Short for radio frequency identification, RFID is a dedicated short range communication (DSRC) technology. The term RFID is used to describe various technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects.

With RFID, the electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the RF (radio frequency) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is used to transmit signals. An RFID system consists of an antenna and a transceiver which reads the radio frequency and transfers the information to a processing device (reader) and a transponder, or RF tag, which contains the RF circuitry and information to be transmitted. The antenna provides the means for the integrated circuit to transmit its information to the reader that converts the radio waves reflected back from the RFID tag into digital information that can then be passed on to computers that can analyse the data.

In RFID systems, the tags that hold the data are broken down into two different types. Passive tags use the radio frequency from the reader to transmit their signal. Passive tags will generally have their data permanently burned into the tag when it is made, although some can be rewritten. Active tags are much more sophisticated and have on-board battery for power to transmit their data signal over a greater distance and power random access memory (RAM) giving them the ability to store up to 32,000 bytes of data.

SensorTec Security can deliver RFID solutions for your business using a number of different frequencies, depending on the application. With RFID being used just about anywhere and on many devices or objects, the unique ID it is assigned provides you with useful and relevant information pertaining to the specific devices which have been tagged with RFID.