Tracking Technology - RFID & GPS

• RFID stands for Radio-Frequency IDentification. This commonly used acronym refers to a small electronic device that consists of a small chip and antenna. At this point in time with technology, the chip can contain approximately 2000 bytes of data or less.

• The RFID serves the same purpose as that of barcode or magnetic strips on the back of ATM cards etc. in the way that it provides a unique identifier and must also be scanned. The RFID is just seen as an update/upgrade of these items, and could potentially be much more effective and easy to use.

• RFID is said to work better and more efficiently than Barcodes

• As we are familiar with the current issues and problems relating to the actual checkout operators, either finding the barcode, positioning the barcode or actually struggling with missing barcodes. This is a very significant advantage of the RFID; the ease of reading the information on the tag is incomparable to that of reading a current barcode or swiping a credit card

• The RFID reader will read information from tags within a few feet, as much as 20 feet for high frequency devices. This will reduce the amount of time it takes to put all items onto the purchase by simply putting all your items under the reader and nearly instantly will have all the information on the POS. It could also be used to find items in store by perhaps having several readers on the roof and detecting where items are.

• This technology called RFID has been available for more than half a century, but as any new technology first arrives on the scene, it is too expensive first up. But in the last few years the RFID technology has significantly fallen in price as displayed by Alien Technology, where they have recently sold “500 million RFID tags to Gillette” these tags cost a mere 10 cents per tag.

• Another reason why it has taken so long for the RFID technology to come into common use is because there is a lack of standards in the industry and companies only invested in the RFID technology to identify items which they currently have, but one of its greatest uses could be when items are moving between companies or moving between countries etc.

GPS Tracking Technology

GPS tracking units also is a popular tracking device that is used today.  GPS uses the Global Positioning System.  This can be used to determine the precise location/position of a person, vehicle or some other asset, these assets are usually assets which is measured at regular intervals to track where it is going, and when it is going there (ie going to its correct destination at the right time) these services has been around since the year 1982.  When they are measured, they could either store it within the tracking unit, or they can send it of to a database or computer using cellular (GPRS), radio or satellite modem which is usually embedded in the unit.  GPS trackers fall into three categories:  Data Loggers, Data Pullers or Data Pushers.