SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

A proposal by the Department of Homeland Security attempts to address one potential security problem with RFID-chipped passports, but leaves more obvious problems hanging fire.

In an effort to detect attempts to clone the data stored on RFID chips used on US Passport Cards, DHS on Wednesday announced that it is recommending that manufacturers supplying these RFID chips include a “unique identifier number,” or Tag Identifier (TID).

The TID would be used to ascertain when a chip’s data has been cloned, as one would do to create a fake passport. If two passports with the same identifier number turned up at the border, one of them could be deduced as fake. That number would actually be the second unique number in the chip, since all a passport’s RFID chip stores is a unique number that is indexed in a database. (Currently the chips hold one unique number and one generic manufacturer code; that generic code is the one that would be replaced with a TID.)

It’s an identification model that works reasonably well with mobile phones and automobiles, but an identity document is a different creature. Conceivably, the ID number might help to determine whether, for instance, a hacker intercepting the snail mail has waved a reader near a State Department envelope and picked off the data without having to open the envelope — with “contactless” technology, the envelope would not have to be opened. But the model may not help with other security issues RFID researchers, privacy activists, and anti-terrorism experts have flagged. (more…)

An Awarepoint white paper describes critical factors required to maximize your RFID system’s return on investment.

Real-time location systems (RTLSs) are an increasingly important strategic capability for a variety of business applications. RTLSs allow organizations to efficiently identify and track the location of supplies, personnel, equipment, and other items in real-time, as a cost-effective operational management tool.

With the success early adopters have had with RTLSs, the question is not whether to implement, but which technology is best suited for the many applications that can benefit from location awareness. An Awarepoint white paper, “Considering a Real-time Location System? First Consider the 5 Critical Success Factors,” can help maximize your return on investment and ensure long-term success of your RTLS investment.

“The implementation of RTLS technology should pay for itself as a result of shrinking the incidence of misplaced equipment, decreased rental costs, and increased utilization of equipment,” stated Jason Howe, CEO of Awarepoint Corp.

The five critical factors outlined in the white paper to obtain maximum benefit include:

• Enterprise-wide coverage—because assets and people move throughout your entire enterprise, to achieve maximum benefit, your RTLS deployment must cover every square inch of your enterprise.
• Location accuracy—to affect the highest impact for your strategic initiatives, room-level accuracy is a clear critical success factor.
• Installation and maintenance—a minimally invasive solution that does not compromise your existing IT network, does not interrupt daily business operations, and can be installed in days or weeks, is vital. Maintenance impact for hospital staff should be considered as well. It shouldn’t take a team of IT professionals to keep the system running.
• Interoperability—your RTLSs should be supported by standards-based technology and should offer an open application programming interface so that it’s capable of providing location and status data to both your end-users and to third-party applications.
• Low risk—you should partner with a vendor vested in your success. Look for a flexible business model that doesn’t require a large capital purchase or long-term contractual commitment, and allows you to easily expand assets as needed.

Added Howe, “In hospitals particularly, RTLSs can play an important role in automation of common tasks—improving operational efficiency, increasing patient flow, and enhancing patient safety. Knowing the location, status, and movement of equipment and people can be used to improve hospital business processes and asset utilization, reduce capital expense and rental costs, and improve staff productivity.”

The full white paper “Considering a Real-time Location System? First Consider the 5 Critical Success Factors” can be downloaded free off the company’s Web site.

[nmarquardt] has put up an interesting instructable that covers building RFID tags. Most of them are constructed using adhesive copper tape on cardstock. The first version just has a cap and a low power LED to prove that the antenna is receiving power. The next iteration uses tilt switches so the tag is only active in certain orientations. The conclusion shows several different variations: different antenna lengths, conductive paint, light activated and more.

Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise (FTE), which manages the statewide SunPass system, has selected TransCore’s eGo Plus RFID sticker for use on the state’s 460 miles of toll road. The paper-thin, batteryless tags will be sold as the SunPass “Mini” and be available this summer.

The eGo Plus sticker tag is a 915 MHz programmable, beam-powered, windshield-mounted tag packaged as a flexible sticker. Each eGo Plus sticker tag comes equipped with a factory-programmed unique tag identification number to prevent the tag from being duplicated. The eGo Plus technology is also being used by Houston’s Harris County Toll Road Authority, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Washington Department of Transportation.

The FTE’s initial order with TransCore is for 1.5 million of the tags, which will join the more than three million hardcase SunPass tags currently in use on the state’s roads.

Source: RFID News

Check this beautiful line arts of RFID antenna design technologies:

Outer Space

This is an astronaut’s mobile phone kit, right? Nope! It’s Hitachi’s early gen 2 µ-Chip Hibiki, pronounced mu-chip, also known as the “5-yen tag,” introduced in late 2006. Why 5-yen? If ordered in large quantities, each one costs only ¥5. A bargain! Now, why this Greek letter? It’s a variation of the µ-Chip which is only tiny 0,4 mm square. However, the Hibiki is 102 x 135 mm in size.

Alpine Serpentine

We bet that the lab behind the shape of the Nile RFID chip by DNP must have had something like a radiant heater in mind as inspiration. These serpents have a minimalist elegance. Don’t get lost in its beautiful wavy lines, this is still an ultra-high-frequency chip with 96 bit memories.

Gesturing Man

A 512 bit memory is hidden in this shiny metal, simply called ‘global tag’ by UPM Raflatac. Check the tiny filigree pattern! How about an RFID necklace with ultra-high frequency (UHF)?

Alien Sktechbook

A memory stick? Oh, not your USB stick, this one has only 512 bit. Note that ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID systems are being widely deployed since several large corporations got that through, including international retailers and — not to forget — the U.S. Department of Defense.

Picture Frame for Geeks

OK, the shape of this Rafsec Tag isn’t that peculiar, but hey, its high frequency (HF) is in use worldwide. A typical high frequency would be 13,56 MHz. HF systems are widely used in libraries, mass transportation (think SUICA and PASMO train cards) and product authentication applications. Capacity: 1024 bits! Depending on the usage, this HF tag either comes as non-adhesive inlay, die-cut web with adhesive, filmic face (for wet inlay,) or in a tag with a paper face. Stylish.

Weather Satellite

This multi-frequency inlay code-named AD-612 by Avery Dennison has the usual 860-960 MHz frequency — and an utterly space age shape! We wonder which sci-fi scientist came up with this sketch-like design that resembles an orbitting satellite.

Next Season’s Jewellery

Blinded by this glimmering gold, we get that this one isn’t exactly brand new, but still a nice sight; the high frequency Tag-it HF-I Plus Transponder Inlay by Texas Instruments goes by the standard 13,56 MHz and has a 2 Kb memory to store your precious data. This wafer is inked, ground and sewn onto tape. Nice sewing job!

Tribal

A true tag for the world, at least so says manufacturer Alien Technology. This little squiggle is operating between 860 to 960 MHz, with a ‘generation 2′ performance. It was created for most types of packaging, including products containing metal and water. Metal bento, anyone? Watch out, it’s a mere 97 x 11 mm!

The Labyrinth

Oh, a little squiggle! This fancy-looking UHF operates between 860 and 960 MHz. Said to be ideal for item level tagging of plastic packaging such as pill bottles and apparel tags. So this is already in use at your local department store. Also featuring near-field and far-field communication. So talkative!

Ancient Cave-painting

If this were an ancient cave-painting you’d be amazed by its geometric shape. Well, it’s a stylised crab called Rafsec Crab and only slightly newer — also from the high-performing UHF, ultra-high frequency, group by UPM Raflatac. By the way, the other chips of the the same series have some quite weird shapes named Frog, DogBone or Hammer. Welcome to this unusual family! And what a modest memory of 96/240 bits.

Source: PingMag

Certain types of radio frequency identification tags can cause electromagnetic interference with medical equipment, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The report cautions facilities to check for interference from an RFID system before deploying it.

The study examined the impact of 125-kHz and 868-MHz frequencies on medical equipment. The 125-kHz is the technology used in proximity cards while the 868-MHz is a long-range RFID tag. Contactless smart cards, which use the 13.56 MHz, were not mentioned in the report.

In 123 tests, RFID induced 34 incidents of interference: 22 were classified as hazardous, two as significant, and ten as light. The 868-MHz RFID signal induced a higher number of incidents, 26 incidents in 41 EMI tests. Compared with the 125-kHz RFID signal which cause eight incidents in 41 tests. The median distance between the RFID reader and the medical device in all EMI incidents was 30 centimeters.

Read a summary of the report here.

IPICO Inc. and McMaster RFID Applications Laboratory have been awarded a $1.2 million (Canadian dollars) grant to create an RFID system that would capture and analyze data related to traffic use and capacity, without a corresponding increase in investment in road infrastructure. The technology also could be used to help manage traffic, reducing road delays and transit time, and then reduce both emissions and dependency on fossil fuels.

The grant was from the International Science and Technology Partnerships Canada Inc. and the Global Innovation & Technology Alliance. McMaster and IPICO will work with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and Strategic Consultants, both of New Delhi, India.

The consortium had submitted a proposal to develop and create a platform for a specially designed passive commercial RFID transponder that would be capable of carrying significant, safe, secure and accurate information pertaining to the vehicle itself, including its identity. This information collected would be used to manage transportation flows on highways and roads.

Source: RFID News

What does the story of another low-power, low-cost radio standard tell us about the future of RFID?

At about the same time as Electronic Product Code (EPC) technology was being developed, another somewhat similar standard was being born. ZigBee is a standard for mesh networking, in which tiny low-powered radios form networks by passing data among themselves.

Mesh networking is a cool idea on a chalkboard. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, academic mathematicians enthusiastically calculated what shapes and communication styles mesh networks should have, what their power would be, and how they would work.

But what was the point? While ZigBee could pass information over short ranges at low costs, RFID could identify things over short ranges at a lower cost. And while ZigBee was simpler and cheaper than Wi-Fi, which was becoming the dominant force in wireless local-area networking, it was also less powerful. What was the killer application that did not need the luxurious bandwidth of Wi-Fi, but needed more networking capability than could be had from the simple identification provided by RFID?

ZigBee enthusiasts and entrepreneurs wrestled with that question for more than five years. There were disappointments. Opportunities appeared and shimmered, but turned out to be mirages. There was military ZigBee, medical ZigBee, even ZigBee-enabled RFID readers and tags. None of these led to large orders. ZigBee appeared to be in trouble, crushed between cheaper RFID and more powerful Wi-Fi.

Two years ago, I mentioned ZigBee at a meeting with one of the world’s largest wireless networking companies and got a derisory reaction: ZigBee, explained the Wi-Fi product manager, was a dead technology. Wi-Fi could do everything ZigBee could do and would soon be cheaper, too, due to the huge volumes of Wi-Fi devices being manufactured. At about the same time, an MIT engineering Ph.D. pointed me to a detailed paper showing that ZigBee would fail due to unavoidable bandwidth crunches. It all seemed very convincing.

Then the U.S. electricity industry decided, with a little encouragement from the federal government, that it was time to replace decades-old electricity meters with new, network-enabled devices that would not just monitor energy consumption but potentially control it as well. Wi-Fi was too expensive and too power-hungry; the point was to reduce power use, not add to it. Since all the meters, air conditioners and light switches were conveniently located right alongside one another, the solution was obvious and ready to go: ZigBee. Today, millions of dollars are being invested in ZigBee home-automation technology.

What does this have to do with RFID? The lesson of ZigBee is that all major technologies go through cycles of hope and despair, of exuberance and pessimism, of adoring experts and then scathing experts. This happens until those first big commercial applications kick in. Then it’s hard to find a naysayer anywhere. So if you find yourself wondering whether the RFID revolution is ever going to come, remember ZigBee—where the right questions turned out to be how and when, not if.

Souce: RFID Journal

The last thing a hospital employee wants to do is run around searching for a piece of equipment needed for a patient or an upcoming surgery. If the device can’t be found, often, hospitals rent the equipment even though it same device may be sitting somewhere in the hospital, such as a storage room or another area long vacated by the patient, unused. These rentals can cut into a hospital’s bottom line.

But using the same scenario, what if you could go to the nearest computer, call up the device number and get notification, within six feet, of where that device is? That’s the purpose behind RFID in a hospital environment. Yes, it’s the same technology used by major retailers or wholesalers to track products or shipments but health care facilities are also using it to save money.

Awarepoint, San Diego, Calif., was founded six-years ago to track assets and people in real time at acute care hospitals, says its CEO, Jason Howe. Like RFID, Awarepoint’s primary product, real time location service, has its own acronym, RTLS, which goes beyond location. “You also need to monitor and get history as well,” says Howe.

The company’s name is derived from this: “Find a point and you’re aware of everything,” says Howe. While Awarepoint is an active RFID company, he compares RTLS to an indoor positioning system. In fact, Awarepoint got its start by tracking kids at theme parks. RTLS grew from that when it was realized that such a system could work well in hospitals, which “have a lot of unique issues,” says Howe.

He describes what he calls five criteria that need to be in place to make RTLS advantageous for hospitals.

First, you need facility-wide coverage. “You have to cover every square inch of your medical facility,” says Howe. He likens this to GPS. If you drive outside a zone that may not be covered, there’s a problem.

Second, it has to be accurate enough to be able to pinpoint the item’s location. Is it in a hallway, outside of the hallway or in a room? “You have to have enough accuracy to tell you where things are,” he says.

Three, it has to be an easy to install. “You can’t afford to pull wires and cables everywhere. And you can’t shut down patient rooms or the operating rooms. You can’t interfere with any systems,” Howe says.

Lastly, you have to be interoperable with other systems in the hospital. “You have to be able to leverage those systems. There needs to be some way of integrating this system. It can’t be its own proprietary system.” (more…)

Alanco Technologies has announced that its subsidiary Alanco/TSI Prism, a provider of real-time RFID tracking technologies, has won a $3.3 million contract to create an RFID-based inmate tracking system for the Washington D.C. Department of Corrections.

The Alanco/TSI Prism system, which will combine Alanco’s TSI Prism RFID system with Wi-Fi compatible RTLS technology from AeroScout, will be installed at a Washington DC jail complex housing over 2,000 prisoners and staffed by 450 DOC employees. The system is intended to increase safety and improve inmate accountability.

Source: RFID News