RFID access control - effective, not perfect
Issue #228 | March 11, 2010 | by Andy Kowl and the Auto-ID Professionals
Tracking people ranges from the most misunderstood and controversial aspect of RFID to the one solution that directly saves people's lives.
When you are trapped underground amidst the darkness and terror of a mine cave in, you sure want to be wearing a reliable, active RFID badge.
A major, international agri-business conglomerate came to RFID Switchboard to figure out the best way to combine RFID tags with safe areas so that during an unforeseen crises all employees can be quickly accounted for. RFID identifiers, combined with heat, smoke and radiation sensors, create ad-hoc emergency control centers at disasters. Among other life-saving benefits, these provide "man down status" as first responders rush into harms way.
My favorite people app, not quite as dramatic, is how the
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For asset tracking, and particularly for Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), RFID is not always the answer. Ultrasound technology implementations also provide these auto identification benefits. Ultrasound refers to sound waves that are higher than 20,000 cycles per second, which is beyond what the human ear can hear. The ultrasound used for asset tracking is not the same ultrasound we often first encounter as expectant parents viewing a fetus in the womb, which operate on far higher
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The purpose of an RFID reader is to read the identifying number (and perhaps other data) contained in a tag. If more than one tag is present in the region accessed by the reader (the read zone), and they reply simultaneously to a reader inquiry, a collision results. A reader may be able to recognize that a collision occurred, but generally will not be able to extract any more information from the garbled tag reply.
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Are you following "Telematics?" According to one source, $6 billion (US) was spent on it in 2007. And apparently Telematics Detroit 2009 was the 9th annual such event. It seems a big chunk of those dollars is accounted for in sales of OnStar, the system in some cars that call for help when you need it, as well as other systems you and I might think of as GPS. At the 2009 Taiwan Business Alliance Conference, I saw live demo, imagine your GPS mapping device crossed with a video game.
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