Tell me about this stuff!

Radio Frequency identification - RFid, the technology of tomorrow, is here — today. In fact, over 500 million tags are already in use worldwide, yielding benefits from livestock tracking to vehicle immobilization.

RFID is an automatic method of identifying unique items using radio waves. It is comprised of the following subsystems:

1. Tag aka Transponder
2. Reader aka Interrogator
3. Air Interface
4. CCC - Computer Command and Control

Typically, a Reader sends a radio signal over the air interface to a Tag. The tag maintains digital information in its microchip and responds back to the reader with its own radio signal sent over the air interface. For you geeks, think of a Tag as low power transceiver with an integrated database. Multiple Tags form a peer to peer distributed database. CCC is the layer of the system that includes a master computer and software which controls the Reader as a slave node. Since Reader's are essentially machine handlers they have no intelligence and always wait for CCC to tell them what to do. In effect, CCC is like the brain for the body and thus controls all activity for the local RFID infrastructure.

Its important to realize that RFID isn't just about the hardware, tags and receivers that comprise the physical infrastructure. It's also about the design and velocity of data that an RFID solution creates and streams. Clever integration of this data with your existing business processes can offer a huge payoff. After all, even the best technology is only as good as the process foundation it works from.

Unless you live in a cave, you know RFID is no longer a "coming soon" technology enhancement. Large enterprises like Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense have adopted RFID to reinvent how they perform. New standards and advances in antenna theory, semiconductors, semantic internet, and wireless have converged to create new applications for RFID.

In my opinion, RFID will create the world's largest information network in the next decade while simultaneously redefining the retail experience, supply chain management and a new paradigm known as the Real Time Enterprise. It's here, and it promises to establish its place as a fundamental component of your business tactics.