RFID and Internet of Things

Great efforts are being taken to improve the interoperability of Internet-connected devices to further enhance communication.

14:09 31 May 2017

The plan is to "define a common communications framework based on industry standard technologies to wirelessly connect and intelligently manage the flow of information among personal computing and emerging IoT devices, regardless of form factor, operating system or service provider."

 

This raises the question of whether or not it can be expanded to include RFID considering that various RFID systems contain a variety of informational data, require specific protocols, and operate on a very wide frequency spectrum. Could efforts also be taken so smart phones, iPads, and other current mobile devices be used as readers? It would be revolutionary if mobile devices had the ability to do such as well as capability to remotely transfer the acquired data to any point of the world.

 

Such technology can speed up payments for toll roads, for example. When users pass a toll point with insufficient funds in their account, they are warned with a yellow light informing them of their pending problem. Instead of stopping at one of the local toll offices to reload money into their account, wouldn’t it be more convenient if drivers can simply point their mobile device at the RFID tag, select an application on the mobile device to send funds and send the message to the toll agency?

 

Another application that could benefit from the concept of an open Internet architecture would be inventory control. Most RFID applications use handheld readers for the collection of information from tags in warehouses. The process can be improved by expanding the readers’ capabilities to include an Internet connection so the information they have captured could be transferred in real-time to all hosts required.