What is your RFID tag encoding strategy?

 

What's your RFID strategy? 

 

 In a few recent customer engagements, ODIN was specifically asked to help them with their RFID tag encoding strategy. Customers do not always ask us for this help, so I started to wonder what choices are being made for this critical base level RFID architecture component and how these choices might affect the current and future operation of these RFID systems.

 With a little digging, I came to understand that more than a few users of RFID are just accepting the default encoding on the tags as they come from their tag suppliers.  

As an RFID system designer; standards developer; and an engineer, I was surprised at this discovery. The RFID tag that is on that asset, badge, reusable container, or disposable packet represents that item first to the RFID Software that is making sense of the observations of the tag, and then quite likely to the rest of the enterprise systems-of-record.

The RFID is now feeding data into the systems that support highly optimized manufacturing processes, regulatory compliance, and critical patient care protocols.  The lowest level representation of the tags used for these systems should not be left to chance.

So what is the big deal with RFID numbers?

   Imagine a world in which our social security numbers were issued independently by each state without any structure or organization to them? Things are probably fine when only one person in one state entity gives out the numbers and people don’t move from state to state. However, people do move from state to state.   Furthermore, what would happen when that one number allocator goes on vacation if there is no organization to the numbers?   

Have an idea about your RFID ID

 It is easy to see how this part of the process could be overlooked.  First of all, the RFID tags come with some IDs on them and they work (i.e. get read) right out of the box. Tag enrollment (the act of making the RFID Software aware of the tag ID as it is assigned to the tagged item) is well established and we now do a pretty good job of making the user unaware that there are 96 bits of ID encoded on each tag. 

Users might see a barcode on the tag, but more frequently these days, they just see a familiar plastic badge or inconspicuous plastic form that doesn’t look very much like an RF device at all. In all of the moving parts of the system, the tag encoding is something that passes into the system easily and worrying about it simply just doesn’t make it to the top of the list.

 I sympathize with the end users who just want systems that work and don’t want to worry about bits and bytes.  The good news is that at ODIN, we are able to help them choose RFID tag encodings that eliminate the chance of ID collision, allow for filtering down to the air protocol level by expected or unexpected tags,  provide an ability to search databases more efficiently by tag ID, and organize the growth of the tag items in the their system.  The important first step is simply to ask the question “what type of tag encoding will you be using?”, and that is what we are now doing with all of our customers.  

My name is Scott Barvick and for more info about RFID soultions or software, please contact me on SBarvick@odinrfid.com or visit ODIN website