RFID的應用與挑戰

Abstract

Since human civilization has stepped in the era of electrical and electronic devices, the pace and magnitude of technological breakthrough has been unprecedented, over any past time period. Ironically, the need and expectations of the society have been a step ahead. At any particular time, there exist few technical fronts where the above two factors exist in equilibrium. Further, the equilibrium is short lived.

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, it is a technical breakthrough in the challenging field of providing unique identity to a person or thing and being able to monitor it or them. What sets it apart from numerous other short lived breakthroughs is that despite being around for decades, its ramifications with modern technologies are capable of meeting the enormous demand, relevant to its scope, which again is constantly touching new horizons. Despite being such a versatile technology and being adopted by industry giants like Wal-Mart, the technology is still under skepticism in larger proportion.

This literature review paper explores the obstacles or the challenges that prevent the global adoption of this unique and exemplary technology. The challenges are made special by the fact that there are very few technologies that exist in the equilibrium like RFID, and hence are not available for study at all the times. Further they are unique to each technology.

This paper starts with an insight into the history of RFID. Then a concise section on the topic that commands numerous books and research papers to itself, the components of RFID and how they integrate into this technological marvel. The numerous uses of RFID are hard to fit in any paper. Thus we carefully select the areas, relevant to a broader audience, and give a comprehensive account of how RFID has been instrumental in these areas. Next comes the challenges in RFID adoption. The paper presents challenges ranging in duration from the inception of RFID, to the contemporary ones originating from the small material component changes in present day RFID. The paper concludes by giving a brief outline of present scenario and recommendations derived after balancing the challenges against the present and potential scope of RFID technology.

Since human civilization has stepped in the era of electrical and electronic devices, the pace and magnitude of technological breakthrough has been unprecedented, over any past time period. Ironically, the need and expectations of the society have been a step ahead. At any particular time, there exist few technical fronts where the above two factors exist in equilibrium. Further, the equilibrium is short lived.

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, it is a technical breakthrough in the challenging field of providing unique identity to a person or thing and being able to monitor it or them. What sets it apart from numerous other short lived breakthroughs is that despite being around for decades, its ramifications with modern technologies are capable of meeting the enormous demand, relevant to its scope, which again is constantly touching new horizons. Despite being such a versatile technology and being adopted by industry giants like Wal-Mart, the technology is still under skepticism in larger proportion.

This literature review paper explores the obstacles or the challenges that prevent the global adoption of this unique and exemplary technology. The challenges are made special by the fact that there are very few technologies that exist in the equilibrium like RFID, and hence are not available for study at all the times. Further they are unique to each technology.

This paper starts with an insight into the history of RFID. Then a concise section on the topic that commands numerous books and research papers to itself, the components of RFID and how they integrate into this technological marvel. The numerous uses of RFID are hard to fit in any paper. Thus we carefully select the areas, relevant to a broader audience, and give a comprehensive account of how RFID has been instrumental in these areas. Next comes the challenges in RFID adoption. The paper presents challenges ranging in duration from the inception of RFID, to the contemporary ones originating from the small material component changes in present day RFID. The paper concludes by giving a brief outline of present scenario and recommendations derived after balancing the challenges against the present and potential scope of RFID technology.