Five major issues related to RFID technology

At present, although the main technical directions involved in RFID are developing rapidly, there are still bottlenecks in all aspects. From the current point of view, there are mainly five problems.

The standardization of RFID technology The earliest work of RFID began in 1995. The joint technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) organized this work. The series of RFID technical standards issued by ISO/IEC can be mainly divided into four categories: technical standards, data structure standards, equipment performance standards and application standards, in addition to some specifications. According to the content of the RFID technology standard formulated by ISO/IEC, it is based on the basic technical standards and data structure standards such as RFID encoding, air interface protocol, and reader/writer protocol, and defines the conditions of use, the size of the label, the location of the label paste, and the data. Specific performance requirements such as content formats and frequency bands are used, and application standards are established based on application areas such as data integrity and manual identification. The greatest significance of the RFID technology standard developed by ISO/IEC is universality. It provides a basic framework, taking into account the characteristics of different application fields and ensuring the specific requirements of each application field on the principle of ensuring interoperability and interoperability.

Five major issues that have an important impact on the development of RFID technology EPC Global is the world's second-largest RFID standardization organization organized by UCC and EAN. The center has developed EPC Global technology together with many corporate members. Standards, the focus of this standard is that the “Internet of Things” automatically identifies the infrastructure and the data carrier and content of the logo, and on the basic system of open technology and computer interconnection, realizes the exchange and sharing of commodity information, and transparently addresses the logistics supply chain. Sexuality and traceability. EPC Global is committed to establishing a standardized service network for electronic tag users worldwide, which has been widely used as the de facto largest standard in the industry. At present, EPC Global also submits some of its own technical standards to ISO in order to become an international standard, thus making its own technical standard system more competitive.

The third largest RFID technology standard in the world was drafted by the ubiquitous center led by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and its technical alliance members are mainly Japanese manufacturers. The ubiquitous central organization and its members rejected the EPC Global technical standards. The RFID-related standards developed by the organization also established a complete standard system, with its own ucode coding system, maintaining its independence and without compromising compatibility. The focus of this system places more emphasis on the security performance of networks and application systems.

In addition to these three major RFID technology standards organizations, there is also international AIM-global, the global automatic identification organization and the third world standard organization IP-X, to jointly promote the future IoT technology system.

The cost of electronic tags The cost of electronic tags has an extremely important impact on the promotion of RFID technology. Once they have low-cost electronic tags, they can be quickly applied. The electronic tags used in RFID systems are classified into active electronic tags (ie, active electronic tags) and passive electronic tags (ie, passive electronic tags). Active electronic tags are generally equipped with a battery as a power source, and the stored data content is large. Therefore, more information is included to realize more functions and the recognized space range is relatively large. The disadvantages are that the battery has a large size, a high price, and battery life. Determined by the power consumption of the tag. Passive electronic tags are small in size, low in cost, and easy to use, but their functions are limited. They contain a small amount of information and a short recognition distance. Due to the constraints of cost factors, the actual electronic tags currently used are mostly passive passive electronic tags. There are many factors affecting the price of electronic tags, but the most important are materials and electronic components. The volume and power consumption of electronic tags are also important factors affecting prices. Generally speaking, electronic tags with the same technical system and good compatibility are subject to volume Large, can often reduce the price of a single electronic tag.

Transmission Data Interference RFID technology uses a variety of frequency bands to achieve data communications, complete the identification of electronic tags and the ability to read and write data. Because of its use of non-contact communication methods, using electromagnetic waves as the transmission medium and free space as the transmission channel, the inductive coupling principle or backscattering working principle is generally used, and the specific frequency band and application principle are based on application requirements and application fields. Decision. When the electromagnetic wave propagates in space, reflection, refraction, scattering, and absorption phenomena cause attenuation of the signal due to loss, and time delay due to multipath effect, and the indoor space environment and the outdoor space environment have great Randomness makes data transmission interference difficult to analyze in a fixed condition model. In addition, due to the openness of space, various electromagnetic wave signals actually present also generate various types of interference on the spatial transmission channel. In the RFID system, due to the large number of tags, after the reader sends a signal, the response signals from different tags also interfere with each other. Even when multiple readers are used, the readers interfere with each other. In theory, the larger the RFID is. The more complex and prominent the system's own interference problems are. For these reasons, failures such as missed reading and unrecognized events may occur during the data read/write transmission.

Data collision In many applications of RFID systems, it is often necessary to perform read and write data operations on tens or even hundreds of tags in extremely short time segments (seconds), and signal transmissions overlap in the time domain. Generate data collision problems. The data collision problem is essentially a channel sharing problem. In the channel sharing problem, four types of time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), space division multiple access (SDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA) are generally used. Ways to solve, but in the RFID system is subject to power consumption and other factors, FDMA, SDMA, CDMA three methods are not applicable. Currently widely used anti-collision algorithms based on TDMA methods to solve the data collision problem: one is a deterministic algorithm based on binary numbers, and the other is an ALOHA-based uncertainty algorithm.

Data security RFID systems make heavy use of electronic tags. In this environment, business secrets of companies may leak. Security threats come mainly from label threats, cyber threats, and data threats. The computing power, storage space, and power supply of RFID tags are relatively limited. The cheaper electronic tags have weaker computing power, and the protection against security threats is worse. Due to the use of wireless communication, in the case of certain mediums that can be penetrated, for communication channels of up to 50 meters in length, criminals can use technical means to steal tag information, cover electronic tags or read electronic data in a covert manner. A reader of tag information launches an attack to intercept the message. For the electronic tag itself, the electronic tag with multiple reading and writing functions is relatively easy to use, but there are also more hidden dangers, the security protection strategy is particularly important; for wireless communication channels, it is vulnerable to the risk of illegal interception of communication data; For network connection, it is vulnerable to various attacks from the Internet. RFID systems should ensure confidentiality, data integrity, anti-spoofing authenticity, and privacy of communication information in terms of data security.