RFID Infrastructure — A Technical Overview

Geared to general interest readers and entry-level practitioners, this paper takes an in-depth look at the elements of an RFID infrastructure, including its tags and readers and protocol layers, and the roles they play. History has taught us that a technology cannot and will not be deployed pervasively and globally without a robust set of standard protocols specified between these entities.

First generation RFID systems were deployed at a single site usually with a handful of readers communicating over dedicated links to one or a few application servers. Such architecture (see Figure 1) works fine for pilot and proof-of-concept projects, but does not scale up readily to enterprise implementations with more readers, more sites and more applications.

On a global scale, RFID readers could easily become one of the most densely deployed and numerous network devices in the world, with many analysts predicting over 100 million RFID readers connected globally within 10 years. But, before even contemplating a vision of ubiquitous RFID deployment, today's enterprises are experiencing scaling challenges for even very modest deployments. In fact, the issues associated with rolling out, managing and operating 5 or more readers at more than a couple of facilities are significant and most IT departments are not equipped to support field trials involving server-based RFID middleware for extended periods of time. Connectivity at such scale challenges a network's ability to absorb compounding demands. From radio frequency (RF) contention and bandwidth management to data management, back office integration and operational support— the proliferation of RFID technology is an escalating RF, network and data management challenge.