplicate their brand.Mid-level companies can learn something valuable from these boutique hotels. If nothing differentiates mid-level hotels from one another because they all have the same price point, offer a reward program, and look and feel the same, who has a competitive advantage? No one.Likewise with the major airlines. United, Delta, and US Airways feel the same and offer point programs. JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, and Song compete on price and style. JetBlue's brand, like Virgin Atlantic's, can't be easily copied. People fly on those airlines because the brand experience is unique.Real Loyalty Comes From the Brand ExperienceThese loyalty programs cost a lot to maintain. They've become so common they're just a cost of doing business, not a differentiator. Customer loyalty must revert back to the brand experience and the intrinsic desire we have to be loyal to a brand we like. That brand must somehow be differentiated so it sticks in our mind. Anyone who's flown Virgin Atlantic or stayed at one of Ian Schrager's hotels understands this. Mid-market brands (which don't cater to the luxury set) must figure out how to make their brand proposition stand out among their competitors.Brand is just as important online as off-. Companies such as hotels and airlines tend to have boring Web sites. Their brands are boring. Their design firms build traditional hotel or airline sites.Even the most boring Web pages are spruced up by a strong brand. Registration pages, for instance, all look the same: boring and brandless. JetBlue, however, inserts its brand into its registration page:Please enter your email address and a password that you're likely to remember (Don't worry, if you forget your password, we'll help you find it. If you forget your email address, we're both out of luck).Loyalty programs are running amok. Companies are mired in point systems. Those that will prevail rely on their brand differentiation. Brand experience loyalty will prove more important than any reward schedule or token economy.
2007년 9월 30일 일요일
Doesn't IT matter?
IT doesn’t matter. IT is becoming a commodity and general-purpose technology as the articles mentioned. These two articles give us a good perspective about the future of IT. It is meaningful that those analogies give us some insight and preparation for the coming change. Particularly,utility providers can reduce service cost through economies of scale by eliminating the overinvestment of most companies.
In fact,there were a few symptoms of possibility of utilization and comoditization of IT in Korean SI industries.Let me take two examples. First, SI industries has been restructured naturally according to the principle of free market economy without any loud sound and without M&A.Most conglomerates has their own SI companies up to now. But from 5 years ago, many people have forecasted that only three to four major SI companies can survive in Korean SI industries in the long run. It is because most medium-sized and small-sized SI companies are losing their competitive edge due to failures in taking large-scale and profitable orders. Second, IBM strove to take order of information system management of POSCO in 1996. The trial failed in the end,but IBM continues to suggest the outsourcing of SM(system management) to several conglo-merates.
IT can become commodity or utility in the long run,but there are many obstacles. IT also still does matter. IT is not the same as the railroad or electricity, as the articles recognize the limit of generalization of IT. Electricity or railroad is public social capital which is not so related and independent of business contents and characteristics of individual companies. But IT is not a mere utility or commodity in that it contains and closely relates to important business contents such as secret sales information and business processes and sources codes of core programs which enable companies to keep their sustainable growth. Secret information can be leaked out or attacked by hackers.Generalization can be not so easy for the time being if security from hacking may not be guaran-
teed and if information and knowledge cannot be protected.And IT has enhanced competitive edge in many companies till now by supporting business technologically and at the right time.So,utility providers should be able to in
crease the value and benefits through timely support or enhancement of competitive edge of IT. Can utility providers do so even after consolidation? They seem to have a long way to go.
In fact,there were a few symptoms of possibility of utilization and comoditization of IT in Korean SI industries.Let me take two examples. First, SI industries has been restructured naturally according to the principle of free market economy without any loud sound and without M&A.Most conglomerates has their own SI companies up to now. But from 5 years ago, many people have forecasted that only three to four major SI companies can survive in Korean SI industries in the long run. It is because most medium-sized and small-sized SI companies are losing their competitive edge due to failures in taking large-scale and profitable orders. Second, IBM strove to take order of information system management of POSCO in 1996. The trial failed in the end,but IBM continues to suggest the outsourcing of SM(system management) to several conglo-merates.
IT can become commodity or utility in the long run,but there are many obstacles. IT also still does matter. IT is not the same as the railroad or electricity, as the articles recognize the limit of generalization of IT. Electricity or railroad is public social capital which is not so related and independent of business contents and characteristics of individual companies. But IT is not a mere utility or commodity in that it contains and closely relates to important business contents such as secret sales information and business processes and sources codes of core programs which enable companies to keep their sustainable growth. Secret information can be leaked out or attacked by hackers.Generalization can be not so easy for the time being if security from hacking may not be guaran-
teed and if information and knowledge cannot be protected.And IT has enhanced competitive edge in many companies till now by supporting business technologically and at the right time.So,utility providers should be able to in
crease the value and benefits through timely support or enhancement of competitive edge of IT. Can utility providers do so even after consolidation? They seem to have a long way to go.
2007년 9월 21일 금요일
RFID
Radio-frequency identification
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An EPC RFID tag used by Wal-Mart
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders.
An RFID tag is an object that can be applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radiowaves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.
Most RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a (RF) signal and can also be used for other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal. A technology called chipless RFID allows for discrete identification of tags without an integrated circuit, thereby allowing tags to be printed directly onto assets at lower cost than traditional tags.
Today, a significant thrust in RFID use is in enterprise supply chain management, improving the efficiency of inventory tracking and management. However, a threat is looming that the current growth and adoption in enterprise supply chain market will not be sustainable. A fair cost-sharing mechanism, rational motives and justified returns from RFID technology investments are the key ingredients to achieve long-term and sustainable RFID technology adoption [1].
Contents[hide]
1 History of RFID tags
2 RFID tags
2.1 Passive
2.2 Active
2.3 Semi-passive
2.4 Antenna types
2.5 Tag attachment
2.6 Tagging positions
2.7 Tag environments
3 Current uses
3.1 Passports
3.2 Transport payments
3.3 Product tracking
3.4 Automotive
3.5 Animal identification
3.6 RFID in inventory systems
3.7 Human implants
3.8 RFID in libraries
3.9 Other
4 Potential uses
4.1 Replacing barcodes
4.2 Telemetry
4.3 Patient identification
5 Regulation and standardization
5.1 EPC Gen2
6 Problems and Concerns
6.1 Global standardization
6.2 Security concerns
6.3 Viruses
6.4 Passports
6.5 Protection against RFID interception
6.6 RFID shielding
6.7 Cancer risk
7 Controversies
7.1 Privacy
7.2 Human implantation
7.3 Religious opinion
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
//
[edit] History of RFID tags
An RFID tag used for electronic toll collection
In 1946 Léon Theremin invented an espionage tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, which modulated the reflected radio frequency. Even though this device was a passive covert listening device, not an identification tag, it has been attributed as the first known device and a predecessor to RFID technology. The technology used in RFID has been around since the early 1920s according to one source (although the same source states that RFID systems have been around just since the late 1960s).[2][3][4][5]
A similar technology, such as the IFF transponder invented by the British in 1939, was routinely used by the allies in World War II to identify airplanes as friend or foe. Transponders are still used by military and commercial aircraft to this day.
Another early work exploring RFID is the landmark 1948 paper by Harry Stockman, titled "Communication by Means of Reflected Power" (Proceedings of the IRE, pp 1196–1204, October 1948). Stockman predicted that "…considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored."
Mario Cardullo's U.S. Patent 3,713,148 in 1973 was the first true ancestor of modern RFID; a passive radio transponder with memory. The initial device was passive, powered by the interrogating signal, and was demonstrated in 1971 to the New York Port Authority and other potential users and consisted of a transponder with 16 bit memory for use as a toll device. The basic Cardullo patent covers the use of RF, sound and light as transmission medium. The original business plan presented to investors in 1969 showed uses in transportation (automotive vehicle identification, automatic toll system, electronic license plate, electronic manifest, vehicle routing, vehicle performance monitoring), banking (electronic check book, electronic credit card), security (personnel identification, automatic gates, surveillance) and medical (identification, patient history).
A very early demonstration of reflected power (modulated backscatter) RFID tags, both passive and active, was done by Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle and Robert Freyman at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1973[3]. The portable system operated at 915 MHz and used 12 bit tags. This technique is used by the majority of today's UHF and microwave RFID tags.
The first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton in 1983 (U.S. Patent 4,384,288).
[edit] RFID tags
RFID tags come in three general varieties: passive, active, or semi-passive (also known as battery-assisted). Passive tags require no internal power source, thus being pure passive devices (they are only active when a reader is nearby to power them), whereas semi-passive and active tags require a power source, usually a small battery.
RFID backscatter
To communicate, tags respond to queries generating signals that must not create interference with the reader's, as arriving signals can be very weak and must be told apart. Besides backscattering, load modulation techniques can be used to manipulate the reader's field. Typically, backscatter is used in the far field, whereas load modulation applies in the near field, within a few wavelengths from the reader.
[edit] Passive
Passive RFID tags have no internal power supply. The minute electrical current induced in the antenna by the incoming radio frequency signal provides just enough power for the CMOS integrated circuit in the tag to power up and transmit a response. Most passive tags signal by backscattering the carrier wave from the reader. This means that the antenna has to be designed to both collect power from the incoming signal and also to transmit the outbound backscatter signal. The response of a passive RFID tag is not necessarily just an ID number; the tag chip can contain non-volatile, possibly writable EEPROM for storing data.
Passive tags have practical read distances ranging from about 10 cm (4 in.) (ISO 14443) up to a few meters (Electronic Product Code (EPC) and ISO 18000-6), depending on the chosen radio frequency and antenna design/size. Due to their simplicity in design they are also suitable for manufacture with a printing process for the antennas. The lack of an onboard power supply means that the device can be quite small: commercially available products exist that can be embedded in a sticker, or under the skin in the case of low frequency RFID tags.
In 2006, Hitachi, Ltd. developed a passive device called the µ-Chip measuring 0.15×0.15 mm (not including the antenna), and thinner than a sheet of paper (7.5 micrometers).[6][7] Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology is used to achieve this level of integration. The Hitachi µ-Chip can wirelessly transmit a 128-bit unique ID number which is hard coded into the chip as part of the manufacturing process. The unique ID in the chip cannot be altered, providing a high level of authenticity to the chip and ultimately to the items the chip may be permanently attached or embedded into. The Hitachi µ-Chip has a typical maximum read range of 30 cm (1 foot). In February 2007 Hitachi unveiled an even smaller RFID device measuring 0.05×0.05 mm, and thin enough to be embedded in a sheet of paper.[8] The new chips can store as much data as the older µ-chips, and the data contained on them can be extracted from as far away as a few hundred metres. The ongoing problem with all RFIDs is that they need an external antenna which is 80 times bigger than the chip in the best version thus far developed.
Alien Technology's Fluidic Self Assembly, SmartCode's Flexible Area Synchronized Transfer (FAST) and Symbol Technologies' PICA process are alleged to potentially further reduce tag costs by massively parallel production[citation needed]. Alien Technology and SmartCode are currently using the processes to manufacture tags while Symbol Technologies' PICA process is still in the development phase. Alternative methods of production such as FAST, FSA and PICA could potentially reduce tag costs dramatically, and due to volume capacities achievable, in turn be able to also drive the economies of scale models for various Silicon fabricators as well. Some passive RFID vendors believe that Industry benchmarks for tag costs can be achieved eventually as new low cost volume production systems are implemented more broadly.
Non-silicon tags made from polymer semiconductors are currently being developed by several companies globally. Simple laboratory printed polymer tags operating at 13.56 MHz were demonstrated in 2005 by both PolyIC (Germany) and Philips (The Netherlands). If successfully commercialized, polymer tags will be roll-printable, like a magazine, and much less expensive than silicon-based tags. The end game for most item-level tagging over the next few decades may be that RFID tags will be wholly printed – the same way a barcode is today – and be virtually free, like a barcode. However, substantial technical and economic hurdles must be surmounted to accomplish such an end: hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested over the last three decades in silicon processing, resulting in a per-feature cost which is actually less than that of conventional printing.
[edit] Active
Unlike passive RFID tags, active RFID tags have their own internal power source, which is used to power the integrated circuits and broadcast the signal to the reader. Active tags are typically much more reliable (e.g. fewer errors) than passive tags due to the ability for active tags to conduct a "session" with a reader. Active tags, due to their onboard power supply, also transmit at higher power levels than passive tags, allowing them to be more effective in "RF challenged" environments like water (including humans/cattle, which are mostly water), metal (shipping containers, vehicles), or at longer distances, generating strong responses from weak requests (as opposed to passive tags, which work the other way around). In turn, they are generally bigger and more expensive to manufacture, and their potential shelf life is much shorter.
Many active tags today have practical ranges of hundreds of meters, and a battery life of up to 10 years. Some active RFID tags include sensors such as temperature logging which have been used to monitor the temperature of perishable goods like fresh produce or certain pharmaceutical products. Other sensors that have been married with active RFID include humidity, shock/vibration, light, radiation, temperature, and atmospherics like ethylene. Active tags typically have much longer range (approximately 500 m/1500 feet) and larger memories than passive tags, as well as the ability to store additional information sent by the transceiver. The United States Department of Defense has successfully used active tags to reduce logistics costs and improve supply chain visibility for more than 15 years.
[edit] Semi-passive
Semi-passive tags are similar to active tags as they have their own power source, but the battery is used just to power the microchip and not broadcast a signal. The RF energy is reflected back to the reader like a passive tag. An alternative use for the battery is to store energy from the reader to emit a response in the future, usually by means of backscattering. Tags which do not have a battery need to emit their response reflecting energy from the reader carrier on the fly.
Semi-passive tags are comparable to active tags in reliability while featuring the effective reading range of a passive tag. They usually last longer than active tags as well.
[edit] Antenna types
The antenna used for an RFID tag is affected by the intended application and the frequency of operation. Low-frequency (LF) passive tags are normally inductively coupled, and because the voltage induced is proportional to frequency, many coil turns are needed to produce enough voltage to operate an integrated circuit. Compact LF tags, like glass-encapsulated tags used in animal and human identification, use a multilayer coil (3 layers of 100–150 turns each) wrapped around a ferrite core.
At 13.56 MHz (High frequency or HF), a planar spiral with 5–7 turns over a credit-card-sized form factor can be used to provide ranges of tens of centimeters. These coils are less costly to produce than LF coils, since they can be made using lithographic techniques rather than by wire winding, but two metal layers and an insulator layer are needed to allow for the crossover connection from the outermost layer to the inside of the spiral where the integrated circuit and resonance capacitor are located.
Ultra-high frequency (UHF) and microwave passive tags are usually radiatively-coupled to the reader antenna and can employ conventional dipole-like antennas. Only one metal layer is required, reducing cost of manufacturing. Dipole antennas, however, are a poor match to the high and slightly capacitive input impedance of a typical integrated circuit. Folded dipoles, or short loops acting as inductive matching structures, are often employed to improve power delivery to the IC. Half-wave dipoles (16 cm at 900 mHz) are too big for many applications; for example, tags embedded in labels must be less than 100 mm (4 inches) in extent. To reduce the length of the antenna, antennas can be bent or meandered, and capacitive tip-loading or bowtie-like broadband structures are also used. Compact antennas usually have gain less than that of a dipole — that is, less than 2 dBi — and can be regarded as isotropic in the plane perpendicular to their axis.
Dipoles couple to radiation polarized along their axes, so the visibility of a tag with a simple dipole-like antenna is orientation-dependent. Tags with two orthogonal or nearly-orthogonal antennas, often known as dual-dipole tags, are much less dependent on orientation and polarization of the reader antenna, but are larger and more expensive than single-dipole tags.
Patch antennas are used to provide service in close proximity to metal surfaces, but a structure with good bandwidth is 3–6 mm thick, and the need to provide a ground layer and ground connection increases cost relative to simpler single-layer structures.
HF and UHF tag antennas are usually fabricated from copper or aluminum. Conductive inks have seen some use in tag antennas but have encountered problems with IC adhesion and environmental stability.
[edit] Tag attachment
Basically, there are three different kinds of RFID tags based on their attachment with identified objects, i.e. attachable, implantable and insertion tags [9]. In addition to these conventional RFID tags, Eastman Kodak Company has filed two patent applications for monitoring ingestion of medicine comprises forming a digestible RFID tag[10].
[edit] Tagging positions
RFID tagging positions can influence the performance of air interface UHF RFID passive tags and related to the position where RFID tags are embedded, attached, injected or digested.
In many cases, optimum power from RFID reader is not required to operate passive tags. However, in cases where the Effective Radiated Power (ERP) level and distance between reader and tags are fixed, such as in manufacturing setting, it is important to know the location in a tagged object where a passive tag can operate optimally.
R-Spot or Resonance Spot, L-Spot or Live Spot and D-Spot or Dead Spot are defined to specify the location of RFID tags in a tagged object, where the tags can still receive power from a reader within specified ERP level and distance [11].
[edit] Tag environments
The proposed ubiquity of RFID tags means that readers may need to select which tags to read among many potential candidates, or may wish to probe surrounding devices to perform inventory checks or, in case the tags are associated to sensors and capable of keeping their values, question them for environmental conditions. If a reader intends to work with a collection of tags, it needs to either discover all devices within an area to iterate over them afterwards, or use collision avoidance protocols.
Finding tags in a search environment
In order to read tag data, readers use a tree-walking singulation algorithm, resolving possible collisions and processing responses one by one. Blocker tags may be used to prevent readers from accessing tags within an area without killing surrounding tags by means of suicide commands. These tags masquerade as valid tags but have some special properties: in particular, they may possess any identification code, and may deterministically respond to all reader queries, thus rendering them useless and securing the environment.
Besides this, tags may be promiscuous, attending all requests alike, or secure, which requires authentication and control of typical password management and secure key distribution issues. A tag may as well be prepared to be activated or deactivated in response to specific reader commands.
Readers that are in charge of the tags of an area may operate in autonomous mode (as opposed to interactive mode). When in this mode, a reader periodically locates all tags in its operating range, and keeps a presence list with a persist time and some control information. When an entry expires, it is removed from the list.
Frequently, a distributed application requires both types of tags: passive tags are incapable of continuous monitoring and perform tasks on demand when accessed by readers. They are useful when activities are regular and well defined, and requirements for data storage and security are limited; when accesses are frequent, continuous or unpredictable, there are time constraints to meet or data processing (internal searches, for instance) to perform, active tags may be preferred.
[edit] Current uses
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[edit] Passports
RFID tags are being used in passports issued by many countries. The first RFID passports ("E-passport") were issued by Malaysia in 1998. In addition to information also contained on the visual data page of the passport, Malaysian e-passports record the travel history (time, date, and place) of entries and exits from the country.
Standards for RFID passports are determined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and are contained in ICAO Document 9303, Part 1, Volumes 1 and 2 (6th edition, 2006). ICAO refers to the ISO 14443 RFID chips in e-passports as "contactless integrated circuits". ICAO standards provide for e-passports to be identifiable by a standard e-passport logo on the front cover.
RFID tags are included in new passports, beginning in 2006. The US produced 10 million passports in 2005, and it has been estimated that 13 million will be produced in 2006. The chips will store the same information that is printed within the passport and will also include a digital picture of the owner. The passports will incorporate a thin metal lining to make it more difficult for unauthorized readers to "skim" information when the passport is closed.
[edit] Transport payments
Throughout Europe, and in particular in Paris in France (system started in 1995 by the RATP), Lyon and Marseille in France, Porto and Lisbon in Portugal, Milan and Torino in Italy, Brussels in Belgium, RFID passes conforming to the Calypso (RFID) international standard are used for public transport systems. They are also used now in Canada (Montreal), Mexico, Israel, Bogotá and Pereira in Colombia, Stavanger in Norway, etc.
T-money cards can be used to pay for public transit in Seoul and surrounding cities. Some other South Korean cities have adopted the system, which can also be used in some stores as cash. T-money replaced Upass, first introduced for transport payments in 1996 using MIFARE technology.
JR East in Japan introduced SUICa (Super Urban Intelligent Card) for transport payment service in its railway transportation service in November 2001, using Sony's FeliCa (Felicity Card) technology. The same Sony technology was used in Hong Kong's Octopus card, and Singapore's EZ-Link card.
In Hong Kong, mass transit is paid for almost exclusively through the use of an RFID technology, called the Octopus Card. Originally it was launched in September 1997 exclusively for transit fare collection, but has grown to be similar to a cash card, and can be used in vending machines, fast-food restaurants and supermarkets. The card can be recharged with cash at add-value machines or in shops, and can be read several centimetres from the reader.
An Electronic Road Pricing gantry in Singapore. Gantries such as these collect tolls in high-traffic areas from active RFID units in vehicles.
In Singapore, public transport buses and trains employ passive RFID cards known as EZ-Link cards. Traffic into crowded downtown areas is regulated by variable tolls imposed using an active tagging system combined with the use of stored-value cards (known as CashCards).
RFID is used in Malaysia Expressways payment system. The name for the system is Touch 'n Go. Due to the name and design, one must touch the card for usage.
The Washington, D.C. Metrorail became the first U.S. urban mass-transit system to use RFID technology when it introduced the SmarTrip card in 1999.
In Turkey, RFID has been used in the motorways and bridges as a payment system over ten years.
The Chicago Transit Authority has offered the Chicago Card and the Chicago Card Plus for rail payments across the entire system since 2002 and for bus payments since 2005.
The New York City Subway is conducting a trial during 2006, utilizing PayPass by MasterCard as fare payment.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority introduced the use of a CharlieCard RFID as a fare payment system which is cheaper than its paper or cash equivalent.
Six transit agencies in the King County region of Washington State are collaborating to introduce the Smart Card, or Orca Card.
The Moscow Metro, the world's second busiest, was the first system in Europe to introduce RFID smartcards in 1998.
In the UK, op systems for prepaying for unlimited public transport have been devised, making use of RFID technology. The design is embedded in a creditcard-like pass, that when scanned reveals details of whether the pass is valid, and for how long the pass will remain valid. The first company to implement this is the NCT company of Nottingham City, where the general public affectionately refer to them as "beep cards". It has since then been implemented with great success in London, where "Oyster cards" allow for pay-as-you-go travel as well as passes valid for various lengths of time and in various areas.
In Oslo, Norway, the upcoming public transport payment is to be entirely RFID-based. The system is to be put into production around spring 2007
In Norway, all public toll roads are equipped with an RFID payment system known as AutoPass.
Since 2002, in Taipei, Taiwan the transportation system uses RFID operated cards as fare collection. The Easy Card is charged at local convenience stores and metro stations, and can be used in Metro, buses, parking lots and taxis. The uses are planned to extend all throughout the island of Taiwan in the future.
RFID tags are used for electronic toll collection at toll booths with Georgia's Cruise Card, California's FasTrak, Illinois' I-Pass, Oklahoma's Pikepass, the expanding eastern states' E-ZPass system (including Massachusetts's Fast Lane, New Hampshire Turnpike, New Jersey Turnpike, and the Maine Turnpike), Florida's SunPass, North Texas NTTA and Houston HCTRA EZ Tag, Kansas's K-Tag, The "Cross-Israel Highway" (Highway 6), Philippines South Luzon Expressway E-Pass, Brisbane's Queensland Motorway E-Toll System in Australia, Autopista del Sol (Sun's Highway), Autopista Central (Central Highway), Autopista Los Libertadores, Costanera Norte, Vespucio Norte Express and Vespucio Sur urban Highways and every forthcoming urban highway (in a "Free Flow" modality) concessioned to private investors in Chile and all highways in Portugal (Via Verde, the first system in the world to span the entire network of tolls), France (Liber-T system), Italy (Telepass), Spain (VIA-T)… The tags, which are usually the active type, are read remotely as vehicles pass through the booths, and tag information is used to debit the toll from a prepaid account. The system helps to speed traffic through toll plazas as it records the date, time, and billing data for the RFID vehicle tag. The plaza- and queue-free 407 Express Toll Route, in the Greater Toronto Area, allows the use of a transponder (an active tag) for all billing. This eliminates the need to identify a vehicle by licence plate and saves the end user money.
The Transperth public transport network in Perth, Western Australia uses RFID technology in the new SmartRider ticketing system.
MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) has transitioned its bus and rail lines from coin tokens to the new Breeze Card system which uses RFID tags embedded in disposable paper tickets. More permanent plastic cards are available for frequent users.
In Rio de Janeiro, "RioCard" passes can be used in buses, ferries, trains and subway. There are two types, one you cannot recharge, the other one can be recharged if it's been bought by the company you work for, if they provided it (only in Brazil).
A number of ski resorts, particularly in the French Alps and in the Spanish and French Pyrenees, have adopted RFID tags to provide skiers hands-free access to ski lifts. Skiers don't have to take their passes out of their pockets.
In Santiago (Chile) the subway system Metro and the recently implemented public transportation system Transantiago uses an RFID card called Bip or Multivia.
In Medellín (Colombia) the system Metro and the recently implemented card system uses an RFID card called Cívica.
In Colombia, "Federación Nacional de Cafeteros" uses an RFID solution to trace the coffee.
In Dubai(United Arab Emirates)drivers through certain roads use RFID tags called Salik
In Milano (Italy) the ATM "Azienda Trasporti Milanese" has implemented RFID tags for frequent users.
[edit] Product tracking
The Canadian Cattle Identification Agency began using RFID tags as a replacement for barcode tags. The tags are required to identify a bovine's herd of origin and this is used for tracing when a packing plant condemns a carcass. Currently CCIA tags are used in Wisconsin and by US farmers on a voluntary basis. The USDA is currently developing its own program.
RFID tags used in libraries: square book tag, round CD/DVD tag and rectangular VHS tag.
High-frequency RFID tags are used in library book or bookstore tracking, pallet tracking, building access control, airline baggage tracking, and apparel and pharmaceutical items tracking. High-frequency tags are widely used in identification badges, replacing earlier magnetic stripe cards. These badges need only be held within a certain distance of the reader to authenticate the holder. The American Express Blue credit card now includes a high-frequency RFID tag.
BGN has launched two fully automated Smartstores that combine item-level RFID tagging and SOA to deliver an integrated supply chain, from warehouse to consumer.
UHF RFID tags are commonly used commercially in case, pallet, and shipping container tracking, and truck and trailer tracking in shipping yards.
[edit] Automotive
Microwave RFID tags are used in long range access control for vehicles.
Since the 1990s RFID tags have been used in car keys. Without the correct RFID, the car will not start.
In January 2003, Michelin began testing RFID transponders embedded into tires with the intention that after an 18 month testing period, the manufacturer would offer RFID-enabled tires to car makers. Their primary purpose is tire tracking in compliance with the United States Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act (TREAD Act). As at August 2007 the progress has only extended to truck tires where rubber patches are affixed to the truck tire. An advanced version, the eTire includes a batteryless pressure sensor, is marketed by Michelin for truck tires. Interestingly Michelin are required under the terms of their licence to offer this eTire system to all other tire manufacturers in November 2008. Car tires still present technical problems for embedding tags as the low cost of the tire means the cost of fixing the tags should be very cheap to be commercially viable.
Starting with the 2004 model year, a Smart Key/Smart Start option became available to the Toyota Prius. Since then, Toyota has been introducing the feature on various models globally under both the Toyota and Lexus brands, including the Toyota Avalon (2005 model year), Toyota Camry (2007 model year), and the Lexus GS (2006 model year). The key uses an active RFID circuit allowing the car to detect the key approximately 3 feet from the sensor. The driver can open the doors and start the car with the key in a purse or pocket.
Ford, Honda, and several other manufacturers use RFID-equipped ignition keys as anti-theft measures.
[edit] Animal identification
Implantable RFID tags or transponders can be used for animal identification. The transponders are more well-known as passive RFID technology on Microchip implant (animal).
[edit] RFID in inventory systems
An advanced automatic identification technology such as the Auto-ID system based on the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has two values for inventory systems. First, the visibility provided by this technology allows an accurate knowledge on the inventory level by eliminating the discrepancy between inventory record and physical inventory. In an academic study[12] performed at Wal-Mart, RFID reduced Out of Stocks by 30 percent for products selling between 0.1 and 15 units a day. Second, the RFID technology can prevent or reduce the sources of errors. Benefits of using RFID include the reduction of labour costs, the simplification of business processes and the reduction of inventory inaccuracies.
RFID mandates
Wal-Mart and the United States Department of Defense have published requirements that their vendors place RFID tags on all shipments to improve supply chain management. Due to the size of these two organizations, their RFID mandates impact thousands of companies worldwide. The deadlines have been extended several times because many vendors face significant difficulties implementing RFID systems. In practice, the successful read rates currently run only 80%, due to radio wave attenuation caused by the products and packaging. In time it is expected that even small companies will be able to place RFID tags on their outbound shipments.
Since January, 2005, Wal-Mart has required its top 100 suppliers to apply RFID labels to all shipments. To meet this requirement, vendors use RFID printer/encoders to label cases and pallets that require EPC tags for Wal-Mart. These smart labels are produced by embedding RFID inlays inside the label material, and then printing bar code and other visible information on the surface of the label.
[edit] Human implants
Hand with the planned location of the RFID chip
Just after the operation to insert the RFID tag was completed
Implantable RFID chips designed for animal tagging are now being used in humans. An early experiment with RFID implants was conducted by British professor of cybernetics Kevin Warwick, who implanted a chip in his arm in 1998. Night clubs in Barcelona, Spain and in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, use an implantable chip to identify their VIP customers, who in turn use it to pay for drinks.[citation needed]
In 2004, the Mexican Attorney General's office implanted 18 of its staff members with the Verichip to control access to a secure data room. (This number has been variously mis-reported as 160 or 180 staff members.[13] [14])
Security experts are warned against using RFID for authenticating people due to the risk of identity theft. For instance a man-in-the-middle attack would make it possible for an attacker to steal the identity of a person in real-time. Due to the resource-constraints of RFIDs it is virtually impossible to protect against such attack models as this would require complex distance-binding protocols.[citation needed]
[edit] RFID in libraries
Among the many uses of RFID technologies is its deployment in libraries. This technology has slowly begun to replace the traditional barcodes on library items (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.). However, the RFID tag can contain identifying information, such as a book’s title or material type, without having to be pointed to a separate database (but this is rare in North America). The information is read by an RFID reader, which replaces the standard barcode reader commonly found at a library’s circulation desk. The RFID tag found on library materials typically measures 50 mm X 50 mm in North America and 50 mm x 75 mm in Europe, and can also act as a security device, taking the place of the more traditional electromagnetic security strip.[15]
While there is some debate as to when and where RFID in libraries first began, it was first proposed in the late 1990s as a technology that would enhance workflow in the library setting. Rockefeller University in New York may have been the first academic library in the United States to utilize this technology, whereas Farmington Community Library may have been the first public institution, both of which began using RFID in 1999. Worldwide, the United States utilizes RFID in libraries more than any other nation, followed by the United Kingdom and Japan. It is estimated that over 30 million library items worldwide now contain RFID tags, including some in the Vatican Library in Rome.[16]
RFID has many applications in libraries that can be highly beneficial, particularly for circulation staff. Since RFID tags can be read through an item, there is no need to open a book cover or DVD case to scan an item. This would help alleviate injuries such as repetitive strain injury that can occur over many years. Since RFID tags can also be read while an item is in motion, using RFID readers to check-in returned items while on a conveyor belt reduces staff time. Furthermore, inventories could be done on a whole shelf of materials within seconds, without a book ever having to be taken off the shelf.[17]. In Umeå, Sweden, it is being used to assist visually impaired people in borrowing audiobooks[18]. In Malaysia, Smart Shelves are used to pinpoint the exact location of books in Multimedia University Library, Cyberjaya[19].
However, this technology remains cost prohibitive for many smaller libraries, and the conversion time has been estimated at 11 months for an average size library. With RFID taking a large burden off staff, it has also been shown to produce a threat to staff that their job duties have been replaced by technology,[16] but the threat is not realized in North America where recent surveys have not returned a single library that cut staff because of adding RFID. In fact, library budgets are being reduced for personnel and increased for infrastructure, making it necessary for libraries to add automation to compensate for the reduced staff size.
A concern surrounding RFID in libraries that has received considerable publicity is the issue of privacy. Because RFID tags can in theory be scanned and read from over 350 feet in distance, and because RFID utilizes an assortment of frequencies, there is a legitimate concern over whether sensitive information could be collected from an unwilling source. However, advocates of RFID’s use in libraries will point out that library RFID tags do not contain any patron information,[20] and that the tags used in the majority of libraries use a frequency only readable from approximately ten feet.[15] There is much yet to be written and discussed on the issue of privacy and RFID, but it is clear that vendors need to be aware of this issue and develop improved technologies for secure RFID transactions.
[edit] Other
Some hospitals use Active RFID tags to perform Asset Tracking in Real Time.[21]
The NEXUS and SENTRI frequent traveler programs use RFID to speed up landborder processing between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico. [22]
NADRA has developed an RFID-based driver license that bears the license holders personal information and stores data regarding traffic violations, tickets issued, and outstanding penalties. The license cards are designed so that driving rights can be revoked electronically in case of serious violations.[23]
Sensors such as seismic sensors may be read using RFID transceivers, greatly simplifying remote data collection.
In August 2004, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRH) approved a $415,000 contract to evaluate the personnel tracking technology of Alanco Technologies. Inmates will wear wristwatch-sized transmitters that can detect attempted removal and alert prison computers. This project is not the first rollout of tracking chips in US prisons. Facilities in Michigan, California and Illinois already employ the technology.
Automatic timing at mass sports events "ChampionChip".
Used as storage for a video game system produced by Mattel, "HyperScan".
RFIQin, designed by Vita Craft, is an automatic cooking device that has three different sized pans, a portable induction heater, and recipe cards. Each pan is embedded with a RFID tag that monitors the food 16 times per second while a MI tag in the handle of the pans transmits signals to the induction heater to adjust the temperature.
Slippery Rock University is using RFID tags in their students' ID cards beginning in the fall 2007 semester.
Many more applications can be found in the literature.[24]
25 real world application case studies can be found in a 61 page free Ebook RFID Technology Applications
RFID tags is now being embeded into playing cards that are used for televisied poker tournamnets, so comentators know exactly what cards has been dealt to whom, as soon as the deal is complete.
The Iraqi army uses an RFID security card that contains a biometric picture of the soldier. The picture in the chip must match the picture on the card to prevent forgery.[25]
Theme parks (such as Alton Towers in the United Kingdom) have been known to use RFID to help them identify users of a ride in order to make a dvd of their time at the park. This is then available for the user to buy at the end of the day. This is voluntary by the user by wearing a wristband given to them at the park.
[edit] Potential uses
[edit] Replacing barcodes
RFID tags are often envisioned as a replacement for UPC or EAN barcodes, having a number of important advantages over the older barcode technology. They may not ever completely replace barcodes, due in part to their higher cost and in other part to the advantage of more than one independent data source on the same object. The new EPC, along with several other schemes, is widely available at reasonable cost.
The storage of data associated with tracking items will require many terabytes on all levels. Filtering and categorizing RFID data is needed in order to create useful information. It is likely that goods will be tracked preferably by the pallet using RFID tags, and at package level with Universal Product Code (UPC) or EAN from unique barcodes.
The unique identity in any case is a mandatory requirement for RFID tags, despite special choice of the numbering scheme. RFID tag data capacity is big enough that any tag will have a unique code, while current bar codes are limited to a single type code for all instances of a particular product. The uniqueness of RFID tags means that a product may be individually tracked as it moves from location to location, finally ending up in the consumer's hands. This may help companies to combat theft and other forms of product loss. Moreover, the tracing back of products is an important feature that gets well supported with RFID tags containing not just a unique identity of the tag but also the serial number of the object. This may help companies to cope with quality deficiencies and resulting recall campaigns, but also contributes to concern over post-sale tracking and profiling of consumers.
It has also been proposed to use RFID for POS store checkout to replace the cashier with an automatic system which needs no barcode scanning. However, this is not likely to be possible without a significant reduction in the cost of current tags and changes in the operational process around POS. There is some research taking place, however, this is some years from reaching fruition.
An FDA nominated task force came to the conclusion after studying the various technologies currently commercially available, which could meet the pedigree requirements. Amongst all technologies studied including bar coding, RFID seemed to be the most promising and the committee felt that the pedigree requirement could be met by easily leveraging something that is readily available. (More details see RFID-FDA-Regulations)
[edit] Telemetry
Active RFID tags also have the potential to function as low-cost remote sensors that broadcast telemetry back to a base station. Applications of tagometry[citation needed] data could include sensing of road conditions by implanted beacons, weather reports, and noise level monitoring.
[edit] Patient identification
In July 2004, the Food and Drug Administration issued a ruling that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use RFID systems to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records. Since then, a number of U.S. hospitals have begun implanting patients with RFID tags and using RFID systems, more generally, for workflow and inventory management.[26] The use of RFID to prevent mixups between sperm and ova in IVF clinics is also being considered [3].
In October 2004, the FDA approved USA's first RFID chips that can be implanted in humans. The 134 kHz RFID chips, from VeriChip Corp., a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions Inc., can incorporate personal medical information and could save lives and limit injuries from errors in medical treatments, according to the company. The FDA approval was disclosed during a conference call with investors. Shortly after the approval, authors and anti-RFID activists Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre discovered a warning letter from the FDA that spelled out serious health risks associated with the VeriChip. According to the FDA, these include "adverse tissue reaction", "migration of the implanted transponder", "failure of implanted transponder", "electrical hazards" and "magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] incompatibility."
In 2007 John Wiley & Sons published a guide to RFID use in the book RFID Applied (ISBN 978-0-471-79365-6)
[edit] Regulation and standardization
There is no global public body that governs the frequencies used for RFID. In principle, every country can set its own rules for this. The main bodies governing frequency allocation for RFID are:
USA: FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
Canada: DOC (Department of Communication)
Europe: ERO, CEPT, ETSI, and national administrations (note that the national administrations must ratify the usage of a specific frequency before it can be used in that country)
Japan: SOUMU (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
China: Ministry of Information Industry
South Africa: Icasa
South Korea: Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy
Australia: Australian Communications and Media Authority.
New Zealand: Ministry of Economic Development
Singapore: Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
Low-frequency (LF: 125 – 134.2 kHz and 140 – 148.5 kHz) and high-frequency (HF: 13.56 MHz) RFID tags can be used globally without a license. Ultra-high-frequency (UHF: 868 MHz-928 MHz) cannot be used globally as there is no single global standard. In North America, UHF can be used unlicensed for 902 – 928 MHz (±13 MHz from the 915 MHz center frequency), but restrictions exist for transmission power. In Europe, RFID and other low-power radio applications are regulated by ETSI recommendations EN 300 220 and EN 302 208, and ERO recommendation 70 03, allowing RFID operation with somewhat complex band restrictions from 865–868 MHz. Readers are required to monitor a channel before transmitting ("Listen Before Talk"); this requirement has led to some restrictions on performance, the resolution of which is a subject of current research. The North American UHF standard is not accepted in France as it interferes with its military bands. For China and Japan, there is no regulation for the use of UHF. Each application for UHF in these countries needs a site license, which needs to be applied for at the local authorities, and can be revoked. For Australia and New Zealand, 918 – 926 MHz are unlicensed, but restrictions exist for transmission power.
These frequencies are known as the ISM bands (Industrial Scientific and Medical bands). The return signal of the tag may still cause interference for other radio users
Some standards that have been made regarding RFID technology include:
ISO 14223/1 – Radio frequency identification of Animals, advanced transponders – Air interface
ISO 14443: This standard is a very popular HF (13.56 MHz) standard, which is being used as the basis of RFID-enabled passports under ICAO 9303.
ISO 15693: This is also a very popular HF (13.56 MHz) standard, widely used for non-contact smart payment and credit cards.
ISO 18000-7: This is the new UHF (433 MHz) industry standard for all active RFID products, mandated by the U.S. Department of Defense, NATO militaries, and, increasingly, commercial users of active RFID.
ISO 18185: This is the industry standard for electronic seals or "e-seals" for tracking cargo containers using the 433 MHz and 2.4Ghz frequencies.
EPCglobal – this is the standardization framework that is most likely to undergo International Standardisation according to ISO rules as with all sound standards in the world, unless residing with limited scope, as customs regulations, air-traffic regulations and others. Currently the big distributors and governmental customers are pushing EPC heavily as a standard well accepted in their community, but not yet regarded as for salvation to the rest of the world.
[edit] EPC Gen2
EPC Gen2 is short for EPCglobal UHF Class 1 Generation 2.
EPCglobal (a joint venture between GS1 and GS1 US) is working on international standards for the use of mostly passive RFID and the EPC in the identification of many items in the supply chain for companies worldwide.
One of the missions of EPCglobal was to simplify the Babel of protocols prevalent in the RFID world in the 1990s. Two tag air interfaces (the protocol for exchanging information between a tag and a reader) were defined (but not ratified) by EPCglobal prior to 2003. These protocols, commonly known as Class 0 and Class 1, saw significant commercial implementation in 2002–2005.
In 2004 the Hardware Action Group created a new protocol, the Class 1 Generation 2 interface, which addressed a number of problems that had been experienced with Class 0 and Class 1 tags. The EPC Gen2 standard was approved in December 2004, and is likely to form the backbone of passive RFID tag standards moving forward. This was approved after a contention from Intermec that the standard may infringe a number of their RFID related patents. It was decided that the standard itself did not infringe their patents, but it may be necessary to pay royalties to Intermec if the tag were to be read in a particular manner. The EPC Gen2 standard was adopted with minor modifications as ISO 18000-6C in 2006.
The lowest cost of Gen2 EPC inlay is offered by SmartCode at a price of 5 cents apiece in volumes of 100 million or more[27]. Nevertheless, further conversion of the inlays into usable RFID labels and the design of current Gen 2 protocol standard will increase the total end-cost, especially with the added security feature extensions for RFID Supply Chain item-level tagging.
[edit] Problems and Concerns
[edit] Global standardization
The frequencies used for RFID in the USA are currently incompatible with those of Europe or Japan. Furthermore, no emerging standard has yet become as universal as the barcode.[28]
[edit] Security concerns
A primary security concern surrounding RFID technology is the illicit tracking of RFID tags. Tags which are world-readable pose a risk to both personal location privacy and corporate/military security. Such concerns have been raised with respect to the United States Department of Defense's recent adoption of RFID tags for supply chain management.[29] More generally, privacy organizations have expressed concerns in the context of ongoing efforts to embed electronic product code (EPC) RFID tags in consumer products.
EPCglobal Network, by design, is also susceptible to DoS attacks. Using similar mechanism with DNS in resolving EPC data requests, the ONS Root servers become vulnerable to DoS attacks. Any organisation planning to embark on EPCglobal Network will cringe finding out that the EPCglobal Network infrastructure inherits security weaknesses similar to DNS'[30].
A second class of defense uses cryptography to prevent tag cloning. Some tags use a form of "rolling code" scheme, wherein the tag identifier information changes after each scan, thus reducing the usefulness of observed responses. More sophisticated devices engage in Challenge-response authentications where the tag interacts with the reader. In these protocols, secret tag information is never sent over the insecure communication channel between tag and reader. Rather, the reader issues a challenge to the tag, which responds with a result computed using a cryptographic circuit keyed with some secret value. Such protocols may be based on symmetric or public key cryptography. Cryptographically-enabled tags typically have dramatically higher cost and power requirements than simpler equivalents, and as a result, deployment of these tags is much more limited. This cost/power limitation has led some manufacturers to implement cryptographic tags using substantially weakened, or proprietary encryption schemes, which do not necessarily resist sophisticated attack. For example, the Exxon-Mobil Speedpass uses a cryptographically-enabled tag manufactured by Texas Instruments, called the Digital Signature Transponder (DST), which incorporates a weak, proprietary encryption scheme to perform a challenge-response protocol.
Still other cryptographic protocols attempt to achieve privacy against unauthorized readers, though these protocols are largely in the research stage. One major challenge in securing RFID tags is a shortage of computational resources within the tag. Standard cryptographic techniques require more resources than are available in most low cost RFID devices. RSA Security has patented a prototype device that locally jams RFID signals by interrupting a standard collision avoidance protocol, allowing the user to prevent identification if desired.[31] Various policy measures have also been proposed, such as marking RFID tagged objects with an industry standard label.
[edit] Viruses
Ars Technica Reported in March 2006 an RFID buffer overflow bug that could infect airport terminal RFID Databases for baggage, and also Passport databases to obtain confidential information on the passport holder.[32]
[edit] Passports
In an effort to make passports more secure, several countries have implemented RFID in passports. However, the encryption on UK chips was broken in under 48 hours leaving millions of citizens vulnerable.[33] Since that incident, further efforts have allowed researchers to clone passport data while the passport is being mailed to its owner. Where before a criminal had to secretly open and then reseal the envelope, now it can be done without detection adding significant insecurity to the passport system.[34]
[edit] Protection against RFID interception
Various methods can be used to protect against RFID data interception:[35]
Most RFID chips can be disabled by physical means: for example the RFID chip inside RFID credit cards can be disabled by a sharp tap of a hammer.
One can prevent the RFID transponders from receiving power. This is accomplished by obstructing the power supply; one approach is to shield the RFID transponders in a Faraday cage, intercepting the electromagnetic signal which normally powers them. UHF transponders can be shielded using an anti-static bag. LF and HF (inductively-coupled) transponders can be shielded with conventional aluminum foil.
One can simply damage the antenna. With larger RFID transponders one can recognize the spirals of the antenna clearly by use of a radiograph. If one splits the antenna circuit, the effective range of the RFID transponder will be greatly reduced.
An intense electromagnetic impulse applied to the transponders and antenna can induce high currents, interrupting the circuit and rendering the tag useless. A crude way to do this is putting the RFID tag in a microwave oven. Success may vary, depending on the frequency of the microwave and the shape of the antenna. A device built to destroy transponders is the RFID-Zapper.
The system can be blocked by sending a spurious signal in conjunction with the inquiry signal, preferably on the RFID frequency. This blocks the relatively weak signals of the RFID transponder.
If a simple memory chip is used to confirm the authenticity of the inquiry, then one can record the inquiry and at a later time reverse engineer the signal, allowing replication. For the reader it appears as if the correct RFID transponder were in the field.
Many RFID tags include a built-in 'kill' function. When provided with the correct pass-code, a tag can be either reprogrammed or told to 'self destruct', rendering it useless.
Newer emerging RFID tags may include some sort of built in Transfer of Control and Privacy enhancing Technologies to ensure the Owner can control and prevent linkage of RFID using silencing or non-linkable protocols.
[edit] RFID shielding
A number of products are available on the market in the US that will allow a concerned carrier of RFID-enabled cards or passports to shield their data. In fact the United States government requires their new employee ID cards to be delivered with an approved shielding sleeve or holder[citation needed]. There are contradicting opinions as to whether aluminum can prevent reading of RFID chips. Some people claim that aluminum shielding, essentially creating a Faraday cage, does work.[36] Others claim that simply wrapping an RFID card in aluminum foil, only makes transmission more difficult, yet is not completely effective at preventing it.[37]
Shielding is again a function of the frequency being used. Low-frequency tags, like those used in implantable devices for humans and pets, are relatively resistant to shielding, though thick metal foil will prevent most reads. High frequency tags (13.56 MHz — smart cards and access badges) are more sensitive to shielding and are difficult to read when within a few centimetres of a metal surface. UHF tags (pallets and cartons) are very difficult to read when placed within a few millimetres of a metal surface, although their read range is actually increased when they are spaced 2–4 cm from a metal due to positive reinforcement of the reflected wave and the incident wave at the tag. UHF tags can be successfully shielded from most reads by being placed within an anti-static plastic bag.
[edit] Cancer risk
On September 8, 2007, veterinary and toxicology studies spanning the last ten years surfaced indicating that RFID chips induced malignant tumors in laboratory animals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency that approved the use of the chips in the United States, refused to respond to questions from the media about their awareness of the studies. VeriChip Corp. maintains that the chips are completely safe and that they were unaware of the studies. The studies were somewhat limited in scope, lacking control groups that did not receive chips and failing to test large animals such as dogs, cats, or primates. As a result, most of the studies included cautionary language against making assumptions about the chips causing cancer in humans based on the study results.[38]
[edit] Controversies
Logo of the anti-RFID campaign by German privacy group FoeBuD
[edit] Privacy
How would you like it if, for instance, one day you realized your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts? — California State Senator Debra Bowen, at a 2003 hearing.[39]
The use of RFID technology has engendered considerable controversy and even product boycotts by consumer privacy advocates such as Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre of CASPIAN who refer to RFID tags as "spychips". The four main privacy concerns regarding RFID are:
The purchaser of an item will not necessarily be aware of the presence of the tag or be able to remove it
The tag can be read at a distance without the knowledge of the individual
If a tagged item is paid for by credit card or in conjunction with use of a loyalty card, then it would be possible to indirectly deduce the identity of the purchaser by reading the unique ID of that item (contained in the RFID tag).
The EPCglobal system of tags create globally unique serial numbers for all products.
Most concerns revolve around the fact that RFID tags affixed to products remain functional even after the products have been purchased and taken home and thus can be used for surveillance and other purposes unrelated to their supply chain inventory functions.[citation needed]
The concerns raised by the above may be addressed in part by use of the Clipped Tag. The Clipped Tag is an RFID tag designed to increase consumer privacy. The Clipped Tag has been suggested by IBM researchers Paul Moskowitz and Guenter Karjoth. After the point of sale, a consumer may tear off a portion of the tag. This allows the transformation of a long-range tag into a proximity tag that still may be read, but only at short range – less than a few inches or centimeters. The modification of the tag may be confirmed visually. The tag may still be used later for returns, recalls, or recycling.
However, read range is both a function of the reader and the tag itself. Improvements in technology may increase read ranges for tags. Having readers very close to the tags makes short range tags readable. Generally, the read range of a tag is limited to the distance from the reader over which the tag can draw enough energy from the reader field to power the tag. Tags may be read at longer ranges than they are designed for by increasing reader power. The limit on read distance then becomes the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal reflected from the tag back to the reader. Increased reader power may increase read ranges by a factor of three, but cannot turn a proximity tag into a long-range tag.
Another privacy issue is due to RFID's support for a singulation (anti-collision) protocol. This is the means by which a reader enumerates all the tags responding to it without them mutually interfering. The structure of some collision-resolution (Medium Access Control) protocols is such that all but the last bit of each tag's serial number can be deduced by passively eavesdropping on just the reader's part of the protocol. Because of this, whenever the relevant types of RFID tags are near to readers, the distance at which a tag's signal can be eavesdropped is irrelevant; what counts is the distance at which the much more powerful reader can be received. Just how far this can be depends on the type of the reader, but in the extreme case some readers have a maximum power output of 4 W, enabling signals to be received from tens of kilometres away.[citation needed] However, more recent UHF tags employing the EPCglobal Gen 2 (ISO 18000-6C) protocol, which is a slotted-Aloha scheme in which the reader never transmits the tag identifying information, are not subject to this particular attack.
Technical note: the anti-collision scheme of ISO 15693 will render this rather implausible. To eavesdrop on the reader part of the protocol – and gather the 63 least significant bits of a uid – would require the reader to send a mask value of 63 bits. This can only happen when the reader detects a collision up to the 63rd bit. In other words: One can eavesdrop on the transmitted mask-value of the reader, but for the reader to transmit a 63 bit mask-value requires two tags with identical least significant 63 bits. The probability of this happening must be near zero. I.e. the eavesdropper needs two virtually identical tags to be read at the same time by the reader in question. In any discussion of eavesdropping and skimming, it is important to make a distinction between inductively-coupled and radiatively-coupled tags. Protocols like ISO 15693 use 13.56 MHz radio frequencies and inductive coupling between the tag and reader. The signal power falls very rapidly to extremely low levels a few antenna diameters away from the reader when inductive coupling is used, so an attacker must be within a few meters to intercept the reader signal, and closer to read a tag. Protocols like 18000-6C, which use 900 MHz signals, usually use radiative coupling between tag and reader; a wave is launched, whose power falls roughly as the square of the distance. Tag signals can be intercepted from ten meters away under good conditions, and the reader signal can be detected from kilometers away if there are no obstructions.
The potential for privacy violations with RFID was demonstrated by its use in a pilot program by the Gillette Company, which conducted a "smart shelf" test at a Tesco in Cambridge, England. They automatically photographed shoppers taking RFID-tagged safety razors off the shelf, to see if the technology could be used to deter shoplifting. This trial resulted in consumer boycott against Gillette and Tesco. In another incident, uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, shelves in a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, were equipped with readers to track the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick containers stacked on them. Webcam images of the shelves were viewed 750 miles (1200 km) away by Procter & Gamble researchers in Cincinnati, Ohio, who could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and observe the shoppers in action. [citation needed]
Richard Stallman at WSIS 2005 presenting his RFID badge wrapped with tin foil as a way of protesting RFID privacy issues
In January 2004 privacy advocates from CASPIAN and the German privacy group FoeBuD were invited to the METRO Future Store in Germany, where an RFID pilot project was implemented. It was uncovered by accident that METRO "Payback" customer loyalty cards contained RFID tags with customer IDs, a fact that was disclosed neither to customers receiving the cards, nor to this group of privacy advocates. This happened despite assurances by METRO that no customer identification data was tracked and all RFID usage was clearly disclosed.[40]
The controversy was furthered by the accidental exposure of a proposed Auto-ID consortium public relations campaign that was designed to "neutralize opposition" and get consumers to "resign themselves to the inevitability of it" whilst merely pretending to address their concerns. During the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) between the 16th to 18th of November, 2005, founder of the free software movement, Richard Stallman, protested the use of RFID security cards. During the first meeting, it was agreed that future meetings would no longer use RFID cards, and upon finding out this assurance was broken, he covered his card in tin foil, and would only uncover it at the security stations. This protest caused the security personnel considerable concern, with some not allowing him to leave a conference room in which he had been the main speaker, and then the prevention of him entering another conference room, where he was due to speak.
RFID was one of the main topics of 2006 Chaos Communication Congress (organized by the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin and trigged a big press debate. Topics included: electronic passports, Mifare cryptography and the tickets for the FIFA World Cup 2006. Talks showed how the first real world mass application of RFID technology at the 2006 FIFA Soccer World Cup worked. Group monochrom staged a special 'Hack RFID' song.[41]
[edit] Human implantation
The Food and Drug Administration in the US has approved the use of RFID chips in humans.[42] Some business establishments have also started to chip customers, such as the Baja Beach nightclub in Barcelona. This has provoked concerns into privacy of individuals as they can potentially be tracked wherever they go by an identifier unique to them. There are some concerns this could lead to abuse by an authoritarian government or lead to removal of other freedoms.[43]
On July 22, 2006, Reuters reported that two hackers, Newitz and Westhues, at a conference in New York City showed that they could clone the RFID signal from a human implanted RFID chip, showing that the chip is not hack-proof as was previously believed.[44]
[edit] Religious opinion
Some critics, claiming to be Christian, believe that RFID tagging could represent the mark of the beast (666) mentioned specifically in the Book of Revelation (see Revelation 13:16). Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, authors of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, wrote a new book on the subject.[45] John Conner, leader of an organization called "The Resistance of Christ" also believes there is a strong connection. Related subjects include eschatology (last things) and dispensationalism.[46][47][48]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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An EPC RFID tag used by Wal-Mart
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders.
An RFID tag is an object that can be applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radiowaves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.
Most RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a (RF) signal and can also be used for other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal. A technology called chipless RFID allows for discrete identification of tags without an integrated circuit, thereby allowing tags to be printed directly onto assets at lower cost than traditional tags.
Today, a significant thrust in RFID use is in enterprise supply chain management, improving the efficiency of inventory tracking and management. However, a threat is looming that the current growth and adoption in enterprise supply chain market will not be sustainable. A fair cost-sharing mechanism, rational motives and justified returns from RFID technology investments are the key ingredients to achieve long-term and sustainable RFID technology adoption [1].
Contents[hide]
1 History of RFID tags
2 RFID tags
2.1 Passive
2.2 Active
2.3 Semi-passive
2.4 Antenna types
2.5 Tag attachment
2.6 Tagging positions
2.7 Tag environments
3 Current uses
3.1 Passports
3.2 Transport payments
3.3 Product tracking
3.4 Automotive
3.5 Animal identification
3.6 RFID in inventory systems
3.7 Human implants
3.8 RFID in libraries
3.9 Other
4 Potential uses
4.1 Replacing barcodes
4.2 Telemetry
4.3 Patient identification
5 Regulation and standardization
5.1 EPC Gen2
6 Problems and Concerns
6.1 Global standardization
6.2 Security concerns
6.3 Viruses
6.4 Passports
6.5 Protection against RFID interception
6.6 RFID shielding
6.7 Cancer risk
7 Controversies
7.1 Privacy
7.2 Human implantation
7.3 Religious opinion
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
//
[edit] History of RFID tags
An RFID tag used for electronic toll collection
In 1946 Léon Theremin invented an espionage tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, which modulated the reflected radio frequency. Even though this device was a passive covert listening device, not an identification tag, it has been attributed as the first known device and a predecessor to RFID technology. The technology used in RFID has been around since the early 1920s according to one source (although the same source states that RFID systems have been around just since the late 1960s).[2][3][4][5]
A similar technology, such as the IFF transponder invented by the British in 1939, was routinely used by the allies in World War II to identify airplanes as friend or foe. Transponders are still used by military and commercial aircraft to this day.
Another early work exploring RFID is the landmark 1948 paper by Harry Stockman, titled "Communication by Means of Reflected Power" (Proceedings of the IRE, pp 1196–1204, October 1948). Stockman predicted that "…considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored."
Mario Cardullo's U.S. Patent 3,713,148 in 1973 was the first true ancestor of modern RFID; a passive radio transponder with memory. The initial device was passive, powered by the interrogating signal, and was demonstrated in 1971 to the New York Port Authority and other potential users and consisted of a transponder with 16 bit memory for use as a toll device. The basic Cardullo patent covers the use of RF, sound and light as transmission medium. The original business plan presented to investors in 1969 showed uses in transportation (automotive vehicle identification, automatic toll system, electronic license plate, electronic manifest, vehicle routing, vehicle performance monitoring), banking (electronic check book, electronic credit card), security (personnel identification, automatic gates, surveillance) and medical (identification, patient history).
A very early demonstration of reflected power (modulated backscatter) RFID tags, both passive and active, was done by Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle and Robert Freyman at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1973[3]. The portable system operated at 915 MHz and used 12 bit tags. This technique is used by the majority of today's UHF and microwave RFID tags.
The first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton in 1983 (U.S. Patent 4,384,288).
[edit] RFID tags
RFID tags come in three general varieties: passive, active, or semi-passive (also known as battery-assisted). Passive tags require no internal power source, thus being pure passive devices (they are only active when a reader is nearby to power them), whereas semi-passive and active tags require a power source, usually a small battery.
RFID backscatter
To communicate, tags respond to queries generating signals that must not create interference with the reader's, as arriving signals can be very weak and must be told apart. Besides backscattering, load modulation techniques can be used to manipulate the reader's field. Typically, backscatter is used in the far field, whereas load modulation applies in the near field, within a few wavelengths from the reader.
[edit] Passive
Passive RFID tags have no internal power supply. The minute electrical current induced in the antenna by the incoming radio frequency signal provides just enough power for the CMOS integrated circuit in the tag to power up and transmit a response. Most passive tags signal by backscattering the carrier wave from the reader. This means that the antenna has to be designed to both collect power from the incoming signal and also to transmit the outbound backscatter signal. The response of a passive RFID tag is not necessarily just an ID number; the tag chip can contain non-volatile, possibly writable EEPROM for storing data.
Passive tags have practical read distances ranging from about 10 cm (4 in.) (ISO 14443) up to a few meters (Electronic Product Code (EPC) and ISO 18000-6), depending on the chosen radio frequency and antenna design/size. Due to their simplicity in design they are also suitable for manufacture with a printing process for the antennas. The lack of an onboard power supply means that the device can be quite small: commercially available products exist that can be embedded in a sticker, or under the skin in the case of low frequency RFID tags.
In 2006, Hitachi, Ltd. developed a passive device called the µ-Chip measuring 0.15×0.15 mm (not including the antenna), and thinner than a sheet of paper (7.5 micrometers).[6][7] Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology is used to achieve this level of integration. The Hitachi µ-Chip can wirelessly transmit a 128-bit unique ID number which is hard coded into the chip as part of the manufacturing process. The unique ID in the chip cannot be altered, providing a high level of authenticity to the chip and ultimately to the items the chip may be permanently attached or embedded into. The Hitachi µ-Chip has a typical maximum read range of 30 cm (1 foot). In February 2007 Hitachi unveiled an even smaller RFID device measuring 0.05×0.05 mm, and thin enough to be embedded in a sheet of paper.[8] The new chips can store as much data as the older µ-chips, and the data contained on them can be extracted from as far away as a few hundred metres. The ongoing problem with all RFIDs is that they need an external antenna which is 80 times bigger than the chip in the best version thus far developed.
Alien Technology's Fluidic Self Assembly, SmartCode's Flexible Area Synchronized Transfer (FAST) and Symbol Technologies' PICA process are alleged to potentially further reduce tag costs by massively parallel production[citation needed]. Alien Technology and SmartCode are currently using the processes to manufacture tags while Symbol Technologies' PICA process is still in the development phase. Alternative methods of production such as FAST, FSA and PICA could potentially reduce tag costs dramatically, and due to volume capacities achievable, in turn be able to also drive the economies of scale models for various Silicon fabricators as well. Some passive RFID vendors believe that Industry benchmarks for tag costs can be achieved eventually as new low cost volume production systems are implemented more broadly.
Non-silicon tags made from polymer semiconductors are currently being developed by several companies globally. Simple laboratory printed polymer tags operating at 13.56 MHz were demonstrated in 2005 by both PolyIC (Germany) and Philips (The Netherlands). If successfully commercialized, polymer tags will be roll-printable, like a magazine, and much less expensive than silicon-based tags. The end game for most item-level tagging over the next few decades may be that RFID tags will be wholly printed – the same way a barcode is today – and be virtually free, like a barcode. However, substantial technical and economic hurdles must be surmounted to accomplish such an end: hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested over the last three decades in silicon processing, resulting in a per-feature cost which is actually less than that of conventional printing.
[edit] Active
Unlike passive RFID tags, active RFID tags have their own internal power source, which is used to power the integrated circuits and broadcast the signal to the reader. Active tags are typically much more reliable (e.g. fewer errors) than passive tags due to the ability for active tags to conduct a "session" with a reader. Active tags, due to their onboard power supply, also transmit at higher power levels than passive tags, allowing them to be more effective in "RF challenged" environments like water (including humans/cattle, which are mostly water), metal (shipping containers, vehicles), or at longer distances, generating strong responses from weak requests (as opposed to passive tags, which work the other way around). In turn, they are generally bigger and more expensive to manufacture, and their potential shelf life is much shorter.
Many active tags today have practical ranges of hundreds of meters, and a battery life of up to 10 years. Some active RFID tags include sensors such as temperature logging which have been used to monitor the temperature of perishable goods like fresh produce or certain pharmaceutical products. Other sensors that have been married with active RFID include humidity, shock/vibration, light, radiation, temperature, and atmospherics like ethylene. Active tags typically have much longer range (approximately 500 m/1500 feet) and larger memories than passive tags, as well as the ability to store additional information sent by the transceiver. The United States Department of Defense has successfully used active tags to reduce logistics costs and improve supply chain visibility for more than 15 years.
[edit] Semi-passive
Semi-passive tags are similar to active tags as they have their own power source, but the battery is used just to power the microchip and not broadcast a signal. The RF energy is reflected back to the reader like a passive tag. An alternative use for the battery is to store energy from the reader to emit a response in the future, usually by means of backscattering. Tags which do not have a battery need to emit their response reflecting energy from the reader carrier on the fly.
Semi-passive tags are comparable to active tags in reliability while featuring the effective reading range of a passive tag. They usually last longer than active tags as well.
[edit] Antenna types
The antenna used for an RFID tag is affected by the intended application and the frequency of operation. Low-frequency (LF) passive tags are normally inductively coupled, and because the voltage induced is proportional to frequency, many coil turns are needed to produce enough voltage to operate an integrated circuit. Compact LF tags, like glass-encapsulated tags used in animal and human identification, use a multilayer coil (3 layers of 100–150 turns each) wrapped around a ferrite core.
At 13.56 MHz (High frequency or HF), a planar spiral with 5–7 turns over a credit-card-sized form factor can be used to provide ranges of tens of centimeters. These coils are less costly to produce than LF coils, since they can be made using lithographic techniques rather than by wire winding, but two metal layers and an insulator layer are needed to allow for the crossover connection from the outermost layer to the inside of the spiral where the integrated circuit and resonance capacitor are located.
Ultra-high frequency (UHF) and microwave passive tags are usually radiatively-coupled to the reader antenna and can employ conventional dipole-like antennas. Only one metal layer is required, reducing cost of manufacturing. Dipole antennas, however, are a poor match to the high and slightly capacitive input impedance of a typical integrated circuit. Folded dipoles, or short loops acting as inductive matching structures, are often employed to improve power delivery to the IC. Half-wave dipoles (16 cm at 900 mHz) are too big for many applications; for example, tags embedded in labels must be less than 100 mm (4 inches) in extent. To reduce the length of the antenna, antennas can be bent or meandered, and capacitive tip-loading or bowtie-like broadband structures are also used. Compact antennas usually have gain less than that of a dipole — that is, less than 2 dBi — and can be regarded as isotropic in the plane perpendicular to their axis.
Dipoles couple to radiation polarized along their axes, so the visibility of a tag with a simple dipole-like antenna is orientation-dependent. Tags with two orthogonal or nearly-orthogonal antennas, often known as dual-dipole tags, are much less dependent on orientation and polarization of the reader antenna, but are larger and more expensive than single-dipole tags.
Patch antennas are used to provide service in close proximity to metal surfaces, but a structure with good bandwidth is 3–6 mm thick, and the need to provide a ground layer and ground connection increases cost relative to simpler single-layer structures.
HF and UHF tag antennas are usually fabricated from copper or aluminum. Conductive inks have seen some use in tag antennas but have encountered problems with IC adhesion and environmental stability.
[edit] Tag attachment
Basically, there are three different kinds of RFID tags based on their attachment with identified objects, i.e. attachable, implantable and insertion tags [9]. In addition to these conventional RFID tags, Eastman Kodak Company has filed two patent applications for monitoring ingestion of medicine comprises forming a digestible RFID tag[10].
[edit] Tagging positions
RFID tagging positions can influence the performance of air interface UHF RFID passive tags and related to the position where RFID tags are embedded, attached, injected or digested.
In many cases, optimum power from RFID reader is not required to operate passive tags. However, in cases where the Effective Radiated Power (ERP) level and distance between reader and tags are fixed, such as in manufacturing setting, it is important to know the location in a tagged object where a passive tag can operate optimally.
R-Spot or Resonance Spot, L-Spot or Live Spot and D-Spot or Dead Spot are defined to specify the location of RFID tags in a tagged object, where the tags can still receive power from a reader within specified ERP level and distance [11].
[edit] Tag environments
The proposed ubiquity of RFID tags means that readers may need to select which tags to read among many potential candidates, or may wish to probe surrounding devices to perform inventory checks or, in case the tags are associated to sensors and capable of keeping their values, question them for environmental conditions. If a reader intends to work with a collection of tags, it needs to either discover all devices within an area to iterate over them afterwards, or use collision avoidance protocols.
Finding tags in a search environment
In order to read tag data, readers use a tree-walking singulation algorithm, resolving possible collisions and processing responses one by one. Blocker tags may be used to prevent readers from accessing tags within an area without killing surrounding tags by means of suicide commands. These tags masquerade as valid tags but have some special properties: in particular, they may possess any identification code, and may deterministically respond to all reader queries, thus rendering them useless and securing the environment.
Besides this, tags may be promiscuous, attending all requests alike, or secure, which requires authentication and control of typical password management and secure key distribution issues. A tag may as well be prepared to be activated or deactivated in response to specific reader commands.
Readers that are in charge of the tags of an area may operate in autonomous mode (as opposed to interactive mode). When in this mode, a reader periodically locates all tags in its operating range, and keeps a presence list with a persist time and some control information. When an entry expires, it is removed from the list.
Frequently, a distributed application requires both types of tags: passive tags are incapable of continuous monitoring and perform tasks on demand when accessed by readers. They are useful when activities are regular and well defined, and requirements for data storage and security are limited; when accesses are frequent, continuous or unpredictable, there are time constraints to meet or data processing (internal searches, for instance) to perform, active tags may be preferred.
[edit] Current uses
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[edit] Passports
RFID tags are being used in passports issued by many countries. The first RFID passports ("E-passport") were issued by Malaysia in 1998. In addition to information also contained on the visual data page of the passport, Malaysian e-passports record the travel history (time, date, and place) of entries and exits from the country.
Standards for RFID passports are determined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and are contained in ICAO Document 9303, Part 1, Volumes 1 and 2 (6th edition, 2006). ICAO refers to the ISO 14443 RFID chips in e-passports as "contactless integrated circuits". ICAO standards provide for e-passports to be identifiable by a standard e-passport logo on the front cover.
RFID tags are included in new passports, beginning in 2006. The US produced 10 million passports in 2005, and it has been estimated that 13 million will be produced in 2006. The chips will store the same information that is printed within the passport and will also include a digital picture of the owner. The passports will incorporate a thin metal lining to make it more difficult for unauthorized readers to "skim" information when the passport is closed.
[edit] Transport payments
Throughout Europe, and in particular in Paris in France (system started in 1995 by the RATP), Lyon and Marseille in France, Porto and Lisbon in Portugal, Milan and Torino in Italy, Brussels in Belgium, RFID passes conforming to the Calypso (RFID) international standard are used for public transport systems. They are also used now in Canada (Montreal), Mexico, Israel, Bogotá and Pereira in Colombia, Stavanger in Norway, etc.
T-money cards can be used to pay for public transit in Seoul and surrounding cities. Some other South Korean cities have adopted the system, which can also be used in some stores as cash. T-money replaced Upass, first introduced for transport payments in 1996 using MIFARE technology.
JR East in Japan introduced SUICa (Super Urban Intelligent Card) for transport payment service in its railway transportation service in November 2001, using Sony's FeliCa (Felicity Card) technology. The same Sony technology was used in Hong Kong's Octopus card, and Singapore's EZ-Link card.
In Hong Kong, mass transit is paid for almost exclusively through the use of an RFID technology, called the Octopus Card. Originally it was launched in September 1997 exclusively for transit fare collection, but has grown to be similar to a cash card, and can be used in vending machines, fast-food restaurants and supermarkets. The card can be recharged with cash at add-value machines or in shops, and can be read several centimetres from the reader.
An Electronic Road Pricing gantry in Singapore. Gantries such as these collect tolls in high-traffic areas from active RFID units in vehicles.
In Singapore, public transport buses and trains employ passive RFID cards known as EZ-Link cards. Traffic into crowded downtown areas is regulated by variable tolls imposed using an active tagging system combined with the use of stored-value cards (known as CashCards).
RFID is used in Malaysia Expressways payment system. The name for the system is Touch 'n Go. Due to the name and design, one must touch the card for usage.
The Washington, D.C. Metrorail became the first U.S. urban mass-transit system to use RFID technology when it introduced the SmarTrip card in 1999.
In Turkey, RFID has been used in the motorways and bridges as a payment system over ten years.
The Chicago Transit Authority has offered the Chicago Card and the Chicago Card Plus for rail payments across the entire system since 2002 and for bus payments since 2005.
The New York City Subway is conducting a trial during 2006, utilizing PayPass by MasterCard as fare payment.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority introduced the use of a CharlieCard RFID as a fare payment system which is cheaper than its paper or cash equivalent.
Six transit agencies in the King County region of Washington State are collaborating to introduce the Smart Card, or Orca Card.
The Moscow Metro, the world's second busiest, was the first system in Europe to introduce RFID smartcards in 1998.
In the UK, op systems for prepaying for unlimited public transport have been devised, making use of RFID technology. The design is embedded in a creditcard-like pass, that when scanned reveals details of whether the pass is valid, and for how long the pass will remain valid. The first company to implement this is the NCT company of Nottingham City, where the general public affectionately refer to them as "beep cards". It has since then been implemented with great success in London, where "Oyster cards" allow for pay-as-you-go travel as well as passes valid for various lengths of time and in various areas.
In Oslo, Norway, the upcoming public transport payment is to be entirely RFID-based. The system is to be put into production around spring 2007
In Norway, all public toll roads are equipped with an RFID payment system known as AutoPass.
Since 2002, in Taipei, Taiwan the transportation system uses RFID operated cards as fare collection. The Easy Card is charged at local convenience stores and metro stations, and can be used in Metro, buses, parking lots and taxis. The uses are planned to extend all throughout the island of Taiwan in the future.
RFID tags are used for electronic toll collection at toll booths with Georgia's Cruise Card, California's FasTrak, Illinois' I-Pass, Oklahoma's Pikepass, the expanding eastern states' E-ZPass system (including Massachusetts's Fast Lane, New Hampshire Turnpike, New Jersey Turnpike, and the Maine Turnpike), Florida's SunPass, North Texas NTTA and Houston HCTRA EZ Tag, Kansas's K-Tag, The "Cross-Israel Highway" (Highway 6), Philippines South Luzon Expressway E-Pass, Brisbane's Queensland Motorway E-Toll System in Australia, Autopista del Sol (Sun's Highway), Autopista Central (Central Highway), Autopista Los Libertadores, Costanera Norte, Vespucio Norte Express and Vespucio Sur urban Highways and every forthcoming urban highway (in a "Free Flow" modality) concessioned to private investors in Chile and all highways in Portugal (Via Verde, the first system in the world to span the entire network of tolls), France (Liber-T system), Italy (Telepass), Spain (VIA-T)… The tags, which are usually the active type, are read remotely as vehicles pass through the booths, and tag information is used to debit the toll from a prepaid account. The system helps to speed traffic through toll plazas as it records the date, time, and billing data for the RFID vehicle tag. The plaza- and queue-free 407 Express Toll Route, in the Greater Toronto Area, allows the use of a transponder (an active tag) for all billing. This eliminates the need to identify a vehicle by licence plate and saves the end user money.
The Transperth public transport network in Perth, Western Australia uses RFID technology in the new SmartRider ticketing system.
MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) has transitioned its bus and rail lines from coin tokens to the new Breeze Card system which uses RFID tags embedded in disposable paper tickets. More permanent plastic cards are available for frequent users.
In Rio de Janeiro, "RioCard" passes can be used in buses, ferries, trains and subway. There are two types, one you cannot recharge, the other one can be recharged if it's been bought by the company you work for, if they provided it (only in Brazil).
A number of ski resorts, particularly in the French Alps and in the Spanish and French Pyrenees, have adopted RFID tags to provide skiers hands-free access to ski lifts. Skiers don't have to take their passes out of their pockets.
In Santiago (Chile) the subway system Metro and the recently implemented public transportation system Transantiago uses an RFID card called Bip or Multivia.
In Medellín (Colombia) the system Metro and the recently implemented card system uses an RFID card called Cívica.
In Colombia, "Federación Nacional de Cafeteros" uses an RFID solution to trace the coffee.
In Dubai(United Arab Emirates)drivers through certain roads use RFID tags called Salik
In Milano (Italy) the ATM "Azienda Trasporti Milanese" has implemented RFID tags for frequent users.
[edit] Product tracking
The Canadian Cattle Identification Agency began using RFID tags as a replacement for barcode tags. The tags are required to identify a bovine's herd of origin and this is used for tracing when a packing plant condemns a carcass. Currently CCIA tags are used in Wisconsin and by US farmers on a voluntary basis. The USDA is currently developing its own program.
RFID tags used in libraries: square book tag, round CD/DVD tag and rectangular VHS tag.
High-frequency RFID tags are used in library book or bookstore tracking, pallet tracking, building access control, airline baggage tracking, and apparel and pharmaceutical items tracking. High-frequency tags are widely used in identification badges, replacing earlier magnetic stripe cards. These badges need only be held within a certain distance of the reader to authenticate the holder. The American Express Blue credit card now includes a high-frequency RFID tag.
BGN has launched two fully automated Smartstores that combine item-level RFID tagging and SOA to deliver an integrated supply chain, from warehouse to consumer.
UHF RFID tags are commonly used commercially in case, pallet, and shipping container tracking, and truck and trailer tracking in shipping yards.
[edit] Automotive
Microwave RFID tags are used in long range access control for vehicles.
Since the 1990s RFID tags have been used in car keys. Without the correct RFID, the car will not start.
In January 2003, Michelin began testing RFID transponders embedded into tires with the intention that after an 18 month testing period, the manufacturer would offer RFID-enabled tires to car makers. Their primary purpose is tire tracking in compliance with the United States Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act (TREAD Act). As at August 2007 the progress has only extended to truck tires where rubber patches are affixed to the truck tire. An advanced version, the eTire includes a batteryless pressure sensor, is marketed by Michelin for truck tires. Interestingly Michelin are required under the terms of their licence to offer this eTire system to all other tire manufacturers in November 2008. Car tires still present technical problems for embedding tags as the low cost of the tire means the cost of fixing the tags should be very cheap to be commercially viable.
Starting with the 2004 model year, a Smart Key/Smart Start option became available to the Toyota Prius. Since then, Toyota has been introducing the feature on various models globally under both the Toyota and Lexus brands, including the Toyota Avalon (2005 model year), Toyota Camry (2007 model year), and the Lexus GS (2006 model year). The key uses an active RFID circuit allowing the car to detect the key approximately 3 feet from the sensor. The driver can open the doors and start the car with the key in a purse or pocket.
Ford, Honda, and several other manufacturers use RFID-equipped ignition keys as anti-theft measures.
[edit] Animal identification
Implantable RFID tags or transponders can be used for animal identification. The transponders are more well-known as passive RFID technology on Microchip implant (animal).
[edit] RFID in inventory systems
An advanced automatic identification technology such as the Auto-ID system based on the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has two values for inventory systems. First, the visibility provided by this technology allows an accurate knowledge on the inventory level by eliminating the discrepancy between inventory record and physical inventory. In an academic study[12] performed at Wal-Mart, RFID reduced Out of Stocks by 30 percent for products selling between 0.1 and 15 units a day. Second, the RFID technology can prevent or reduce the sources of errors. Benefits of using RFID include the reduction of labour costs, the simplification of business processes and the reduction of inventory inaccuracies.
RFID mandates
Wal-Mart and the United States Department of Defense have published requirements that their vendors place RFID tags on all shipments to improve supply chain management. Due to the size of these two organizations, their RFID mandates impact thousands of companies worldwide. The deadlines have been extended several times because many vendors face significant difficulties implementing RFID systems. In practice, the successful read rates currently run only 80%, due to radio wave attenuation caused by the products and packaging. In time it is expected that even small companies will be able to place RFID tags on their outbound shipments.
Since January, 2005, Wal-Mart has required its top 100 suppliers to apply RFID labels to all shipments. To meet this requirement, vendors use RFID printer/encoders to label cases and pallets that require EPC tags for Wal-Mart. These smart labels are produced by embedding RFID inlays inside the label material, and then printing bar code and other visible information on the surface of the label.
[edit] Human implants
Hand with the planned location of the RFID chip
Just after the operation to insert the RFID tag was completed
Implantable RFID chips designed for animal tagging are now being used in humans. An early experiment with RFID implants was conducted by British professor of cybernetics Kevin Warwick, who implanted a chip in his arm in 1998. Night clubs in Barcelona, Spain and in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, use an implantable chip to identify their VIP customers, who in turn use it to pay for drinks.[citation needed]
In 2004, the Mexican Attorney General's office implanted 18 of its staff members with the Verichip to control access to a secure data room. (This number has been variously mis-reported as 160 or 180 staff members.[13] [14])
Security experts are warned against using RFID for authenticating people due to the risk of identity theft. For instance a man-in-the-middle attack would make it possible for an attacker to steal the identity of a person in real-time. Due to the resource-constraints of RFIDs it is virtually impossible to protect against such attack models as this would require complex distance-binding protocols.[citation needed]
[edit] RFID in libraries
Among the many uses of RFID technologies is its deployment in libraries. This technology has slowly begun to replace the traditional barcodes on library items (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.). However, the RFID tag can contain identifying information, such as a book’s title or material type, without having to be pointed to a separate database (but this is rare in North America). The information is read by an RFID reader, which replaces the standard barcode reader commonly found at a library’s circulation desk. The RFID tag found on library materials typically measures 50 mm X 50 mm in North America and 50 mm x 75 mm in Europe, and can also act as a security device, taking the place of the more traditional electromagnetic security strip.[15]
While there is some debate as to when and where RFID in libraries first began, it was first proposed in the late 1990s as a technology that would enhance workflow in the library setting. Rockefeller University in New York may have been the first academic library in the United States to utilize this technology, whereas Farmington Community Library may have been the first public institution, both of which began using RFID in 1999. Worldwide, the United States utilizes RFID in libraries more than any other nation, followed by the United Kingdom and Japan. It is estimated that over 30 million library items worldwide now contain RFID tags, including some in the Vatican Library in Rome.[16]
RFID has many applications in libraries that can be highly beneficial, particularly for circulation staff. Since RFID tags can be read through an item, there is no need to open a book cover or DVD case to scan an item. This would help alleviate injuries such as repetitive strain injury that can occur over many years. Since RFID tags can also be read while an item is in motion, using RFID readers to check-in returned items while on a conveyor belt reduces staff time. Furthermore, inventories could be done on a whole shelf of materials within seconds, without a book ever having to be taken off the shelf.[17]. In Umeå, Sweden, it is being used to assist visually impaired people in borrowing audiobooks[18]. In Malaysia, Smart Shelves are used to pinpoint the exact location of books in Multimedia University Library, Cyberjaya[19].
However, this technology remains cost prohibitive for many smaller libraries, and the conversion time has been estimated at 11 months for an average size library. With RFID taking a large burden off staff, it has also been shown to produce a threat to staff that their job duties have been replaced by technology,[16] but the threat is not realized in North America where recent surveys have not returned a single library that cut staff because of adding RFID. In fact, library budgets are being reduced for personnel and increased for infrastructure, making it necessary for libraries to add automation to compensate for the reduced staff size.
A concern surrounding RFID in libraries that has received considerable publicity is the issue of privacy. Because RFID tags can in theory be scanned and read from over 350 feet in distance, and because RFID utilizes an assortment of frequencies, there is a legitimate concern over whether sensitive information could be collected from an unwilling source. However, advocates of RFID’s use in libraries will point out that library RFID tags do not contain any patron information,[20] and that the tags used in the majority of libraries use a frequency only readable from approximately ten feet.[15] There is much yet to be written and discussed on the issue of privacy and RFID, but it is clear that vendors need to be aware of this issue and develop improved technologies for secure RFID transactions.
[edit] Other
Some hospitals use Active RFID tags to perform Asset Tracking in Real Time.[21]
The NEXUS and SENTRI frequent traveler programs use RFID to speed up landborder processing between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico. [22]
NADRA has developed an RFID-based driver license that bears the license holders personal information and stores data regarding traffic violations, tickets issued, and outstanding penalties. The license cards are designed so that driving rights can be revoked electronically in case of serious violations.[23]
Sensors such as seismic sensors may be read using RFID transceivers, greatly simplifying remote data collection.
In August 2004, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRH) approved a $415,000 contract to evaluate the personnel tracking technology of Alanco Technologies. Inmates will wear wristwatch-sized transmitters that can detect attempted removal and alert prison computers. This project is not the first rollout of tracking chips in US prisons. Facilities in Michigan, California and Illinois already employ the technology.
Automatic timing at mass sports events "ChampionChip".
Used as storage for a video game system produced by Mattel, "HyperScan".
RFIQin, designed by Vita Craft, is an automatic cooking device that has three different sized pans, a portable induction heater, and recipe cards. Each pan is embedded with a RFID tag that monitors the food 16 times per second while a MI tag in the handle of the pans transmits signals to the induction heater to adjust the temperature.
Slippery Rock University is using RFID tags in their students' ID cards beginning in the fall 2007 semester.
Many more applications can be found in the literature.[24]
25 real world application case studies can be found in a 61 page free Ebook RFID Technology Applications
RFID tags is now being embeded into playing cards that are used for televisied poker tournamnets, so comentators know exactly what cards has been dealt to whom, as soon as the deal is complete.
The Iraqi army uses an RFID security card that contains a biometric picture of the soldier. The picture in the chip must match the picture on the card to prevent forgery.[25]
Theme parks (such as Alton Towers in the United Kingdom) have been known to use RFID to help them identify users of a ride in order to make a dvd of their time at the park. This is then available for the user to buy at the end of the day. This is voluntary by the user by wearing a wristband given to them at the park.
[edit] Potential uses
[edit] Replacing barcodes
RFID tags are often envisioned as a replacement for UPC or EAN barcodes, having a number of important advantages over the older barcode technology. They may not ever completely replace barcodes, due in part to their higher cost and in other part to the advantage of more than one independent data source on the same object. The new EPC, along with several other schemes, is widely available at reasonable cost.
The storage of data associated with tracking items will require many terabytes on all levels. Filtering and categorizing RFID data is needed in order to create useful information. It is likely that goods will be tracked preferably by the pallet using RFID tags, and at package level with Universal Product Code (UPC) or EAN from unique barcodes.
The unique identity in any case is a mandatory requirement for RFID tags, despite special choice of the numbering scheme. RFID tag data capacity is big enough that any tag will have a unique code, while current bar codes are limited to a single type code for all instances of a particular product. The uniqueness of RFID tags means that a product may be individually tracked as it moves from location to location, finally ending up in the consumer's hands. This may help companies to combat theft and other forms of product loss. Moreover, the tracing back of products is an important feature that gets well supported with RFID tags containing not just a unique identity of the tag but also the serial number of the object. This may help companies to cope with quality deficiencies and resulting recall campaigns, but also contributes to concern over post-sale tracking and profiling of consumers.
It has also been proposed to use RFID for POS store checkout to replace the cashier with an automatic system which needs no barcode scanning. However, this is not likely to be possible without a significant reduction in the cost of current tags and changes in the operational process around POS. There is some research taking place, however, this is some years from reaching fruition.
An FDA nominated task force came to the conclusion after studying the various technologies currently commercially available, which could meet the pedigree requirements. Amongst all technologies studied including bar coding, RFID seemed to be the most promising and the committee felt that the pedigree requirement could be met by easily leveraging something that is readily available. (More details see RFID-FDA-Regulations)
[edit] Telemetry
Active RFID tags also have the potential to function as low-cost remote sensors that broadcast telemetry back to a base station. Applications of tagometry[citation needed] data could include sensing of road conditions by implanted beacons, weather reports, and noise level monitoring.
[edit] Patient identification
In July 2004, the Food and Drug Administration issued a ruling that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use RFID systems to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records. Since then, a number of U.S. hospitals have begun implanting patients with RFID tags and using RFID systems, more generally, for workflow and inventory management.[26] The use of RFID to prevent mixups between sperm and ova in IVF clinics is also being considered [3].
In October 2004, the FDA approved USA's first RFID chips that can be implanted in humans. The 134 kHz RFID chips, from VeriChip Corp., a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions Inc., can incorporate personal medical information and could save lives and limit injuries from errors in medical treatments, according to the company. The FDA approval was disclosed during a conference call with investors. Shortly after the approval, authors and anti-RFID activists Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre discovered a warning letter from the FDA that spelled out serious health risks associated with the VeriChip. According to the FDA, these include "adverse tissue reaction", "migration of the implanted transponder", "failure of implanted transponder", "electrical hazards" and "magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] incompatibility."
In 2007 John Wiley & Sons published a guide to RFID use in the book RFID Applied (ISBN 978-0-471-79365-6)
[edit] Regulation and standardization
There is no global public body that governs the frequencies used for RFID. In principle, every country can set its own rules for this. The main bodies governing frequency allocation for RFID are:
USA: FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
Canada: DOC (Department of Communication)
Europe: ERO, CEPT, ETSI, and national administrations (note that the national administrations must ratify the usage of a specific frequency before it can be used in that country)
Japan: SOUMU (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
China: Ministry of Information Industry
South Africa: Icasa
South Korea: Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy
Australia: Australian Communications and Media Authority.
New Zealand: Ministry of Economic Development
Singapore: Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
Low-frequency (LF: 125 – 134.2 kHz and 140 – 148.5 kHz) and high-frequency (HF: 13.56 MHz) RFID tags can be used globally without a license. Ultra-high-frequency (UHF: 868 MHz-928 MHz) cannot be used globally as there is no single global standard. In North America, UHF can be used unlicensed for 902 – 928 MHz (±13 MHz from the 915 MHz center frequency), but restrictions exist for transmission power. In Europe, RFID and other low-power radio applications are regulated by ETSI recommendations EN 300 220 and EN 302 208, and ERO recommendation 70 03, allowing RFID operation with somewhat complex band restrictions from 865–868 MHz. Readers are required to monitor a channel before transmitting ("Listen Before Talk"); this requirement has led to some restrictions on performance, the resolution of which is a subject of current research. The North American UHF standard is not accepted in France as it interferes with its military bands. For China and Japan, there is no regulation for the use of UHF. Each application for UHF in these countries needs a site license, which needs to be applied for at the local authorities, and can be revoked. For Australia and New Zealand, 918 – 926 MHz are unlicensed, but restrictions exist for transmission power.
These frequencies are known as the ISM bands (Industrial Scientific and Medical bands). The return signal of the tag may still cause interference for other radio users
Some standards that have been made regarding RFID technology include:
ISO 14223/1 – Radio frequency identification of Animals, advanced transponders – Air interface
ISO 14443: This standard is a very popular HF (13.56 MHz) standard, which is being used as the basis of RFID-enabled passports under ICAO 9303.
ISO 15693: This is also a very popular HF (13.56 MHz) standard, widely used for non-contact smart payment and credit cards.
ISO 18000-7: This is the new UHF (433 MHz) industry standard for all active RFID products, mandated by the U.S. Department of Defense, NATO militaries, and, increasingly, commercial users of active RFID.
ISO 18185: This is the industry standard for electronic seals or "e-seals" for tracking cargo containers using the 433 MHz and 2.4Ghz frequencies.
EPCglobal – this is the standardization framework that is most likely to undergo International Standardisation according to ISO rules as with all sound standards in the world, unless residing with limited scope, as customs regulations, air-traffic regulations and others. Currently the big distributors and governmental customers are pushing EPC heavily as a standard well accepted in their community, but not yet regarded as for salvation to the rest of the world.
[edit] EPC Gen2
EPC Gen2 is short for EPCglobal UHF Class 1 Generation 2.
EPCglobal (a joint venture between GS1 and GS1 US) is working on international standards for the use of mostly passive RFID and the EPC in the identification of many items in the supply chain for companies worldwide.
One of the missions of EPCglobal was to simplify the Babel of protocols prevalent in the RFID world in the 1990s. Two tag air interfaces (the protocol for exchanging information between a tag and a reader) were defined (but not ratified) by EPCglobal prior to 2003. These protocols, commonly known as Class 0 and Class 1, saw significant commercial implementation in 2002–2005.
In 2004 the Hardware Action Group created a new protocol, the Class 1 Generation 2 interface, which addressed a number of problems that had been experienced with Class 0 and Class 1 tags. The EPC Gen2 standard was approved in December 2004, and is likely to form the backbone of passive RFID tag standards moving forward. This was approved after a contention from Intermec that the standard may infringe a number of their RFID related patents. It was decided that the standard itself did not infringe their patents, but it may be necessary to pay royalties to Intermec if the tag were to be read in a particular manner. The EPC Gen2 standard was adopted with minor modifications as ISO 18000-6C in 2006.
The lowest cost of Gen2 EPC inlay is offered by SmartCode at a price of 5 cents apiece in volumes of 100 million or more[27]. Nevertheless, further conversion of the inlays into usable RFID labels and the design of current Gen 2 protocol standard will increase the total end-cost, especially with the added security feature extensions for RFID Supply Chain item-level tagging.
[edit] Problems and Concerns
[edit] Global standardization
The frequencies used for RFID in the USA are currently incompatible with those of Europe or Japan. Furthermore, no emerging standard has yet become as universal as the barcode.[28]
[edit] Security concerns
A primary security concern surrounding RFID technology is the illicit tracking of RFID tags. Tags which are world-readable pose a risk to both personal location privacy and corporate/military security. Such concerns have been raised with respect to the United States Department of Defense's recent adoption of RFID tags for supply chain management.[29] More generally, privacy organizations have expressed concerns in the context of ongoing efforts to embed electronic product code (EPC) RFID tags in consumer products.
EPCglobal Network, by design, is also susceptible to DoS attacks. Using similar mechanism with DNS in resolving EPC data requests, the ONS Root servers become vulnerable to DoS attacks. Any organisation planning to embark on EPCglobal Network will cringe finding out that the EPCglobal Network infrastructure inherits security weaknesses similar to DNS'[30].
A second class of defense uses cryptography to prevent tag cloning. Some tags use a form of "rolling code" scheme, wherein the tag identifier information changes after each scan, thus reducing the usefulness of observed responses. More sophisticated devices engage in Challenge-response authentications where the tag interacts with the reader. In these protocols, secret tag information is never sent over the insecure communication channel between tag and reader. Rather, the reader issues a challenge to the tag, which responds with a result computed using a cryptographic circuit keyed with some secret value. Such protocols may be based on symmetric or public key cryptography. Cryptographically-enabled tags typically have dramatically higher cost and power requirements than simpler equivalents, and as a result, deployment of these tags is much more limited. This cost/power limitation has led some manufacturers to implement cryptographic tags using substantially weakened, or proprietary encryption schemes, which do not necessarily resist sophisticated attack. For example, the Exxon-Mobil Speedpass uses a cryptographically-enabled tag manufactured by Texas Instruments, called the Digital Signature Transponder (DST), which incorporates a weak, proprietary encryption scheme to perform a challenge-response protocol.
Still other cryptographic protocols attempt to achieve privacy against unauthorized readers, though these protocols are largely in the research stage. One major challenge in securing RFID tags is a shortage of computational resources within the tag. Standard cryptographic techniques require more resources than are available in most low cost RFID devices. RSA Security has patented a prototype device that locally jams RFID signals by interrupting a standard collision avoidance protocol, allowing the user to prevent identification if desired.[31] Various policy measures have also been proposed, such as marking RFID tagged objects with an industry standard label.
[edit] Viruses
Ars Technica Reported in March 2006 an RFID buffer overflow bug that could infect airport terminal RFID Databases for baggage, and also Passport databases to obtain confidential information on the passport holder.[32]
[edit] Passports
In an effort to make passports more secure, several countries have implemented RFID in passports. However, the encryption on UK chips was broken in under 48 hours leaving millions of citizens vulnerable.[33] Since that incident, further efforts have allowed researchers to clone passport data while the passport is being mailed to its owner. Where before a criminal had to secretly open and then reseal the envelope, now it can be done without detection adding significant insecurity to the passport system.[34]
[edit] Protection against RFID interception
Various methods can be used to protect against RFID data interception:[35]
Most RFID chips can be disabled by physical means: for example the RFID chip inside RFID credit cards can be disabled by a sharp tap of a hammer.
One can prevent the RFID transponders from receiving power. This is accomplished by obstructing the power supply; one approach is to shield the RFID transponders in a Faraday cage, intercepting the electromagnetic signal which normally powers them. UHF transponders can be shielded using an anti-static bag. LF and HF (inductively-coupled) transponders can be shielded with conventional aluminum foil.
One can simply damage the antenna. With larger RFID transponders one can recognize the spirals of the antenna clearly by use of a radiograph. If one splits the antenna circuit, the effective range of the RFID transponder will be greatly reduced.
An intense electromagnetic impulse applied to the transponders and antenna can induce high currents, interrupting the circuit and rendering the tag useless. A crude way to do this is putting the RFID tag in a microwave oven. Success may vary, depending on the frequency of the microwave and the shape of the antenna. A device built to destroy transponders is the RFID-Zapper.
The system can be blocked by sending a spurious signal in conjunction with the inquiry signal, preferably on the RFID frequency. This blocks the relatively weak signals of the RFID transponder.
If a simple memory chip is used to confirm the authenticity of the inquiry, then one can record the inquiry and at a later time reverse engineer the signal, allowing replication. For the reader it appears as if the correct RFID transponder were in the field.
Many RFID tags include a built-in 'kill' function. When provided with the correct pass-code, a tag can be either reprogrammed or told to 'self destruct', rendering it useless.
Newer emerging RFID tags may include some sort of built in Transfer of Control and Privacy enhancing Technologies to ensure the Owner can control and prevent linkage of RFID using silencing or non-linkable protocols.
[edit] RFID shielding
A number of products are available on the market in the US that will allow a concerned carrier of RFID-enabled cards or passports to shield their data. In fact the United States government requires their new employee ID cards to be delivered with an approved shielding sleeve or holder[citation needed]. There are contradicting opinions as to whether aluminum can prevent reading of RFID chips. Some people claim that aluminum shielding, essentially creating a Faraday cage, does work.[36] Others claim that simply wrapping an RFID card in aluminum foil, only makes transmission more difficult, yet is not completely effective at preventing it.[37]
Shielding is again a function of the frequency being used. Low-frequency tags, like those used in implantable devices for humans and pets, are relatively resistant to shielding, though thick metal foil will prevent most reads. High frequency tags (13.56 MHz — smart cards and access badges) are more sensitive to shielding and are difficult to read when within a few centimetres of a metal surface. UHF tags (pallets and cartons) are very difficult to read when placed within a few millimetres of a metal surface, although their read range is actually increased when they are spaced 2–4 cm from a metal due to positive reinforcement of the reflected wave and the incident wave at the tag. UHF tags can be successfully shielded from most reads by being placed within an anti-static plastic bag.
[edit] Cancer risk
On September 8, 2007, veterinary and toxicology studies spanning the last ten years surfaced indicating that RFID chips induced malignant tumors in laboratory animals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency that approved the use of the chips in the United States, refused to respond to questions from the media about their awareness of the studies. VeriChip Corp. maintains that the chips are completely safe and that they were unaware of the studies. The studies were somewhat limited in scope, lacking control groups that did not receive chips and failing to test large animals such as dogs, cats, or primates. As a result, most of the studies included cautionary language against making assumptions about the chips causing cancer in humans based on the study results.[38]
[edit] Controversies
Logo of the anti-RFID campaign by German privacy group FoeBuD
[edit] Privacy
How would you like it if, for instance, one day you realized your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts? — California State Senator Debra Bowen, at a 2003 hearing.[39]
The use of RFID technology has engendered considerable controversy and even product boycotts by consumer privacy advocates such as Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre of CASPIAN who refer to RFID tags as "spychips". The four main privacy concerns regarding RFID are:
The purchaser of an item will not necessarily be aware of the presence of the tag or be able to remove it
The tag can be read at a distance without the knowledge of the individual
If a tagged item is paid for by credit card or in conjunction with use of a loyalty card, then it would be possible to indirectly deduce the identity of the purchaser by reading the unique ID of that item (contained in the RFID tag).
The EPCglobal system of tags create globally unique serial numbers for all products.
Most concerns revolve around the fact that RFID tags affixed to products remain functional even after the products have been purchased and taken home and thus can be used for surveillance and other purposes unrelated to their supply chain inventory functions.[citation needed]
The concerns raised by the above may be addressed in part by use of the Clipped Tag. The Clipped Tag is an RFID tag designed to increase consumer privacy. The Clipped Tag has been suggested by IBM researchers Paul Moskowitz and Guenter Karjoth. After the point of sale, a consumer may tear off a portion of the tag. This allows the transformation of a long-range tag into a proximity tag that still may be read, but only at short range – less than a few inches or centimeters. The modification of the tag may be confirmed visually. The tag may still be used later for returns, recalls, or recycling.
However, read range is both a function of the reader and the tag itself. Improvements in technology may increase read ranges for tags. Having readers very close to the tags makes short range tags readable. Generally, the read range of a tag is limited to the distance from the reader over which the tag can draw enough energy from the reader field to power the tag. Tags may be read at longer ranges than they are designed for by increasing reader power. The limit on read distance then becomes the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal reflected from the tag back to the reader. Increased reader power may increase read ranges by a factor of three, but cannot turn a proximity tag into a long-range tag.
Another privacy issue is due to RFID's support for a singulation (anti-collision) protocol. This is the means by which a reader enumerates all the tags responding to it without them mutually interfering. The structure of some collision-resolution (Medium Access Control) protocols is such that all but the last bit of each tag's serial number can be deduced by passively eavesdropping on just the reader's part of the protocol. Because of this, whenever the relevant types of RFID tags are near to readers, the distance at which a tag's signal can be eavesdropped is irrelevant; what counts is the distance at which the much more powerful reader can be received. Just how far this can be depends on the type of the reader, but in the extreme case some readers have a maximum power output of 4 W, enabling signals to be received from tens of kilometres away.[citation needed] However, more recent UHF tags employing the EPCglobal Gen 2 (ISO 18000-6C) protocol, which is a slotted-Aloha scheme in which the reader never transmits the tag identifying information, are not subject to this particular attack.
Technical note: the anti-collision scheme of ISO 15693 will render this rather implausible. To eavesdrop on the reader part of the protocol – and gather the 63 least significant bits of a uid – would require the reader to send a mask value of 63 bits. This can only happen when the reader detects a collision up to the 63rd bit. In other words: One can eavesdrop on the transmitted mask-value of the reader, but for the reader to transmit a 63 bit mask-value requires two tags with identical least significant 63 bits. The probability of this happening must be near zero. I.e. the eavesdropper needs two virtually identical tags to be read at the same time by the reader in question. In any discussion of eavesdropping and skimming, it is important to make a distinction between inductively-coupled and radiatively-coupled tags. Protocols like ISO 15693 use 13.56 MHz radio frequencies and inductive coupling between the tag and reader. The signal power falls very rapidly to extremely low levels a few antenna diameters away from the reader when inductive coupling is used, so an attacker must be within a few meters to intercept the reader signal, and closer to read a tag. Protocols like 18000-6C, which use 900 MHz signals, usually use radiative coupling between tag and reader; a wave is launched, whose power falls roughly as the square of the distance. Tag signals can be intercepted from ten meters away under good conditions, and the reader signal can be detected from kilometers away if there are no obstructions.
The potential for privacy violations with RFID was demonstrated by its use in a pilot program by the Gillette Company, which conducted a "smart shelf" test at a Tesco in Cambridge, England. They automatically photographed shoppers taking RFID-tagged safety razors off the shelf, to see if the technology could be used to deter shoplifting. This trial resulted in consumer boycott against Gillette and Tesco. In another incident, uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, shelves in a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, were equipped with readers to track the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick containers stacked on them. Webcam images of the shelves were viewed 750 miles (1200 km) away by Procter & Gamble researchers in Cincinnati, Ohio, who could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and observe the shoppers in action. [citation needed]
Richard Stallman at WSIS 2005 presenting his RFID badge wrapped with tin foil as a way of protesting RFID privacy issues
In January 2004 privacy advocates from CASPIAN and the German privacy group FoeBuD were invited to the METRO Future Store in Germany, where an RFID pilot project was implemented. It was uncovered by accident that METRO "Payback" customer loyalty cards contained RFID tags with customer IDs, a fact that was disclosed neither to customers receiving the cards, nor to this group of privacy advocates. This happened despite assurances by METRO that no customer identification data was tracked and all RFID usage was clearly disclosed.[40]
The controversy was furthered by the accidental exposure of a proposed Auto-ID consortium public relations campaign that was designed to "neutralize opposition" and get consumers to "resign themselves to the inevitability of it" whilst merely pretending to address their concerns. During the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) between the 16th to 18th of November, 2005, founder of the free software movement, Richard Stallman, protested the use of RFID security cards. During the first meeting, it was agreed that future meetings would no longer use RFID cards, and upon finding out this assurance was broken, he covered his card in tin foil, and would only uncover it at the security stations. This protest caused the security personnel considerable concern, with some not allowing him to leave a conference room in which he had been the main speaker, and then the prevention of him entering another conference room, where he was due to speak.
RFID was one of the main topics of 2006 Chaos Communication Congress (organized by the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin and trigged a big press debate. Topics included: electronic passports, Mifare cryptography and the tickets for the FIFA World Cup 2006. Talks showed how the first real world mass application of RFID technology at the 2006 FIFA Soccer World Cup worked. Group monochrom staged a special 'Hack RFID' song.[41]
[edit] Human implantation
The Food and Drug Administration in the US has approved the use of RFID chips in humans.[42] Some business establishments have also started to chip customers, such as the Baja Beach nightclub in Barcelona. This has provoked concerns into privacy of individuals as they can potentially be tracked wherever they go by an identifier unique to them. There are some concerns this could lead to abuse by an authoritarian government or lead to removal of other freedoms.[43]
On July 22, 2006, Reuters reported that two hackers, Newitz and Westhues, at a conference in New York City showed that they could clone the RFID signal from a human implanted RFID chip, showing that the chip is not hack-proof as was previously believed.[44]
[edit] Religious opinion
Some critics, claiming to be Christian, believe that RFID tagging could represent the mark of the beast (666) mentioned specifically in the Book of Revelation (see Revelation 13:16). Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, authors of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, wrote a new book on the subject.[45] John Conner, leader of an organization called "The Resistance of Christ" also believes there is a strong connection. Related subjects include eschatology (last things) and dispensationalism.[46][47][48]
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