Building Smart RFID Networks

By Hersh Bhargava

Application-Driven Smart RFID Networks
Data becomes valuable information if it is relevant to a recipient. In an application-driven RFID network, applications define the rules for processing RFID reads. The network layer executes those rules for organizing RFID data and then delivers quality information to its subscribers. The most common example would be an RFID network providing a location service. Anytime an application needed to know the last location of an EPC, it could query the RFID network to obtain it. This service could help with recall management or just-in-time replenishment if one knew how far the inventory reached in the supply chain.

Similarly, a smart RFID network can provide other services, such as dwelling times at a particular location, or the transit time between two locations. RFID networks can also provide complex services—for instance, "no product received (at a location)" or "no product stocked. "This service can help monitor promotion execution in the retail supply chain, or ensure customer satisfaction in any supply chain. Another example of complex service would be pushing alerts out to subscribers when an inventory is aging or has already reached the stale status.

Smart RFID Networks hide the complexities and limitations of RFID technology, while providing the right information to the right application at the right time. The topology of RFID interrogator networks depends upon the tracking and tracing capabilities needed to achieve enhanced process efficiency, better inventory control and improved business intelligence. The software stack of the EPC network consists of two distinct layers: namely, filtering and collection data using an Application-Level Events (ALE) interface, and EPC Information Services (EPCIS) with enterprise applications or with partners. The middle step of converting RFID data into information is vital for successful RFID network implementations, because of the sheer volume, granularity and nature of RFID data.

The cost of harnessing business intelligence increases as RFID data moves closer to applications. The implementation of RFID networks driven by target applications will lead to better business intelligence, faster and cheaper event-driven enterprise applications and more manageable and sustainable software architecture. Smart RFID networks can provide such application-level services as location, dwell times, transit times and quantity, and also issue alerts when exceptional situations—stale and aging inventory, for example—are detected.

Hersh Bhargava is the founder of RafCore Systems. He is the visionary behind the company's mission of enabling enterprises to respond in real time using the automatic data collection techniques that RFID provides.