Understanding the Benefits of Active RFID for Asset Tracking

Logistics Insight Asia - Top Story, 7/8/2008

Sales of Active RFID systems grew to $0.74 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $7.07 billion by 2017. The primary contributor to this growth is the need for Real Time Location Systems (RTLS). Other contributors to the growth of active RFID technology are:

· Requirement for total asset visibility for assets or goods as they move through the supply chain. There is an increasing need for more visibility and more data about those assets and their condition as they’re moving through production facilities, between sites, between carriers and in commercial buildings.

· Strong market demand for asset and people tracking. Factors driving this demand are safety and security, competitive cost reduction, and customer service requirements. Specifically, more emphasis has been placed on visibility due to the threat of terrorism and local epidemics or global pandemics. Active RFID is used in markets such as healthcare, commercial and industrial corporations for access control and tracking of valuable or critical assets.

· As the demand for active RFID technology expands across a wide range of vertical markets, the cost of the tags and systems has been reduced over the last several years.

· Active RFID technology is ideal for tracking of high-value items and repeated use in supply cycles. The low-consumption power requirement extends the battery life of active RFID technology up to seven years, which in turn dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership.

· Development of Ubiquitous Sensor Network environments where large quantities of active RFID tags with sensors are networked in commercial establishments, distribution centers and in healthcare facilities providing real time data of asset conditions and status.

The amount of commercial interest stems from the growing need for organizations to track and trace their high value assets in real time. There is a compelling reason behind this interest: 48% of enterprises mobile asset operations consume 5% or more of corporate revenue1. Understanding where one’s assets are and, in some cases, what their condition is can unlock cost savings that enable an RTLS system to deliver a return on the original investment in one to two years.

Active RFID is generally considered the best technology for RTLS applications due to the long tag detection range offered and ability for the tags to transmit on their own accord on a regular basis. RTLS systems typically triangulate a tag’s position when three or more readers pick up the tag signal or will indicate a tag as being in a particular zone depending on which reader(s) detect it.

However, does one choose an active RFID system that uses Wi-Fi over one that uses Zigbee or Bluetooth? Or is so-called ‘conventional’ active RFID (where small transmitter tags communicate with readers using highly optimized but non-standardized data formats) the better option? Which radio frequency is the most appropriate for the tags to transmit on? How accurately should the system locate an asset? How much and what type of data must the tag transmit?

Understandably, the choices can be confusing and no simple answer exists. Yet thousands of companies from SMEs to Multinationals and government organizations worldwide are today successfully using active RFID to track and manage their assets, improve their usage and control, improve their security, automate their processes and increase their productivity.

This White Paper, found on the Company’s website, will examine the options and choices available today and show how active RFID solutions can deliver sustainable ROI and meet customer demands without requiring excessively expensive or complex technologies.

Wavetrend, www.wavetrend.net.