Post Danmark to Tag Its Roll Cages

Between 40 and 50 interrogators (readers), connected to antennas, will cover around 200 gates at the entrances and exits to Post Danmark's facilities. The new system will detect and record each cage as it leaves the facilities by reading the unique ID number on the RFID tag attached to each roll cage. The cage is made of metal wire and measures approximately 6 feet in height and 20 inches in width.

The deployment is scheduled to start in June, using Lyngsoe's CT21 semi-active tags. Measuring 100mm by 150mm by 2mm and weighing 12 grams, each tag carries 256 bits of memory, used to store the ID number. When the tag enters a read field, a 125 kHz signal transmitted by an RFID reader wakes up the tag's transponder. Once powered up, the tag's processor starts running, utilizing the high-frequency 433.92 MHz band to transmit the tag's ID to the reader. After this, the transponder will shut down once more, awakening again only when the transponder enters another read field.

Post Danmark can already read these tags as part of its Automatic Mail Quality Measurement (AMQM) infrastructure system, also supplied by Lyngsoe. Readers installed at key Post Danmark distribution hubs measure RFID-tagged parcels and letters as part of the International Post Corp.'s (IPC) quality-of-service measurement system. This system is used to monitor postal services in more than 50 countries (see Big Blue Puts Stamp on RFID).

For the new roll-cage tracking deployment, Post Danmark's existing interrogator antennas will be upgraded to support individual gate allocation, automatic load control on all gates and automatic in-and-out registration on all gates. It will also handle automatic registration of handling time in hubs and sorting centers, Lyngsoe reports. The carrier's existing RFID system, installed in selected distribution offices, and its existing middleware and back-end applications, will be retained and upgraded with all these new features.

Initially, Post Danmark will not be using the new RFID system to track which customers have which roll cages. Instead, it will track cages as they leave for a specific delivery area—which can include more than one customer—and as they return to Post Danmark's facilities. However, according to Lyngsoe, the postal carrier hopes to install RFID interrogators on its delivery trucks and link those readers to its system via a cellular phone connection. In that way, it can record the drop-off and pickup of individual cages at customer sites.