Understanding Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) – Part V

RFID is a technology every supply chain will soon have to reckon with. Are you prepared?

R. Moroz Ltd., a Canadian bar coding and RFID technology provider and systems integrator, and Canadian Transportation & Logistics have put together a series of articles to help you better understand this emerging technology. This week we take a close look at RFID standards. (New articles are posted every Friday. To check past articles, use the search tool. Write: Understanding Radio Frequency Identification to see past articles.)

R. Moroz Ltd., Canadian Transportation & Logistics and the Town of Markham, Texas Instruments and Philips Electronics are also working together to bring you the 1st Canadian RFID conference.

The event takes place on April 28th in Markham. For more details check the RFID conference button on the www.ctl.ca Web site.

Now on to part V of our series on Understanding RFID.
PART V: RFID STANDARDS

The purpose of standardization is to define the most efficient platform on which an industry can operate and advance. There are several organizations involved in drafting standards for RFID technology. Most notably, International Standardization Organization (ISO) and EPC Global have had many initiatives related to RFID standards.

ISO has been involved with different RFID technologies for many years. Most of the work has been through various sub-groups of JTC1 (ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission formed the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) in 1988 to develop standards for Information Technology). However, there are some influential forces in the RFID market that believe that ISO has not moved fast enough in drafting RFID standards, thus, slowing down the RFID implementations. EPC Global mainly represents this critical view.

In 1999, several universities sponsored by consumer product industry formed Auto Id Center with a mandate to advance RFID technology. In 2003, the Auto Id Center was reorganized to create EPC Global under the UCC / EAN umbrella to manage the business side of the RFID market. The founding universities continue their research and development for the EPC Global under newly formed Auto Id Labs. EPC Global is responsible for defining specifications for all aspects of RFID technology including standardization. In addition to ISO and EPC Global, there are many other global and regional organizations and regulatory bodies involved in RFID standardization.

In this section, we embark on exploring the status of standardization in the RFID industry, primarily focusing on Low, High and Ultra High Frequencies.

Low frequency is the oldest RFID technology, which has been implemented mostly in manufacturing and agricultural applications. Thus far, there has been little work done in terms of standardization in the low frequency arena. This is mainly due to the fact that most of these implementations have been in closed-loop and controlled environments. In the agriculture sector, however, the nature of animal tracking has required some standardization. ISO 11784 and 11785 are the two notable standards in the low frequency technology that has been in use for some time in animal tracking.

ISO 11784 and 11785 are specifically designed for animal tracking and work in tandem. In brief, ISO 11784 defines the data structure of the animal tag. In this standard, an animal can be identified by its country code and unique national ID. There are also provisions to use a manufacturer code in place of the country code. ISO 11785 is concerned with the technical aspects of reader-tag communication. There are several shortcomings in these two standards that has limited its widespread usage but has proven effective where implemented.

ISO has renewed its efforts to develop standards for the low frequency. The process is managed by the SC31 / WG 4 which has been charged with the responsibility to create standards for “Radio Frequency Identification for Item Management”. ISO 18000-2 is the standard defining parameters for Air Interface Communications below 135KHz. We should take note that the EPC Global is also working towards creating standards and specifications for the LF RFID.

Amongst all the different RFID technologies, High Frequency is the one that has had the most established and commonly used standards. This could be attributed to the fact that 13.56 MHz is a globally available frequency for RFID. JTC1/SC17/WG8, which is the work group for “Contact-less Integrated Circuit Cards”, started the standardization process for HF RFID in 1995. That resulted in ISO 15693 and 14443, the most widely RFID standards used to date.

ISO 15693 was published in 2000 defining parameters for vicinity RFID cards, generally used in applications that require read ranges of more than 10 cm. The specifications have been organized in three separate parts covering: Physical Characteristic, Air Interface and Communication Protocol.

ISO 14443 is the standard for the proximity RFID cards with the read range being limited to less than 10 cm. This standard is organized much the same way as the 15693 standard defining similar parameters in different parts of the standard. The main difference between these two standards is their intended application. ISO14443, because of its short read distance and encryption capabilities, is more suitable for applications where security is a serious concern such as electronic payment, banking and financial transactions. In addition to the two standards discussed, SC17/WG8 has drafted several other standards pertaining to the use of RFID which is outside of the scope of our discussions here.

Although ISO 15693 and 14443 are the established standards and have worked well so far, some industry experts are of the opinion that they do not address all the issues. ISO started a more focused process under the SC31 umbrella for RFID standardization. ISO 18000-3 is the new standard for 13.56 MHz RFID. This standard is due to be published shortly and is expected to be the standard for the HF RFID in the future. ISO 18000-3 is a comprehensive standard that has built on the existing ISO 15693. It has two versions, with version 1 being very similar to ISO 15693.

Moving on to the UHF (860 MHz-956MHz) band, we see the concentration of energy and efforts to draw standards. Lack of uniform standards has been a major hurdle to UHF RFID deployments. At present, there is no globally accepted frequency within the UHF band, an urgent issue that has to be addressed to pave for wider implementation of UHF. In North America, UHF RFID uses 915 MHz where 860MHz-866MHz and 950MHz-956MHz are used in Europe and Japan respectively.

ISO work in the 860 – 956MHz UHF has resulted in ISO 18000-6, which defines parameters for Air Interface and Communications. As in the case of other 18000 series standards, part 6 covers all technical aspects of RFID communications in great details. Again, ISO and EPC Global are moving on separate, though parallel paths in standardization of UHF RFID. Thus far, we have mainly focused on the ISO standards. At this point, we are going to turn our attention to EPC Global initiatives.

EPC Global mission starts with the vision to identify every item with a unique Electronic Product Code (EPC). A global network will be implemented to make every item visible throughout the supply chain. Great deals of research and development resources have been invested in creating specification and standardization of the EPC tags and the required infrastructure. Although EPC Global efforts are not limited to the UHF, it seems to have been its focus.

EPC Global through its research wing, Auto ID Labs, has defined specifications for different classes of EPC tags. Currently, class 0 and class 1 tags are commercially available. Class 0 EPC tags have a factory programmed 96 bit code whereas class 1 facilitate user programmable codes. EPC Global has proposed other classes of EPC tags that would provide user memory beyond the ID code. It has also created detailed specifications for the st
ructure of the 96-bit code flexible enough to incorporate other coding standards currently in use in the supply chain. The 96-bit EPC provides unique identifiers for 268 million companies. Each manufacturer can have 16 million object classes and 68 billion serial numbers in each class.

EPC network will track EPC tagged objects as they move through the supply chain from source to consumption. We will briefly describe different components of the EPC network below:

– ONS (Object Naming Services) is analogous to NDS in a typical network. Every EPC tag is tied to the detailed item information through a local network or the Web.
– Savant is the software technology to serve as the nerve system for the network managing flow of data.
– Physical Markup Language (PML) is a sub set of XML language that has been specified as the standard development platform for the EPC network.

RFID industry is moving fast in enhancing current standards and creating new ones needed for the worldwide implementation of the technology. We are witnessing considerable efforts channeled towards this goal and we hope that standardization process can soon catch up with advancements in other aspects of the industry. ISO is the global authority for standardization and EPC Global is a major force in the RFID market with the great support of the consumer industry. Athough it is possible for these two organizations to work side by side, some believe that there could be more achieved through collaboration than competition when it comes to standardization.