| The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a network of the national standards institutes of 148 countries, based on one member per country, coordinated by its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Although ISO is a non-government organization, many of its member institutes are either part of their countries' governments or mandated to develop standards by their governments, making it more global and governmental than EPCglobal. ISO bridges the needs of the public and private sectors, focusing on creating standards and building universal consensus for the acceptance of those standards. Since its inception in 1947, ISO has published more than 13,000 international standards for many different industries. Some of these standards seem simplistic on the surface, such as ISO 8601, governing the date and time format. Yet, when you consider the worldwide worries that resulted from the so-called Y2K bug, you can understand the impact of such global standards. Among the key ISO standards that affect RFID technology are the following: ISO 11784, 11785, and 14223: These standards contain the structure of the radio frequency identification code for animals. ISO 14223 specifies the air interface between the RFID transceiver and advanced transponder used for identification of animals, based on the condition of compatibility according to ISO 11784-5. ISO 10536, 14443, and 15693: These standards cover the physical characteristics, air interface and initialization, and anti-collision and transmission protocol of vicinity cards (contactless integrated circuit cards, also known as smart identification cards). They also apply to proximity cards, covering areas such as radio frequency power and signal interface. The tags in these smart cards are capable of multiple applications so the same card can be used for building access, computer login, and cafeteria payment. ISO 10374: This standard specifies all necessary user requirements for the automatic identification of freight containers (for example, rail and ship), including a container ID system, data coding systems, description of data, performance criteria, and security features. ISO 15961, 15962, and 15963: These standards apply to automatic identification and data capture techniques for item management. Included are RFID guidelines for item management, including data protocol, application interface, data encoding rules, logical memory functions, and unique identification for RF tags. ISO 18000 Series: Several standards in the 18000 series focus on RFID for item management. ISO 18000 parts 1 through 6 address the parameters for Air Interface Communications for globally accepted frequencies such as 135kHz, 13.56MHz, UHF band, 2.45GHz, and 5.8GHz. ISO 18046 focuses on RFID tag and interrogator performance test methods, whereas 18047 covers RFID device conformance test methods. This standard is similar to the EPCglobal standard and the likely point of alignment between the two standard bodies.
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