Basics of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems

Abstract

1.1 Introduction With the recent advances in wireless communications, Radio frequency Identification (RFID) technology is becoming more of a reality in terms of their widespread use in various applications. Although RFID provides a general capability for tagging and tracking of objects, and has been in use for decades, no RFID system fits all applications. Therefore, it's important to start this introductory chapter with an overview of the technology in general terms and continue in the later chapters with more detailed discussions on various techniques that can make RFIDs more adaptable to some specialized applications that face challenges with conventional RFID techniques. This chapter provides a general introduction to RFID systems and serves as a prerequisite to the following chapters, in which challenges of conventional RFID systems are discussed and ultra-wideband RFID solutions are introduced. In this chapter, we start with a brief overview of RFID technology and include a detailed discussion on the history of RFIDs and their evolution from the early 1800s to present. Next we cover RFID frequency bands and discuss their advantages and challenges for a variety of applications. The chapter then continues with a detailed discussion of RFID components including tags, readers, middleware and application software. The subsections of this chapter provide a comprehensive overview of different types of RF tags and their memory components, inductive and magnetically coupled readers with their advantages and limitations under various conditions and applications. We end the chapter with a concise overview of RFID applications and their important parameters categorized by different market sectors.