The Impact of Semi-Passive RFID Tags on the UK Warehouse Operations Performance - Essay Example

ight be used in warehousing and, when they are used, what benefits have resulted from their use in both the warehouse situation and allied industries. The challenges to be overcome in the use of BAP tags and the solutions offered will also be studied. Thereafter the principal objective will be - through an in depth survey of the industry - to attempt to understand the concerns of non-users, asses the reactions of current users and their future intentions, and offer suggestions for greater application of, and improvements in, BAP tags for the warehousing industry.

RFID technology was developed in World War II in order to distinguish between enemy and allied aircraft and to prevent “friendly fire” incidents (Mital & Ives, 2003; Weis, 2009). Refined in 1948 for ‘civilian’ use (Roberts, 2006) the system consists of “two basic components – a transponder [the tag itself] and a transceiver [the reader]. The tag comprises an antenna and an integrated circuit which requires a power input (Mital & Ives, 2003). This comes from the transceiver [reader] through a tiny antenna.

The transponder gathers energy from the magnetic field, processes the information and passes it back to the reader for processing (Mital & Ives, 2003). There are three types of tag: (a) passive - draws energy from the transponder (b) active, containing a small battery and (c) semi-passive - battery powered but requires signal from the transponder for activation [i.e. conserves energy when dormant] (Angeles, 2005). Ambient vibration energy was successfully used to boost BAP battery power (Lai et al., 2005). The performance of the tags depends on their type and the frequencies used.

They may be divided roughly into three groups: (a) low [100-500 kHz] - tags are mostly passive and the reading distance is short [0-3.5 m]; (b) intermediate [10-15 MHz] - reading range of 0-10 m; (c) high [850-950 MHz and 2.4-5.8 GHz] - the reading distance is commonly 50-100 m with, under favourable