The invention of the wheel is considered one of the most significant discoveries of all timenot because of what the wheel can do in isolation, but because of the many ways it can be harnessed to reduce friction between objects and surfaces. Wheelbarrows, wagons, bicycles, cars, and airplanes outline a progression of contemporary uses, 8,500 years after early potter's grokked the "cool factor." These well-known applications for the wheel make life better and easier for all of us but they scratch the surface in describing the myriad of ways in which the wheel is now employed. In much the same way, but in a significantly more accelerated fashion, the invention of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is following a parallel path in becoming a ubiquitous enabler for doing things better than we used to. In a typical RFID system, described in detail in Chapter 3, "Components of RFID Systems," objects are tagged with tiny radio transponders that carry certain data about the objects. The transponders (tags) transmit this data, through radio waves, to nearby readers, which collect and process the data accordingly. These transactions between RFID tags and readers enable a multitude of applications that require efficient detection, identification, and tracking of objects. Although many RFID-enabled applications already exist today, it is expected that RFID will be used in a dramatically growing number of applications over the next five years. According to Venture Development Corporation, a technology market research firm, global shipments of RFID systems are expected to grow at a 45.6% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR), from $1.5 billion in 2004 to $4.7 billion in 2007[1]. Separately, ABI Research reports that an expected 12.3 billion RFID tags will be shipped in 2008, up from an estimated 365 million in 2003[2].
In this chapter, we offer a snapshot of the various ways that RFID applications help us do things in a better way. These applications are categorized and described in terms of the major benefits they provide, which include the following:
This approach will benefit you in the following ways:
We have drawn our examples from real-life applications that either have been deployed or are currently in development. There are cases, as summarized in Table 1.1, in which an RFID application provides more than one of these benefits. For example, the electronic drug pedigree application has a primary benefit of verifying and validating a medicine's origin (authentication), but it also has the added benefit of protecting the consumer (safety). However, in the sections that follow, we will only provide the description of each application in relation to its primary benefit.
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