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05.08

Burgeoning RFID Applications

By George McClure

This year, IEEE-USA co-sponsored its second conference on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. RFID has been a rapidly-adopted technology, largely on the basis of its potential for saving costs and improving productivity in distribution and consumer transactions. The market is estimated at $5 billion now, growing to over $25 billion by 2017.

Five IEEE societies have collaborated in the rolling out of an online magazine devoted to applications and practice, with the initial series (started in April 2007) devoted to RFID.

The Technology

There are standards for RFID operation in four frequency bands: <135 KHz, 13.56 MHz, 860-960 MHz, and 2.45 GHz. The two lower frequencies have slower read rates and larger tags, but better ability to be read near wet or metal surfaces. They feature passive-inductive coupling, while the two higher frequencies allow use of passive or active tags.

Most UHF RFID tags are passive, requiring no internal power to be read. The microchip in the tag is activated by a continuous wave signal from the reader, and responds with its identification code using backscattering of modulated electromagnetic waves [1]. The range at which the tag can be read depends on the power of the reader, up to 5 meters [2]. These tags cost less than ten cents each in production quantities [http://rfdesign.com/news/RFID-Gen-2/]. Two other tag types are semi-passive — a battery operates the microchip, providing longer read range, and active — transmitting RF signals to the reader rather than backscattering, and possibly storing other information as well. By 2010, it is estimated that the number of RFID tags manufactured worldwide will reach 33 billion, up from more than 1.3 billion in 2005 [http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177101437].

Airline Baggage Handling Can Benefit

Two years ago, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) adopted a standard for UHF RFID baggage tags. There are 1.7 billion bags handled every year, with 1 percent mishandled. Special handling for each misplaced bag costs $100 on average. Current bar code readers can be confused by a crumpled paper tag on a bag’s handle and the bag must be visible to be routed. And according to Pankaj Shukla, director of RFID business development for Motorola, roughly 85 percent of bar code tags can be read successfully, whereas, trials of RFID technologies in baggage handling scenarios had success rates from the low 90s to 99 percent [3]. In contrast to the optical bar code, the read range is such that the bag need not be visible to be routed. If a passenger with checked baggage does not board a flight, then the bag(s) must be removed. With RFID tags, bags can be quickly located in cargo compartments and removed with less delay than is required now. The RFID baggage tag costs 21 cents now, but that is expected to drop. Because of the cost, most trials are being conducted at overseas airports rather than in the United States [http://morerfid.com/details.php?subdetail=Report&action=details&report_id=1421&print=true]. IATA estimates that the universal use of RFID baggage tags will save the industry $760 million annually [www.iata.org/pressroom/briefings/2005-11-18-01].

Other Applications

Health Care

RFID has great potential for reducing costs and errors in health care delivery; it can be linked to existing information systems to offer benefits for patient care and hospital systems [4]. It can assist in every step of the process, from admission through examination, care, recovery, discharge and billing. In recovery, for example, the patient is encouraged to walk for exercise. Patient movement from and back to the room are recorded as are meals, medical supplies, and medications consumed by the patient. The location of physicians can be tracked within a medical complex.

Fare Collection Systems

E-ZPass (NE United States) and FasTrak (California) are examples of RFID technologies in use for electronic toll collection systems. Such systems electronically debit the accounts of registered users without requiring them to stop to pay tolls, easing congestion and eliminating or reducing delays on toll roads.

Toll collection systems benefit from fewer fare evasions with RFID. Atlanta’s MARTA rail transit system has introduced the passive RFID “Breeze” card that can be used over and over, month after month. The system confirms the balance on the card (which can be recharged) before opening the toll gate. Savings are estimated at $10 million per year [www.rfidplus.org/?p=32].

The Washington, D.C., Metro has a plastic card, called, SmarTrip, that can hold value up to $300 and can be replaced if lost, with the value at time of reporting loss, on the replacement. Swiping this card over the turnstiles is faster than inserting and retrieving the conventional imprinted paper fare card [www.wmata.com/riding/smartrip.cfm].

Libraries using RFID can speed checkout and reduce the number of books that are misplaced but not checked out.

E-passports — a Step Forward?

The U.S. State Department last year started issuing e-passports with embedded RFID chips, and required all foreign passports from the 27 countries whose citizens can enter the United States without a visa to do likewise. The chip operates at 13.56 MHz and contains the holder's information and a biometric identifier, such as a digital photograph. Some 15 million people enter the country each year under the visa waiver program [www.news.com/2100-7348_3-6130016.html]. The International Civil Aviation Organization has standardized the specifications for machine-readable travel documents, including their protection [http://mrtd.icao.int]. There have been privacy concerns voiced, if the documents, intended to be read by radio at distances of a few centimeters, can be read at greater distances. With boosted readers, they can be read from a few meters away. This gives rise to concerns about tracking the document holders and perhaps cloning their information. However, when closed, a U.S. passport cannot be read thanks to a metallic shield in the e-passport’s cover that forms a Faraday cage around the chip. It is believed that only U.S. passports use this shield.

Passports include some holder data in optical character recognition form in the machine-readable zone (MRZ), so that it can be compared with the RFID-stored data, verifying that the passport is genuine. The comparison is Basic Access Control. The RFID chip includes a digital version of the passport photo. Eventually, more private information can be added — more biometrics, a digital signature, profession, mailing address, telephone number — even religion [5]. Privacy enhancements do exist. A public key signature can be used with Active Authentication; Belgium and the Czech Republic now use this technique. But earlier Belgian passports with RFID lacked privacy measures [www.dice.ucl.ac.be/crypto/passport].

Immigration control points benefit from the RFID-equipped passports because they simplify checking against a database for terrorists or other undesirables. But critics charge that the information available to hotel clerks and shopkeepers from e-passports amounts to broadcasting your details to the world. RFID readers are available for about the cost of the passport itself [www.rfidiot.org]. Hackers have demonstrated the ability to duplicate the chip data in RFID passports, but there is dispute about whether the electronic signature, if encoded, can be copied [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/6182207.stm].

Because of higher processing costs, the U.S. State Department had announced an increase in application fees for tourist, business and student visas from $100 to $131, effective 1 January 2008. Applications from the 27 visa-waiver countries will not be affected.

A newspaper investigation into e-passport contracting by the Government Printing Office (GPO) found that the non-profit GPO is charging the State Department 85 percent more than production costs (totaling about $100 million in 16 months); that the patented chip provided by Smartrac Technology, Ltd., in the Netherlands, is inserted in the cover in Europe before the RFID wire antenna (used to couple to readers at border inspection points) is outfitted at a factory in Ayutthana, Thailand; that blank passports had been mailed from Thailand to the Netherlands by unsecure commercial couriers; and that the patented technology had been stolen by the Chinese in Thailand. The completed blank passports are processed for issuing by the State Department. The report quoted the GPO assertion that no U.S. company could make the chips needed. A back-up facility, originally planned for the Nevada Test Site, a secure desert location, was moved in 2006 to NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center, near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The site was in the path of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 [6].

Animal Tags

Branding irons are obsolete. Animal tagging is a growing market for High Frequency (HF) RFID tags. In China, pig tagging costs 35 cents per tag, expected to drop to 17.5 cents in a year. Low Frequency (LF) animal ear tags cost $2 in Australia and western countries.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has initiated the National Animal Identification System, using RFID tags to track every farm animal in America. Participation is voluntary, but incentives are provided in the form of performance grants.

When a disease outbreak occurs, animal health officials need to know:

• Which animals are involved in a disease outbreak

• Where the infected animals are currently located

• What other animals might have been exposed to the disease

The goal is to be able to trace any disease outbreak within 48 hours. Small farmers are concerned about the cost of the program. The plan, with timelines, can be reviewed at [http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/naislibrary/
documents/plans_reports/NAIS_Business_Plan.pdf].

Another advantage of unique ID ear tags has been discovered by dairy farmers using automatic milking machines. Each cow can be identified as she moves to her own stall to be milked and weighed. The exact time of milking is left to the cow. Detailed records, keyed to the ID tag number, are stored for later inspection and trend analysis.

Rocky Road for Progress

Applications for RFID are burgeoning. Wal-Mart gave the technology a boost in 2003 when it began requiring suppliers to put the tags on shipment it received. The Department of Defense mandated the use of the tags by its 60,000 suppliers. Some other retail chains (Target and Best Buy) have followed suit, but since the suppliers have to pay for the tags, the adoption is slower than once expected. By the end of 2004, a global standard was adopted for UHF RFID (Gen2); this required junking millions of now obsolete tags and investing in new readers. The competition between HF and UHF tag technology meant that some supply chains incorporated both. Interoperability is highly desirable; last year the European Union specified that UHF was the preferred choice, but even so, there are different definitions for UHF in the United States, European Union and Japan.

Orders for HF RFID card systems make China the world’s largest RFID market now. The applications there include national identification and e-cash. Other orders for secure LF systems are also rolling in [www.idtechex.com/products/en/articles/00000527.asp].

For high-end merchandise — clothing, prescription drugs, and consumer electronics — RFID tags are a logical choice. RFID can help with inventory control and prevent counterfeiting. But RFID still cannot compete with a bar code on a candy bar wrapper [www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9249278].

RFID contactless key fobs have found application in casinos and law enforcement, but enjoyed limited success as credit card substitutes. American Express is dropping the key fob after six years [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120692677830875887.html]. But small battery-assisted passive (BAP) fobs have a range of 75 feet and can be used to guard against movement into or out of a restricted area [www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/4009/1/1/].

RFID-based car remotes are popular, using cryptography for security. A popular system, KeeLog, used in Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo, reportedly has been cracked by German scientists [www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Car-Remotes-Hacked/?kc=EWKNLSTE041008FEA1]. It may be easier to defeat the door lock than the ignition lock, where a separately chipped key (with another security system) must be in the lock.

A small RFID capsule can be implanted in a domestic pet, to keep track of location and prove ownership if it strays. Some elder care facilities use the implants to keep track of people. Employees with implants can dispense with clip-on ID badges, and gain access to facilities for which they are authorized. In Spain and the Netherlands, night clubs allow patrons with implants to jump to the head of the line and to run up bar tabs — dispensing with cash inside the clubs. Proponents claim that implanted RFIDs are the answer to identity theft. Others aren’t so sure this is a good idea, given the privacy invasion it makes possible [www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9867324].

Privacy Invasions?

The legal implications are fascinating — does a RFID scan from an implant that shows you were in a certain location at a given time become legal evidence that can be used against you, or would that violate the fifth amendment against self-incrimination? Already, corporate e-mail is considered a legal record. The 18-minute gap in a tape recording during the Nixon era has been replaced as a concern currently with missing White House e-mails. Speed-Pass records (another RFID application) showing vehicle locations based on automatic toll collection have been used in divorce cases. There can be disputes there about who was driving the car at the time that would not occur with location data from implants.

Counterfeiting by Cloning

In some applications, such as access control, cloning is a concern. With the proper equipment, someone coming near a RFID tag or ‘key’ can replicate it if the key is not shielded [www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html].

References

1. L. Ukkonen, et al., "Read Range Performance Comparison of Compact Reader Antennas for a Handheld UHF RFID Reader," IEEE Applications & Practice, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2007.
    

2. P. Krishna and D. Husak, "RFID Infrastructure," IEEE Applications & Practice, RFID, September 2007
    

3. M.C. O'Connor, "Emirates RFID Bag-Tracking Pilot Takes Off," RFID Journal, 19 February 2008, Available Online www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3930/1/1/.
    

4. A. Cangialosi, J. Monaly, Jr., and S. Yang, "Leveraging RFID in Hospitals: Patient Life Cycle and Mobility Perspectives," IEEE Applications & Practice, RFID, September 2007
    

5. P. Gutmann, D. Naccache, and C. Palmer, "E-Passport Threats," IEEE Security & Privacy, Vol. 5, No. 6, November/December 2007
    

6. B. Gertz, “Outsourcing Passports,” Washington Times, in 3 parts: March 26-28, 2008

George F. McClure is Technology Policy editor for IEEE-USA Today’s Engineer and a member of IEEE-USA's Committee on Transportation and Aerospace policy. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.

Opinions expressed are the author's.