I am the CEO and co-founder of Voyantic, a company that specializes in RFID test and measurement solutions. Before starting Voyantic in 2004, I worked as a researcher at the Helsinki University of Technology focusing on passive RFID sensing for moisture in building structures.
I think this was my 11th time at the RFID Journal Live! show. For me the show is mostly about meeting a lot of customers and partners during a highly effective couple of days. And that’s true for this year’s show as well – the show was good for us. Unfortunately, though, the number of exhibitors seems to be going down, as is the number of people visiting the exhibition. It seems that many companies are focusing more on shows that target specific vertical markets. At the same time, as I already wrote after last year’s show, we are seeing less and less significant, new technical advancements at the show.
Every year I plan to attend more conference sessions, but then I always end up spending most of my time at the exhibition – where our customers are. So, I have to rely on what I heard from other conference visitors: There is nothing particularly new in the conference presentations either. We just have new retailers telling about implementations that are similar to the ones presented by someone else the previous year. And I get it: these presentations are not meant for me but for all the new potential users of RFID. Nevertheless, I think there is a valuable insight to be found:
RFID is business as usual!
Retailers or other companies implementing RFID don’t want to see new innovations presented every year. They want to see steady technology that just works – not promises of something that will be ready in two years, maybe. So nothing new is good!
Buzzword: Sustainability
Every year there are some new trends among the companies exhibiting and presenting at RFID Journal Live! Sustainability seems to be the latest buzzword, especially among tag manufacturers. It was present in tag manufacturers’ presentations, and words such as ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘sustainable’ were visible at their booths. It seems, though, that the companies mean many different things with the word: they may be using paper instead of PET as a substrate, or they may experiment with antenna manufacturing techniques that do not require etching. Or they just want to ride the latest wave and put ‘sustainability’ in their PowerPoints.
Localization Systems Winning Awards
RFID Journal Awards recognizes annually the best RFID implementations and new products. Being a geek, I am mostly interested on the new product side. This year’s best new product nominees leaned heavily towards the reader side, and especially real-time localization systems (RTLS). Through rough categorization, I would say half of them were non-reader related: a printer, a cable, a high-heat tag, and cross-compatibility for RFID, NFC and IoT. The other half I consider to be more or less reader-related: a wearable reader, a handheld reader, an overhead reader system, and two RTLS systems. This year’s winner was RF Controls’ CS-445B passive RTLS antenna.
But that was not the only award-winning localization system. As always, I attended the co-located IEEE RFID conference as well. They also give out an award to the best paper. This year, the award went to a paper presented by Cheng Qi from Georgia Institute of Technology, titled: “Breaking the Range Localization Limit of RFIDs: Phase-based Positioning with Tunnelling Tags”. Seems like I should be paying closer attention to what is going on on the localization side.
I am the CEO and co-founder of Voyantic, a company that specializes in RFID test and measurement solutions. Before starting Voyantic in 2004, I worked as a researcher at the Helsinki University of Technology focusing on passive RFID sensing for moisture in building structures.
The RAIN RFID market has been growing nicely throughout the latest years. The latest news is that last year a total of 15.4 billion RAIN ICs were sold – and we are nicely on track for more than 20 billion in 2020. At the same time, the market penetration is still very low. According to IdTechEx, in the most successful market segment, retail, we are at around 10% of the total accessible market, and with other segments, such as Industry 4.0, aviation, and food it is even lower. So, there is plenty of room to grow.
We can already see 100 billion tags a year in the horizon. I don’t know if it will be in 8 or 10 years, but we are getting there. Then maybe another ten more years, and we will be at 1 trillion. However, several things in our thinking will need to change for that to happen.
I can see three obstacles that we need to overcome.
We need to think about what happens when applications overlap. We are already starting to reach the situation where tags from one application are entering the read zones of other applications, and it is causing problems.
We need to prepare for people intentionally messing with the applications. This is something that has not been a big problem for now, but it will increase as RAIN RFID spreads wider.
We need to stop thinking in terms of tags and start thinking about RFID enabled items. There will not always be a separate tag that is attached to a product.
Since the industry has accepted that source tagging is the way to go, there needs to be a way for the party that owns the RAIN system to specify to the party that tags the product, how to tag.
For that I propose the Tagging Specification.
The specification is a common language between the parties, and it could also work as a checklist to make sure that all aspects have been considered. But what should be in a tagging specification? This is my proposal:
Geographic Region
In which geographic regions does the tagged item need to be identifiable? This could be for example ETSI, FCC, or global; and this choice will affect the tuning of the tag. With the upcoming upper ETSI band we have more and more countries working around 915 MHz.
Tag Numbering Scheme
How do we encode the tags? This is one of the areas where we need to look into the future. When there are more and more tags out there, the applications start to overlap.
For example, in a running race we have tags in the bibs of the runners provided by the timing system provider. But we also have tags integrated in some of the garments or accessories of the runners, courtesy of the sports retailer. When the runners pass the RFID readers, there is a limited amount of time to detect each runner – or even get several readings for reliable timing – if there are tags around that don’t belong to that application. Juho’s blog post about tag flooding talks more about this. The radio protocol provides ways to ignore the irrelevant tags, but it takes more time, and it requires that all parties think about the numbering.
Security
One action that is closely related to encoding the tag data, is securing it. At the moment, RAIN RFID is not everywhere, and most RAIN RFID readers are professional equipment. But, we are already close to the time when different electronics enthusiasts get their hands on RAIN reader modules. It may take some more time, but at some point we will have more RAIN readers integrated in mobile phones. And when there is an opportunity, there will be sabotage and people trying to get gains for themselves by affecting the RAIN RFID systems.
Of course, different applications have different security needs. There are still surprisingly many applications out there, where there is zero security – the EPC is encoded and that’s it. Most applications lock the EPC memory and passwords. That may work for a while, but in the long run, you need a way to manage passwords, and Nedap’s Danny Haak’s proposal for managing RAIN passwords could be a solution. Finally, in some application there might be a need for authentication functionalities.
Tagging Method
There is a fundamental shift in the industry, where more and more tags are integrated either into the packaging or into the products themselves, be it a running backpack or a tire. Thus the specification is no longer about the tag itself but about the RAIN-enabled product – or maybe a smart product. So, another line in the tagging specification would be tagging method. Is the tag a sticker applied to the product? Is it a hang tag? Is the tag applied to the package? Or is it integrated somewhere inside the product? Perhaps it is up to the supplier to decide? This all depends on whether there is a use for the tag after the point of sale; for example for product returns, warranty etc.
Tag Size
Tag size is often the first specification that comes up. Usually we want the tag to be as small as possible. But there is a compromise between the bandwidth of the tag which affects the geographic range; its performance – how far it can be read from; and size. You can choose any two, but the third one will be a compromise.
Tagged Item Performance
Radio performance matters as well. But it is not the performance of the tag, it is the performance of the entire RAIN-enabled product. And that’s where inlay lists widely used in retail will be insufficient. Still several retailers maintain lists of inlays that are allowed for products sold in their stores. And Auburn University is certifying tags for different product categories. That is an ok starting point, if you want to do hang tagging. But not everyone does.
Determining radio performance for RAIN-enabled products is somewhat more difficult than for just inlays or tags; and the testing methodology should be thought out for each industry. The TIPP methodology was developed for retail several years ago, and now there is an ISO standard family coming out for RFID in tires. The application determines whether in the typical reading scenario there are multiple tags close to each other and from which directions the products need to be identifiable. The reader type used in the application, on the other hand, may determine the requirements for sensitivity and backscatter strength.
It is extremely important that the tagging specification includes a clear verifiable performance requirement – and that it is vendor agnostic. That is the only way that the industry can improve and innovate.
Example of a tagging specification; what elements a specification should contain.
The tagging specification is my proposal for overcoming the obstacles we are facing – and this is my idea about what should be in the specification. Let us hear what do you think should be there!
I enjoy seeing both the Voyantic employees and our customers thrive. The grand majority of my time goes into projects and initiatives that grow the RAIN RFID market in the long term. My remote office is on a boat on the archipelago of Finland.
How are…. Let me jump right to the point: Christmas music is like microplastics – everywhere, irritating and harmful to living organisms. In right amounts I enjoy Christmas music during December, but not in the autumn. Strangely malls, various shops and service bureaus play it, get this, starting from October. I give them business, and they want… to repel me?
Well they managed just that. Thank you Santa, for giving me all the convenient webshops, postal and grocery delivery services that streamline my everyday life. The music nuisance is pretty much gone now. Outstanding – but do you already have a plan laid out for microplastics?
2018 Was Awesome
End of 2017 I was nervous about the talent pool in our business. Turns out I just wasn’t completely in the loop. To name a few examples, Pavel had rotated himself to Impinj and Goetz and Jason were re-discovered at StoraEnso. Markus the mountain runner stepped over to the end user side in mid-2018. Harri retired, which is a loss but superb news for his granddaughter. Santa, any way to circulate Sipi back to RAIN business?
Both the RAIN name and RAIN market enjoyed a well deserved boost. The RAIN Alliance grew to over 160 members and according to Hervé D’Halluins’ presentation in Xiamen, Decathlon has achieved 100% RAIN tagging coverage on it’s merchandise!
Best of all there seems to be a consensus among manufacturers, brands and retailers that source tagging is the way to go – a message also amplified by the Project Zipper results. I couldn’t have asked for more, and am grateful to you, dear Santa.
Picture from RAIN Alliance meeting in Shenzen, China. October 2017 [Shutterstock image]
2019 to Embrace Mistakes
Santa, as we both know from the frosty Finnish lakeside, without mistakes there is very little learning.
Feeling experimental?
Take the Brexit as an example. Let it be hard or soft, but it’s going to hurt the British people like an ice hockey puck hitting the chin, especially those on the low-income end. As the tide across the English Channel is right, let’s all admit that Brexit was just an epic mistake and welcome the Great Britain warmly back to the union. A few hugs and pints will brush off the ashes, and no-one will go down that path ever again.
I don’t dare to wish anything specific regarding Brexit as such, instead I hope we all would learn to embrace mistakes and failures – also the gigantic ones.
2019 to Schedule the Upper ETSI Frequency Band
Santa, thanks for delivering the Comission Decision last October outside of my wishlist! The global harmonized RAIN Frequency band is already in the books, but not in practice. Understanding the complexities involved, it would be valuable to acquire an adoption plan across the European member states. We especially need the date when frequencies between 916-919 MHz become available for RAIN deployments in Germany.
2019 Let There Be Flooding
As annual tag delivery volumes go north of 20 Billion, we cannot expect applications to remain isolated from each other, as they nowadays still largely are. RAIN tag flooding basically occurs when RAIN applications start to overlap.
Take a sports event for example: the participants are wearing clothes and shoes purchased from Decathlon, making those items RAIN enabled. Together with their RAIN enabled race bib they next run over the race timing system antenna mat. That introduces serious tag flooding to the race timing system. Would this overlapping of applications be a problem? Assuming the correct numbering [ISO/IEC 20248] is used on all the tags AND the readers are properly configured, there should be no problem.
Anyone ordered RAIN RFID tag flooding? Picture Copyright Sami Vaskola.
Flooding is good and it’s inevitable, because the market is growing. Dear Santa, we really need to start educating the RAIN solution providers to prepare for flooding. Luckily, Bertus Pretorius already started.
Getting Warmer
The future outlook for us winter dudes is not so bright. Santa, get wheels for your sleigh. No kidding matter. See you in a few days, ok? Travel safe.
I enjoy seeing both the Voyantic employees and our customers thrive. The grand majority of my time goes into projects and initiatives that grow the RAIN RFID market in the long term. My remote office is on a boat on the archipelago of Finland.
Content
Im Januar 2016 hatte ich einen Blog darüber geschrieben, wie RAIN RFID-Unternehmen ihre Interessen vor allem in Europa vertreten sollten. Die Regulierung der Frequenzzuteilung schreitet langsam voran und jetzt, zweieinhalb Jahre später, ist es mir eine große Freude festzustellen, dass die bisherigen Ergebnisse beeindruckend sind. Lassen Sie uns einen Blick darauf werfen, wie die Nutzung des höheren ETSI-Frequenzbandes möglicherweise die Art und Weise der Optimierung des Tagging (Markierung von Objekten mittels RFID RAIN UHF Transpondern) verändert. Sicherlich werden sich diese Änderungen nicht unmittelbar bemerkbar machen. Mein Beitrag hebt zwei Faktoren hervor die derzeit einen unmittelbaren Vorteil dieser neuen Verordnung für den Anwender behindern.
Wie Tags traditionell abgestimmt werden
Im Jahr 2005 wurde das RAIN-Tagging in Europa weitgehend für das Frequenzband 866-868 MHz weitgehend optimiert. Eine solche Kennzeichnung bot in den USA nur eine sehr begrenzte oder nicht vorhandene Lesbarkeit, dies führte schnell zur Entstehung globaler Tag-Designs.
Während die weltweite (globale) Lesbarkeit im Prinzip keine so große technische Herausforderung darstellt, hat dies die Entwickler von Transponder (Tag) Antennen gezwungen, Einbußen bei der Sensitivität der Transponder in Kauf zu nehmen. Bei der Entwicklung von RFID Transpondern für die Montage auf Metall verlangt die globale Lesbarkeit in den Abmessungen deutlich größere Transpondern im Vergleich zu den winzigen Designs für einen stark eingeschränkten Frequenzbereich (ETSI 868 MHz oder FCC 915 MHz). Dies führt nicht nur zu weiteren technischen Herausforderungen sondern stellt auch einen zusätzlichen Preisfaktor dar.
Die Europäische Kommission genehmigt 4W für RFID-Lesegeräte bei 916-919 MHz
Schließlich heißt es im lang erwarteten Durchführungsbeschluss [EU] 2018/1538 der Europäischen Kommission vom 11. Oktober 2018, dass die Mitgliedstaaten bis zum 1. Februar 2019 drei Kanäle innerhalb des Frequenzbandes 916,1 -918,9 MHz für RFID-Lesegeräte öffnen sollten. Damit wird die Norm ETSI EN 302 208 V3.1.0 ergänzt, die ebenfalls ein RFID-Band zwischen 915 und 921 MHz definiert, allerdings mit eingeschränktem Umsetzungsstatus innerhalb der EU und der CEPT-Länder.
Während all dies nach Jahren der technischen Argumentation und Lobbyarbeit nach einem ausgezeichnetem Ergebnis klingt, werden die Hersteller von Lesegeräten vor neue technische Herausforderungen gestellt. Jedoch wie wird sich diese Entscheidung langfristig auf die RFID-Transponder auswirken?
Der optimale Bereich für Tagging auf globaler Ebene
Auch in Europa bietet sich damit die Möglichkeit, das Transponder-Design speziell für den oberen Frequenzbereich zu optimieren. In Anwendungen, in denen die RFID RAIN Lesegeräte (Reader) viel Zeit haben eine Bestandsaufnahme (Inventory) aller Transponder im Lesefeld durchzuführen und durch alle ETSI-Frequenzen zu scannen, sollte eine solcherart eingeschränkte Reaktion von Transpondern, die nur bei den oberen ETSI-Frequenzen wirklich empfindlich sind, kein Problem darstellen. Dies setzt natürlich voraus, dass die ETSI-Lesegeräte in Zukunft sowohl das traditionelle Frequenzband 866-868 MHz als auch das neue obere 916-919 MHz Frequenzband nutzen werden.
Unbekannter Faktor Nr.1: Umsetzungszeitplan in Mitteleuropa
Derzeit nutzt die GSM-R(ailway) das 918-921 MHz Frequenzband in Deutschland, Österreich und Frankreich auf der Grundlage nationalen Rechts gemäß den Frequenz Verordnungen der Internationalen Fernmeldeunion (International Telecommunication Union, kurz: ITU). Leider überlappt sich dieses Frequenzband und das für Europa neue obere ETSI RFID-Band. Die militärische Nutzung desselben Frequenzbereiches in Deutschland ist ein weiteres Fragezeichen und möglicherweise auch ein Hindernis. Die Europäische Kommission hat dieses Problem erkannt und gibt den Mitgliedstaaten die Möglichkeit, die Nutzung von GSM-R und RFID auf der Grundlage von Geographie, spezifischer Installation, Betriebsanforderungen oder ähnlichem zu koordinieren.
Was bedeutet dies nun in der Praxis? Schwer zu sagen. In Deutschland, Österreich oder Frankreich sind noch keine RFID-Umsetzungsrichtlinien veröffentlicht, also ist es von Vorteil die GS1-Übersicht der Regularien für Updates im Auge zu behalten. Die gute Nachricht ist, dass sich das „Future Railway Mobile Communication System“ (FRMCS) nicht mehr mit RFID überschneiden sollte. Die schlechte Nachricht ist, dass noch nicht bekannt ist, wann die Bahnen ein solches System entwickeln oder einsetzen. Das FRMCS-Projekt ist erst seit 2012 im Gange…. Ich persönlich erwarte, dass der Umsetzungsplan in Mitteleuropa bis zur zweiten Jahreshälfte 2019 weiter an Klarheit gewinnt.
Unbekannter Faktor Nr.2: Auswirkung der Leserempfindlichkeit
Der Lesebereich ist oft mehr eine Abschätzung als eine Tatsache, aber die Sensitivität des Lesegeräts ist in der Tat bereits in vielen Anwendungen ein limitierender Faktor. Ein gutes Beispiel ist die Zeitmessung von Marathonläufen. Herr Nikias Klohr von der race result AG hat dieses Thema in seinen exzellenten Präsentationen bei der Konferenz RFID Tomorrow und dem RAIN Face-to-Face-Meeting in Wien 2018 wiederholt angesprochen.
Wir alle haben in den letzten 15 Jahren gesehen, wie sich die erhöhte IC-Empfindlichkeit der Tags zur Entwicklung von Transpondern mit geringeren Abmessungen und nicht zu extrem langen >20 Meter-Lesereichweiten geführt hat. Wenn sich meine Vorhersage zur Optimierung des Tag-Designs für das 902-928 MHz-Band als richtig erweisen sollte, dann werden sich die Abmessungen und Kosten der Transponder weiter verringern.
Bis zum Jahr 2021 könnte die Stärke des rückgestrahlten Signals (Backscatter) von Miniatur-RAIN-Transpondern auf unter -90 dBm bis hinunter zu -100 dBm fallen. Die aktuelle Leserinfrastruktur wird solche geringen Transponder-Signale nicht so einfach interpretieren können. Daher müssen möglicherweise immer noch Transponder in den Abmessungen größer als notwendig verbunden mit höheren Kosten verwendet werden. Aus diesem Grund wird langfristig eine neue Gattung von Lesegeräten und eine Infrastruktur mit verbesserten Lesefähigkeiten benötigt, um die Gesamtkosten der RAIN RFID-Technologie weiter zu senken.
Fazit: Die Arbeit geht weiter
Wie schätzen Sie die Bedeutung der höheren ETSI-Frequenz ein? Haben Sie Einblicke in die regionalen Regulierungsdebatten in Deutschland oder Frankreich? Ich würde mich über einen Austausch zum Thema sehr freuen! Kontaktieren Sie uns dazu gerne.
I enjoy seeing both the Voyantic employees and our customers thrive. The grand majority of my time goes into projects and initiatives that grow the RAIN RFID market in the long term. My remote office is on a boat on the archipelago of Finland.
In January 2016 I wrote a blog about how RAIN RFID companies should defend their interests especially in Europe. Frequency regulation moves forward slowly, and now 2,5 years later it gives me great pleasure to conclude that the results so far are rather impressive. Let’s have a look at how the upper ETSI band potentially changes the way tagging is optimized. Surely the change is not immediate, and my story further highlights two factors that currently prevent end users from benefiting from this new regulation.
How Tags Are Traditionally Tuned
In 2005 RAIN tagging in Europe was largely optimized for the 866-868 MHz frequency band. Such tagging provided only very limited or non-existent readability in US, which quickly lead to emergence of global tag designs.
While global readability has not been a major technical challenge, it has forced antenna designers to sacrifice some of tag’s sensitivity. On the on-metal tag side global readability leads to significantly larger sized tags compared with the tiny one-band designs, which is both an inconvenience and a price factor.
The European Commission Permits 4W for RFID Readers at 916-919 MHz
Finally, the long-awaited COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION [EU] 2018/1538 dated 11th October 2018 says that member states should open three channels within the 916,1 -918,9 MHz frequency band for RFID readers by 1st February 2019. This comes on top of the ETSI EN 302 208 V3.1.0 standard which also defines a RFID band between 915 and 921 MHz, although with limited implementation status within the EU and CEPT countries.
While all this sounds like a fantastic outcome after years of technical argumentation and lobbying, a new variety of technical challenges are introduced for reader manufacturers. However, what will be the long term impact of this decision on the RFID tagging side?
Also in Europe this introduces a possibility to optimize tag designs specifically for the upper frequency range. In applications where readers have plenty of time to conduct inventory and scan through all the ETSI frequencies, such limited response from tags sensitive only at the upper ETSI frequencies should not be a problem. Naturally this assumes that in the future the ETSI readers will utilize both the traditional 866-868 MHz and the new upper 916-919 MHz frequency band.
Unknown Factor #1: Implementation Schedule in Middle-Europe
Currently the GSM-R(ailway) is using the 918-921 MHz band in Germany, Austria and France based on National Law in accordance with the ITU Radio Regulations. Unfortunately this band overlaps with the upper ETSI RFID band. The military usage of the same band in Germany is another question mark, and even a roadblock. The Commission recognizes the situation, and gives member states the possibility to coordinate the use of GSM-R and RFID based on geography, specific installation, operating requirements or something else.
What does this mean in practice? I actually do not know. No RFID implementation guidelines are yet published in Germany, Austria or France, but it’s good to keep an eye on the: GS1 regulatory overview for updates. Good news is that the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) should not overlap with RFID anymore. Bad news is that it’s now known when the railways will have such system designed or deployed – the FRMCS project has only been active since 2012… I personally anticipate that implementation schedule in Middle-Europe gains further clarity by second half of 2019.
Unknown Factor #2: Impact of Reader Sensitivity
The read range is often more an opinion than a fact, but the sensitivity of the reader is indeed already a limiting factor in many applications. An example is marathon race timing, and Mr. Nikias Klohr of race result AG has repeatedly raised this issue in his excellent presentations at the RFID Tomorrow and RAIN face-to-face meeting in Vienna 2018.
We all have seen over the past 15 years how the increased tag IC sensitivity has translated into smaller footprint tags rather than to ultra long >20 meter read ranges. If my prediction of tag design optimization for the 902-928 MHz band is correct, then the tag footprint will further shrink with the benefit of lower tagging costs.
By year 2021 backscatter signal strengths from miniature RAIN tags may fall below -90 dBm, even down to -100 dBm. The current reader infrastructure simply won’t be able to interpret such small tag responses, therefore larger-than-necessary tags may still need to be used at a higher expense. Therefore a new breed of readers and infrastructure with enhanced reading capabilities will be needed to continue drive down the overall cost of RAIN RFID technology.
Work Continues
What is your view on the significance of the upper ETSI band? Do you have insights into the local regulatory debates in Germany or France? Please contact us and let’s talk!
I joined Voyantic as a partner in 2005 to design Voyantic's first commercial product, and I've had a front-row seat since then to see how the RAIN technology has evolved and matured while bringing my own contribution to it. As a background, I have a MSc level in electronics after which I made my PhD in the field of photonics. UHF RFID slots nicely between these two worlds and they offer a lot of perspective into my work. Currently, as the CTO of RFID technology, I work with new measurement methods, RF design, proofs of concept, standards, protocols, industry collaboration and IPR.
The October 11th 2018 was a day of small celebration in the RFID industry. Celebration, because on that date, the European Commission published their positive implementing decision about the 915-921 MHz frequency band in Europe. Small, because it came out as somewhat of a compromise in the end allowing less than anticipated new channels, and in coexistence with other IoT and short range devices. This was referred to as the squeeze plan. The given implementation deadline is the 1st of February, 2019, so in a few months, country by country, the new band will become a reality.
Global Tags
Now that there is a more or less global frequency band in the world allocated for RAIN RFID, it is possible to design tags that can be operated around the world. For basic labels and average sized hard and on-metal tags this has not been an issue in the past either. It isn’t too hard at all to stretch the tag’s performance band to cover both the 865-867 MHz and 902-928 MHz bands in one go with giving practically no performance away in the process.
Smaller tags tend to be specific for a frequency band, whereas larger labels are easily truly global.
Miniaturization of tags, like the ones needed to track small tools and surgical equipment, as an example, has come with a cost. It’s near impossible to make a tag which is simultaneously: (1) small, (2) wideband and (3) has a good performance. Pick any two qualities and say farewell to the third. With the miniaturized RAIN tags, the lost quality has predominantly been the wide bandwidth. This has led to separate tag versions for the ETSI 866 MHz region and for the 902-928 MHz FCC band. The very smallest tags have even had trouble covering the whole FCC band. Luckily, there is the obligatory frequency hopping to cover this deficit. Now, making a global miniaturized tag is easy, just aim at the 917 MHz mark and be done.
A New Breed of Readers
In all likelihood, we are going to witness the emerging of a new breed of RAIN readers as well. A truly global reader would be nice, and will surely arrive one day. Long before that, we need a new spec ETSI reader, one that will operate both on the European lower and upper band. The utilization of the two bands will help better cover all tags, especially all those miniaturized tags, tags with close-coupling issues and large challenging populations. The utilization of both the bands interleaved might also give rise to features, like more accurate tag ranging and positioning.
From a hardware point of view, there lies a small re-design challenge. Most of the smaller inbuilt circular antennas in the hand-held readers are certainly unique to ETSI or FCC currently and need some tweaking to cover both bands with a good performance. Other hardware like directional couplers, SAW filters, and power amplifier matching might also not be directly functional for both bands. While these are fairly simple RF engineering tasks to put right, it means that a big portion of the existing readers probably are not updateable to the new European RF landscape with a simple firmware update.
Different Flavors of the Upper Band
When we look closer into the requirements at different regions that use the upper band, we start to notice a lot more differences to which the readers need to adapt. The first thing that will catch attention is the sheer difference in the number of channels available in the bands such as FCC and Brazil as an example. After that one would hope that the three allocated ETSI upper band channels would be ones picked from the FCC channel, but actually none of them coincide. Same goes for Chinese, Japanese, Russian and other channels, they just are not the same. Also, the center frequencies often do not give much of a room for flexibility. For instance, ETSI specifies a channel center frequency maximum deviation of 10ppm, which equates to +/- 9.2kHz. So, for example, there is no compromise available to be at for the nearly coinciding channels of 916.3 MHz (ETSI) and 916.25 MHz (FCC) simultaneously.
To add to the complexity, different regions have varying regulations of:
channel hopping
dwell time
Listen before Talk (LBT)
sensitivity limit
modulation speeds and formats (because of spectral mask).
At the moment all of this is not a huge technical hurdle to accomplish. But the day will come when readers start to cross borders installed in cars, trains and even operating in mobile phones, and then it will be a major inconvenience to track location and change settings at every border.
Channel center frequencies in various regions. Most use their own list of frequencies which just do not coincide.
Summary
The coming changes in the Europe and the already existing different RAIN RFID bands in the world have long affected the tag design. The new ETSI upper band is a move to the right direction to make RFID systems more global. This will give the reader manufacturers a lot of thinking and rework for the months to come – the outcome of which will be interesting to see. The two different European bands will start to co-exist and readers have one more set of channels and regulations to adapt to.
Luckily when it comes to the minor channel frequency differences in the upper band, at least the tags don’t mind.
R&D Engineer at Voyantic since 2017. I write RFID software and RFID software accessories. Occasional movie enthusiast.
Content
Movies have an escapist quality that allows us to explore places, lives and times that are not our own. Technology is an integral part of film making, from capturing footage to creating computer generated vistas. However, on many occasions, the non-integral technological aspects are often overlooked, simplified or even deliberately misrepresented.
People in the entertainment film industry embrace new technologies and push them forward to achieve new ways of creating effects and ways to think about technology. Unfortunately, in many instances, the devil is in the details which the directors conveniently omit or forget. On the other hand, their objective is not to make a documentary after all and offending a minor (albeit informed!) crowd is a calculated risk.
To this crowd, and the general public, the latest Mission Impossible movie offered a glimpse into RFID.
The Spy Who Loved RFID
Dundun dundun dun du… we are all familiar with the classic spy thriller movie series starring Tom Cruise. The most recent installment brings Cruise in his recurring role as the somewhat aged Ethan Hunt to face off against a nemesis from a previous film. It is also the only film that I could find that names RFID and uses it – but more on that later.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) is a movie that prides on its attention to detail. To name a single example, the movie’s skydiving scene did not only require 106 takes, but also the development of entirely new equipment. This article explains more about this and more technical challenges solved in the movie. In the light of the significant efforts to exude realism in the film, the way that RFID is handled leaves me confused.
In the 2018 film a RFID tagged bracelet is used to identify the persons allowed to the VIP section of a party. Hunt is planning to track a man by locating his bracelet. The handheld tracking device UI shows a pulsating blue dot, intermittently creating wave fronts. The tag’s response is visualized as a pulsating red dot.
Author’s rendition of the used tracking device
Hunt manages to determine the suspect is in the men’s room. As the quarry draws near, Hunt walks around the room to see if the return on the tracker changes to indicate the person is wearing the bracelet he is looking for. Later, with the bracelet removed from its owner, Hunt enters the VIP area. The device scanning the bracelet emits a red light and Hunt is cleared to proceed.
To break this down, it seems that the bracelet contains two very differently behaving tags. One can be tracked tens of meters away, even with liquid (people) and walls attenuating the signal. The other must be close to a reader and within line of sight so it can be verified.
For the long distance tracking to work, the following requirements have to be met:
The target’s tag must be differentiable from all the others An individual tag can be differentiated from any other tag by using the select command. To do this, Hunt and co. must have knowledge of the memory contents (EPC and or TID) of the tag embedded in the bracelet. The film states that they were able to retrieve the tag’s TID.
The tracking device must transmit sufficient power for the tag to power itself The tag can reply only if the interrogator supplies sufficient power. The required power is exponentially proportional to the distance between the tag and interrogator in free space. The range of a handheld RFID reader is typically 2W e.r.p, most likely lower for non-dedicated readers such as depicted in the film. Read more about the relationship of RFID and read range.
The tag’s reply must be strong enough for the tracker to decode The reply from the tag is subject to the same relationship of power and distance as the signal sent from the interrogator. The receiver must be sensitive enough to be able to sift the tag reply from other signals.
The tracking device must be able to tell the orientation of the reply relative to itself Whether the orientation of a tag can be measured, depends on the antenna design. After receiving a reply, its strength could be used as a reference. The signal loss in free space depends on the distance and frequency, i.e. with a known frequency the distance may be computed. Panning the tracker would make the signal strength change depending on the orientation coupling. The strongest response would indicate the direction of the tag.
Out of these four requirements, 1 is correct and 4 is plausible, though Hunt is not shown to move the interrogator in the described manner. Unfortunately, 2 and 3 are science fiction. It comes down to the power requirements of the transmitter and the sensitivity of its receiver. While it is implied in the film that Hunt is constantly getting closer and he just misses visual confirmation as the target enters the men’s room, the tracker would not be able to generate sufficient power to get a reply from the tag in the crowd of people.
The second observed tag behavior requirements are less exacting. A HF tag could exhibit these characteristics. A HF tag would also be more suitable because it is far more likely to read only the intended tag due to the read range discrepancy to UHF. This issue could be circumvented by providing another form of identification alongside the bracelet.
…Should you choose to accept the mission
For the purposes of this blog, I tried finding other examples of RFID in films. Besides MI: Fallout, the only other non-disputable RFID use I could find is the implantation of a transponder into James Bond in Casino Royale (2006). Explicit references to RFID are rather sparse on the silver screen. Devices operated in the AM/FM frequency range are present in movies depicting the near-future dystopian landscapes. A couple of examples include exploding collars in The Running Man (1987) and an implanted locator devices in Demolition Man (1993).
Trigger discipline is not limited to firearm handling
More ambiguous cases which could utilize RFID include:
A chip containing compromising information which is implanted for safekeeping (Safehouse 2011)
Back to Mission Impossible: the objective of Mission: Impossible – Fallout is not to make a documentary but an entertaining action movie. It achieves partial success in representing RFID technologies accurately, possibly indicating that directors are slowly becoming more familiar with the technology as its use becomes more widespread in everyday life.
Emerging, life changing technologies have worried and titillated the public’s mind for different reasons over the years, e.g. the war of the currents. I believe RFID is slowly entering a similar state of mind. An informed public will not be concerned that Big Brother is tracking them via RFID but instead should be aware of the very real risk of contactless payment hijacking.
RFID tags are becoming ever more prevalent, not only in fiction movies, but also in consumer goods and we – as an industry – get to decide the story we want to tell about the technology. Let us make sure we get our facts straight!
I enjoy seeing both the Voyantic employees and our customers thrive. The grand majority of my time goes into projects and initiatives that grow the RAIN RFID market in the long term. My remote office is on a boat on the archipelago of Finland.
Roughly 1,000 attendees headed to Phoenix, Arizona this year for the GS1 Connect conference. The JW Marriot Desert Ridge provided a convenient and relaxed environment where retailers, suppliers and solution providers mingled for three days. I attended a number of sessions on the conference program and here are my highlights from select speakers.
GS1 USA: RFID Is Not a Retailer Story, but More a Supply Chain Story
The theme of the whole Connect 2018 “Accelerate” refers to the universal demand to react on customer demands faster and faster. As Dr. Brian Gibson of the Auburn University put it in his presentation: the traditional “fast or free” is today understood by consumers as “fast and free”. This obviously inflicts extreme performance, efficiency and accuracy requirements on the supply chains.
As I look at this from the RFID perspective, GS1 is doing a good job in driving the RFID adoption. At the AGM Initiative Open Meeting Mr. Patrick Javick explained that technology adoption is currently facilitated in a peer-to-peer format to openly address the issues between the trading partners – underlining the fact that the benefits of RFID are essentially spread throughout the supply chain.
This also raises the question of data ownership and sharing. In his key note Mr. Bob Carpenter, the President and CEO of GS1 USA, explained how everything will be connected, and how for businesses protecting the product identity is equally important as protecting our personal identity.
Mr. Bob Carpenter envisioned also that GDPR will come to the USA soon
Herman Kay: RFID Makes Us a Better Supplier
Mr. Richard Haig of Herman Kay Company, Mr. Bill Connell of Macy’s and Mr. Coby Sparks of J. Reneé Company joined forces to talk about the 10 ways to reduce friction in the supply chain.
From the Supplier point of view the RFID enabled improvements in Shipping Accuracy are substantial. Mr. Haig summarized that the utilization of RFID in outbound shipment validation makes Herman Kay a better supplier for their customers. The way I’m hearing this is that the better Supplier enjoys more business – and less chargebacks.
Macy’s Is Leveraging Their Superior RFID Tagging Coverage
Macy’s has been a beacon-like forerunner in building and eventually enjoying the benefits of shop floor inventory accuracy based on RFID. They have 100% RFID coverage of merchandise from their private brands, as well as 73% of vendor brands. According to Mr. Connell Macy’s is already gearing towards to enhance Omni-Channel Fulfillment even more, and there will be enhanced personalized experience to delight the consumers in the future.
In a separate session Mrs. Pam Sweeney explained how Asset Protection is a domain that the RFID-based data is currently dramatically reshaping. There is a vast pool of added value leverage in core business processes that Macy’s is additionally looking to address, such as financial inventory.
Dillard’s Found DC Inbound Process Gaining Efficiencies
According to Mr. Chuck Lasley, the Director of Application Development, Dillard’s is seeing quantified benefits by utilizing a tunnel reader in one of their distribution centers. The tunnel verifies inbound shipment content against Advance Shipment Notice (ASN). Only packages that don’t show the expected content are routed to manual audit.
Mrs. Sweeney, Mr. Lasley and Mr. Javick around the next-level retail RFID use cases
The RFID based inbound process is shown to be 3-4 times faster than the old manual process! Impressed of this pilot result and generally motivated by the experiences of other retailers, Dillard’s currently says they’re going to be mandating RFID tagging on first product categories within the next 18 months.
Project Zipper Quantifies Immediate Business Value for Suppliers Especially
The Auburn University RFID Lab is collaborating with selected retailers and suppliers in the Project Zipper. As Mr. Justin Patton, the ARC Lab Director, explained, the project participants share their UPC barcode and EPC RFID data on shipments across the supply chain. The data streams are then analysed to find and understand discrepancies.
The Project Zipper 1st phase report will be published soon, but the early results already show that there is a lot in the supply chains that will change as trading partners shift focus from SKU quantities to item level tracking. As the project findings are confirmed and data sharing across supply chains improved accordingly, one frequent discussion topic that many anticipate to fundamentally change tones is chargebacks.
NXP Perspective: RFID Will Be an Integral Part of the Product
Mr. Nigel Stott spoke about NXP’s consumer driven approach on RFID, where RFID-enabled items bring convenience to shopping. Mobile checkouts at the shelf removes the need to line up for the checkout counters: Grab – Tap – Go! Sounds great, and is so for the retailer too, because in NXP’s view the in-store mobile payment ensures 100% engagement in loyalty programs.
Mr. Stott also mentioned sustainability. As the tag will be an integral part of the retail item, the tag life time will be the same as the product life time. This opens up a whole new range of possibilities for more intelligent home appliances, such as washing machines. I’m thinking further to producer liability, recycling and circular economy, which is a rising priority on the European side of the Atlantic.
Words of Wisdom
As a Finn I was suprised and delighted during the day 3 as Dr. Tricia Wang quoted the former EU Commissioner Erkki Liikanen while talking about “Winning the Data Revolution”.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this events or its topics, do let us know!
I am the CEO and co-founder of Voyantic, a company that specializes in RFID test and measurement solutions. Before starting Voyantic in 2004, I worked as a researcher at the Helsinki University of Technology focusing on passive RFID sensing for moisture in building structures.
Content
I have been going to the biggest RFID shows for 12 years now. In 2007, it was RFID World in Grapevine, TX. And for the last ten years, it has been RFID Journal Live!. Once again, I flew to Orlando to find out what is new and exciting in RFID. And I have to conclude that not much. Which is pretty much what I also said last year.
RAIN RFID Industry Maturity
But while nothing new might be bad for RFID Journal Live!, it is not necessarily bad for the RFID industry. It may be just a sign of maturing. The development of an industry is often described with the industry maturity S-curve, which could look something like the one below for RAIN RFID. All the market data suggests that the RAIN RFID market is growing fast, so I would assume that we are currently in the growth stage.
RAIN RFID industry maturity curve
What is typical of the growth stage, compared to the earlier embryonic stage, is that the industry is more focused on process innovation than on product innovation. As a result, we are not really seeing new game-changing products. Rather the technology companies are working hard in producing the existing ones more efficiently, which should eventually lead to lower costs which further supports market growth. And there were some signs of that at the show. First of all, many technology providers were talking about growing volumes, and investing in manufacturing equipment. And on the supply side, BW Papersystems launched a new chip bonding machine that could improve manufacturing capacity.
We are seeing the same trend at Voyantic as well. While at the beginning of the decade, technology providers were in the need of tools for designing tags, the focus has shifted into production testing equipment. And Voyantic’s latest launch of the Reelsurance Pro for RAIN RFID and NFC testing and encoding follows the same trend, improving the efficiency of the manufacturing process.
But There Was Something New After All
Even if we are further along the maturity curve with most RFID technologies, new S-curves will continue to arise. Secure RAIN RFID according Gen2V2 is evolving, and EM Microelectronic has launched new ICs that present a significant advancement in that field. I feel this market is still in the embryonic stage, and there is a lot to do in building up the market.
But above all, what surprised me was that Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has made its way into the product portfolios of many traditional RFID tag manufacturers. And to top it off, HID Global even won the Best New Product Award with its Bluetooth sensor beacon. I guess it is a matter of opinion, whether you want to call BLE RFID. But it is definitely a related technology. Maybe we need to stop positioning the different technologies against each other and accepting that we need different technologies for different applications – all providing a gateway to the Internet of Things.
I am the CEO and co-founder of Voyantic, a company that specializes in RFID test and measurement solutions. Before starting Voyantic in 2004, I worked as a researcher at the Helsinki University of Technology focusing on passive RFID sensing for moisture in building structures.
Until now, it has seemed that different RFID and AIDC technologies, as well as the organizations that represent them have resided in their own silos. Both RAIN RFID and NFC have been focusing on their own applications and they don’t seem to have much in common. At the same time, both technologies have been quite distant from all the discussion surrounding the Internet of Things (IoT).
But as a matter of fact, the two technologies have a common goal: they strive to be means for connecting items to the cloud. And the technologies don’t really compete against each other. So, it makes perfect sense that the two industries started to pull into one direction. That is why the RAIN RFID Alliance, the NFC Forum and AIM Global joined forces to arrange the first Connections Summit at the Google campus in Sunnyvale, California.
The Connections Summit brought together the RAIN RFID and NFC communities, as well as a lot of curious visitors, into a day full of presentations and panels that covered various aspects of these technologies. Overall, there were over 450 people participating, which I think is a huge success. The presentations covered the host Google’s view of the IoT, IDTechEx’s market information, and numerous case studies highlighting the use of both NFC and RAIN RFID. It was clear that RAIN RFID, NFC, BLE (Bluetooth Low-Energy) and other wireless technologies, as well as optical codes have their own benefits and uses. There are some overlaps, but the overlapping application areas are shadowed by unique benefits of each technology.
Intranets of Things is not True IoT
Even if each data collecting technology has its own benefits, there are also shared development needs in the broader identification and IoT industry. In many presentations and discussions, the questions related to the collected data. There is a clear need for common standards on how to point the ID codes to actual data in the cloud (the digital twin). Currently, each technology relies on different methods and standards, and in many cases, applications are company-specific. The current Internet of Things (IoT) is actually a number of separate intranets of things, offering very little meaningful IoT data available “in the internet”.
Data Sharing Requires Determining of Ownership and Privacy
In order to move from the intranets to real IoT, data sharing standards are needed. The topic is complicated: In addition to pure standardization, also questions of privacy and data ownership have to be addressed. What part of the data is owned by the owner of the item? What is owned by the organization collecting the data? And who owns the data that is aggregated from multiple sources? The discussion has started, but the IoT industry has a long road ahead before all these questions are solved.
So, what is the verdict? Did the event work out? Yes! There was definitely a need for this kind of cross-pollination. Everyone I talked to at the event emphasized that they had learned a lot. I am sure that this event was not the last of its kind, I am looking forward to the next one.
