Mass Data Read/Write Technology for UHF‑Band RFID Tags

Passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags operating in the 860 to 960 MHz ultra-high frequency (UHF) band have a wider communication area than RFID tags operating in other frequency bands such as 13.56 MHz or 2.45 GHz. It is expected that UHF-band RFID tags will be used widely in physical distribution, manufacturing, and supply chain management (SCM) fields. To extend the RFID market, accurate data communication with RFID tags is indispensable. We have therefore developed a read/write middleware technology that improves the precision of reading from and writing to multiple RFID tags collectively. This technology uses infrared sensors for RFID position detection and optimizes the data read/write function. A system using this technology can communicate with 100 tags moving at 1 m/s with a read/write success rate of 99.999% or higher. These tags contain a Fujitsu RFID LSI having a built-in high write-performance FRAM that conforms to the ISO/IEC 18000-6 Type B air-interface protocol. This paper describes some of the problems in reading/writing multiple tags and describes a technology we developed to overcome them.