RFID technologies

Starting your car with an electronic key, entering a building or hall with a badge, using the ski lifts on a ski holiday, validating a ticket on the bus or metro, paying for purchases with a contactless bank card or using the automatic checkouts in certain stores are all part of the daily routine for many of us. Often without realizing it, we use automatic data capture technologies based on radio frequency waves and radiation. These technologies are known as RFID for Radio Frequency Identification. They can be found in all our daily activities, but it's important to understand that they are mainly used in industrial sectors, from retailing to oil drilling, as well as in the aeronautical, automotive and healthcare manufacturing industries. Each individual object - carton, pallet, tool - bearing an RFID tag or label can be uniquely identified. By 2020, the number of tags and labels sold for this purpose will exceed 20 billion per year, and is rising steadily. The difference between applications involving individuals and those for tracking objects and packages lies mainly in the distance at which RFID tags can be detected and read. Reading a bank card for contactless payment just a few centimetres from the reader is quite sufficient. For industrial logistics processes, tags need to be read from several meters away. The aim of this article is to present the techniques used in RFID systems. These include remote powering, telecommunications, encoding and identification. Those looking for a solution to their traceability automation needs (identification, inventory, authentication, etc.) will find in this article the basics for choosing the most suitable RFID technology. Notions such as return on investment or the integration of RFID into an IT system are not covered, and generally require a case-by-case study.