December 22, 2005
The march of RFID
EPCGlobal, which has companies like Wal-Mart, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, etc, has emerged as the leading standards developer and ratifier for RFID. The EPCGlobal tags are classified into six classes; read only, write once read many, read write, read write with on-board sensors, read/write with integrated transmitters with ability to communicate independent of reader, read/write with integrated transmitters with the ability to communicate with passive devices.
The data from the tags is filtered and useful information retrieved. The information is made available to business applications for analysis. This is done by the middleware. The middleware filters redundant data and forwards useful data such as that required for initiating dispatch, receiving goods, tracking production, etc. The information on the objects is made available to the software applications by means of the EPC, EPC middleware, ALE, ONS, PML, EPCIS, etc. The Electronic Product Code (EPC) is basically the data that is held in the tag.
The EPC middleware enables information exchange between the EPC readers and business applications that use the EPC data. Application Level Events (ALE) provides the definition based on which the interaction between the EPC/RFID application and the EPC readers takes place. The bytes in the EPC data are converted into the URL of the object data by the Object Naming Service (ONS).
The Physical Markup Language (PML) is XML-based and it provides a format for the storage and retrieval of data. The data is parsed by the various applications that load the information into their own data structures. The standard for a secure, web-based data exchange mechanism for use by trading partners is defined by the EPC Information Services (EPCIS). The application software that is used for reading and updating the data should be able to share the data with the applications being used. mmt-inst.com reports:
Wal-Mart buys $178 billion dollars worth of packaged goods annually, and is looking to RFID to improve visibility into inventories from distribution centers through to retail shelves. The main stated goal is to improve availability of products to consumers while increasing their own revenue and the revenue of their suppliers.
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