Peter Harrop

Traditionally, the use of active RFID in military applications has involved longer range than passive tags but still a portal-based, speak-when-spoken-to approach in most cases. However, the ideal supply chain, and, for that matter, the ideal management of standing assets, should involve tags that can initiate alarms and prompts depending on what they sense. Indeed, the ideal also includes knowing what is where regardless of whether it is near a reader. One recent approach tested a new generation of active RFID tags with satellite-communication capabilities that enabled the tags to give their precise location even when in the most remote and inhospitable areas. "The prototype tags function just as the current RFID tags that can be pinged at ports, depots and distribution centers by interrogators, but they can also phone home," says Larry Loiacono, an information tec... (more)

RFID Prospering at All Levels

While the RFID orders for half a billion dollars grab the headlines, RFID is in fact prospering at all levels. Consider the flood of orders at the one million dollar level, spread across the world. On Track Innovations has just supplied 1.5 million RFID cards to the Warsaw Transport Department in Poland. VeriFone has just taken an order for 20,000 readers for the Australian Cabcharge taxi payment cards. Digital Angel has also received this level of orders but for readers in U.S. rivers to monitor fish. Vuance has taken a $6.2 million service contract for its RFID secure access in... (more)