TECH WATCH
RFID - hot technology for 2007
Published: Mar 21, 2007
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It's no secret that the use of RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology is going to go through the roof. It's been around since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like every significant technological breakthrough, there was a gestation period — several years devoted to development, testing and marketing.
Even with its obligatory gestation period, by the early 1980s, it was clear that RFID was going to be a fixture in every industry — especially as a cutting-edge security tool. By 2010, RFID technology spending is projected to leap to $3 billion, from a measly $504 million two years ago. That's impressive, but you ain't seen nothing yet. By 2015, that number could quadruple.
The big message is that RFID technology means jobs — and plenty of them, especially for experienced project managers with serious technical backgrounds. These are the folks companies will be killing for. They'll have mile-long résumés with lots of high-level RFID experience. They'll not only understand it but be able to program systems, and most important, they'll be able to manage multimillion-dollar RFID implementation projects from start to finish.
Recent improvements have taken RFID technology way beyond manufacturing supply-chain processes and distribution into security, tracking, monitoring and access-control applications.
Initially, manufacturing and logistics experts were so fixated on extolling RFID as the replacement of barcodes that they failed to see it as breakthrough security technology with untapped potential. Now, if we don't get on the stick and put megadollars behind it, the bad guys around the world will be using RFID as a staple for both short- and long-range snooping.
If you're not sure how RFID works, here are a few basics.
RFID consists of two essential components. First, there is a "tag," which is both a microchip for storing information and an antenna; and second, there is a reader, called an "interrogator," which can be stationary or handheld.
For a basic system, the reader transmits a low-power radio signal through its antenna, which the tag picks up with its own antenna. The tag then uses the energy it gets from the radio signal to send the data to the reader, which is paired with other systems crucial to the processing.
The newer, more advanced and more powerful tags cost more because they use battery power. Today, RFID systems are taking advantage of different frequencies of varying power.
Two years ago, David Williams, chief executive officer of E911-LBS Consulting and an expert on RFID and wireless technologies, wrote about RFID's potential in Directions magazine. He said future applications may integrate RFID with other location-related capabilities to deliver "hybrid" functionality. For example, an RFID chip can be implanted in a livestock animal along with a GPS transponder so the animal can be tracked from its breeding ground to the slaughterhouse and processing. It even can be tracked to the supermarket.
As I said in an earlier column, RFID has the potential to create a 2007 version of "1984." Big Brother won't be watching you, but everyone else will. That said, consider that RFID technology also can quickly spot and isolate a mad-cow disease outbreak or be used to monitor an endangered species in the wild so it doesn't face certain death and extinction.
This same technology also can be used to track lost pets. Similarly, for humans, an attached RFID device plus a hidden GPS transponder (implanted in a watch or shoe) can be a proven safeguard against kidnapping and even terrorism. Top security people could be monitored around the clock, and so could their families.
Williams also said that location-enabled cell phones can be used to trace children who may be lost or in trouble or have been kidnapped. But if the phone is stolen, destroyed or lost, the device is worthless.
If you're a creative problem-solver with a pioneer instinct, you can put yourself on the map by playing a part in the next generation of location-tracking RFID technology. Not only will you be heralded as a technology pioneer, but on a larger and more important level, you might save lives.
