It appears as though some are taking sides in the RFID Frequency War. Most agree the *war* is between 900MHz UHF and 13.56MHz HF as the better solution for item level RFID tagging. Last month at the RFID World Conference in
Dallas, Texas several people asked me "what frequency is going to win the war for item level tagging"? Then in just the past couple of weeks there
have been several noteworthy op ed, articles and events that continue to explore this question.
There was that report from Odinabout
UHF versus HF for Pharma SCM and ePedigree. One important note is how the
conclusions were based on their comparison of E-field UHF with H-field HF.
And there have been several other
recent op eds and articles [pdf]
that further explain some of the issues important to this *war*.
I think the discussion (thankfully) is starting to expand to include other factors that are equally as important as frequency. Namely, some of these articles and reports are
starting to discuss "coupling".
Finally, the industry is
starting to understand that coupling, the wireless but physical connection
between tag and reader, is independent of frequency.Coupling is something the industry is only
starting to recognize as a key RFID systems level consideration. Here are a
few terms to keep straight for these two basic types of coupling:
Electric field coupling, E-Field, Capacitive Coupling, Far-Field, Dipole antenna,
Magnetic field coupling, H-Field, Inductive Coupling, Near-Field, Loop antenna
As a long time technical
expert, I started SkyeTek already with several years experience making E-field
tags and readers at both LF and HF – I think before Matrics and Alien were
sampling their first UHF tag silicon.Now there appears to be a reverse opportunity for making inductive
coupling tags with UHF tag silicon.The
promise is to solve some remaining problems with UHF item level tagging, and to
further drive the economy of scale for Gen2.
Indeed, SkyeTek applauds
some of the new tag product announcements and the flurry of reader, antenna,
and installation development that will necessarily follow to provide among
other things - UHF item level tagging.
The result is that more
products, systems and applications than ever will become RFID-enabled.
Until now the industry has
focused more on the differences than the similarities between HF and UHF.Now that's starting to change as awareness
continues to grow. SkyeTek is a neutral
party because we provide Tagnostic(R) HF and UHF RFID reader technologies that
easily configure for use with either type of coupling. Because we don't prefer either frequency HF
or UHF, we can provide the best solution for our customers, instead of looking
to force our solution on the world.