Ho, Ho, Ho, Santa Uses RFID

After youngsters finish telling the old man their secrets, they have the option of buying photographs and videos of the experience. Before the RFID system was implemented, all pictures were printed and placed on a wall, and visitors identified their own photos among the rest. Now, they can proceed to a wooden counter with a computer screen resting on it and an RFID interrogator installed beneath. As a visitor approaches the counter, its interrogator reads that person's tag, causing any corresponding pictures and videos to automatically pop up on the screen.

The new system allows Santa's office to sell videos as well as photos—which can be ordered on the spot—and helps visitors quickly find images and, if they prefer, keep them private. Elves who used to spend their days sorting pictures now have more time to help Kris Kringle shovel snow or feed his reindeer.

Upon arrival, visitors are given a plastic souvenir card, to which they attach an adhesive RFID label.

The RFID system was the brainchild of Finnish imaging and video company Helrot. The firm met German RFID systems developer and integrator Microplex Printware at the CeBIT trade fair this spring, and the two decided to implement the solution together. Designed by Microplex, the system uses UPM Raflatac tags conforming to EPCglobal's Class 1 Gen 2 standard, as well as RFID interrogators from Italian supplier CAEN RFID. Microplex provided the middleware.

As Microplex was putting the system together, it needed to add an additional reader antenna to one gate to Santa's office because his decorations, covered in gold metallic paint, caused radio interference, impeding tag reads. "The third antenna scans at a different time than the first two," says Frank Gaertner, a project manager for RFID solutions at Microplex. The additional antenna, and the tuning and timing of the antennas, helped resolve such interference.

Read rates average between 95 and 100 percent, Gaertner says, depending on visitors' behavior. If they stand too close to one another or hold their hands over their cards, an interrogation may fail. "In logistics, a 95 percent read rate is not acceptable," he notes, "but for Santa, it's OK." The system was set up in mid-November. After testing, Santa formally accepted it in mid-December—just in time for throngs of holiday visitors to his snow-bedecked office.