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The creation and adoption of official (or de facto) standards can powerfully accelerate the adoption of new technology. Standards promise interoperability, luring more vendors to provide solutions that improve services and lower costs. By complying with standards, technology developers, suppliers, and vendors avoid the risk of costly modifications that may result from customized or proprietary implementations, or non-compliance with regulations. Standards give consumers the confidence that products will work together, that they will have more choices, and that they won't be subject to vendor lock-in. This has been true in one technology market after another. RFID is no exception.
In this chapter, we will do the following:
- Describe the role of standards in technology advancement
- Provide an overview of key standards around RFID and details of the EPCglobal standards
- Outline recommendations to deal with evolving standards while deploying
RFID
Role of Standards in Technology Advancement and Adoption
Standards help to serve consumers in many ways. They ensure that different products don't interfere with each other's functions, regardless of which manufacturer made them. For example, a cellular phone operates at a specific frequency. These frequencies are different from the ones used to transmit television signals. As a result, a cellular phone and a television don't interfere with each other even when operating in each other's proximity.
Standards also enable interoperability between applications or devices. When a consumer buys a cellular phone complying with the GSM standard, it comes equipped with a thumbnail-sized SIMcard (Subscriber Identification Module). The card stores all the data about the phone such as the phone number and the phone book. If the consumer decides to upgrade the phone later, all he has to do is insert the old SIMcard into a new phone. His old phone number will now ring the new phone, and his phone book will be available on the new phone. The standardized SIMcard ensures seamless interoperability from one device to another.
Sometimes, a series of interdependent standards is required to help drive further advancement of a particular technology. The standards-based protocols used to transfer data on the Internet provide a good example. In this case, the standards enable a seamless transfer of data through a number of sequential interfaces. The impact of such cascading transactions that occurs from the dovetailing of standards can have a sweeping effect on entire markets, including vendors, suppliers, and consumers.
Consider, for example, a business customer using a wireless laptop to enter data into an application that generates a service order. Several standards come into play in this seemingly simple scenario. Their combined effect causes a chain reaction that is powerful and dramatic in its reach, as in the following:
- A standard such as Java or XML enables successful data transfer between different applications
- Wi-Fi1 standards enable wireless communication between the laptop and the
network
- FCC standards for laptop electronic signals ensure that the user's experience is
a safe one and that the signals do not interfere with other nearby devices
Working together, these standards deliver even more value than they would individually. Had these standards not been defined clearly, business users probably would have had to pay more, receive a less satisfactory result, and possibly might have failed to complete their expected transaction. When such end-to-end standards do not exist, as was the case for RFID until very recently, the technology might only be suitable for certain niche markets. With the creation of EPCglobal, though, the end-to-end RFID standards have become possible.
Standards and RFID--An Overview of EPCglobal
Prior to the development of standards for tags and readers, companies primarily developed proprietary RFID systems so that readers from one vendor often only read tags from the same vendor. Early RFID applications, such as those for electronic toll1 collection, railroad asset tracking, and livestock tracking, were based on such proprietary systems. Although RFID systems can be built to operate primarily in four frequency bands (135kHz, 13.56MHz, 900MHz, or 2.45GHz), only 13.56MHz enjoys worldwide acceptance as an ISO standard (see the section, "ISO and RFID Standards," in this chapter). This lack of interoperability limited incentives for companies to implement RFID solutions broadly, and for developers to create innovative RFID technology.
This situation started changing in the late 1990s with the creation of the Auto-ID
Center, headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It initiated the creation of a standard to facilitate full-scale interoperability between multi-vendor RFID systems and to propel RFID technology into a broad array of markets, notably supply chain. In 2003, the work that started under the auspices of the Auto-ID Center developed into a separate non-profit organization, EPCglobal. A joint venture between the European Article Numbering (EAN) Council and the Uniform Code Council (UCC), EPCglobal established and supports the Electronic Product Code (EPC) as the worldwide standard for immediate, automatic, and accurate identification of any item in the supply chain.
