Computers gave businesses the power to make sense of vast amounts of information. The Internet gave them the means to share it. But computers remain unable to interact with the real world and gather information automatically, without human intervention or human error. That’s about to change.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a simple concept with enormous implications. Put a tag – a microchip with an antenna – on a can of Coke, a pair of jeans, or a car axle, and suddenly a computer can “see” it. Put tags on every can of Coke, every pair of jeans and every car axle, and suddenly the world changes. No more inventory counts. No more lost or misdirected shipments. No more guessing how much material is in the supply chain – or how much product is on the store shelves.

The Auto-ID Center is designing, building, testing and deploying a global infrastructure – a layer on top of the Internet – that will make it possible for computers to identify any object anywhere in the world instantly. This network will not just provide the means to feed reliable, accurate, real-time information into existing business applications; it will usher in a whole new era of innovation and opportunity. This is the next computer revolution.

Well, technically, what is RFID all about?

RFID systems use radio frequency to identify, locate and track people, assets and animals. An RFID system consists of 3 components – an interrogator (reader), a tag and a host computer. The tag is composed of an antenna coil and a silicon chip that includes basic modulation circuitry and non-volatile memory. The tag is energized by a time varying electromagnetic RF wave that is transmitted by the reader. This RF signal is called a carrier signal. When the RF field passes through an antenna coil, there is an AC voltage generated across the coil. This voltage is rectified to supply power to the tag. The information stored in the tag is transmitted back to the reader. This is often called backscattering. By detecting the backscattering signal, the information stored in the tag can be fully identified

Reader Usually a microcontroller-based unit with a wound output coil, peak detector hardware, comparators, and firmware designed to transmit energy to a tag and read information back from it by detecting the backscatter modulation.

Tag An RFID device incorporating a silicon memory chip (usually with on-board rectification bridge and other RF front-end devices), a wound or printed input/output coil, and (at lower frequencies) a tuning capacitor.

Carrier A Radio Frequency (RF) sine wave generated by the reader to transmit energy to the tag and retrieve data from the tag. In these examples the ISO frequencies of 125 kHz and 13.56 MHz are assumed; higher frequencies are used for RFID tagging, but the communicationmethods are somewhat different. 2.45 GHz, for example, uses a true RF link. 125 kHz and 13.56 MHz, utilize transformer-type electromagnetic coupling.