The Chasm Between RFID Standards and Implementation

The ISO and EPCglobal RFID standards have very precise rules for creating the UII that would be placed into MB01. They are unambiguous, each method resulting in a unique name. They are also complex. In the case of EPCglobal-based structures, any of the identity types as described in the published TDS 1.4 or draft TDS 1.5 could be used as a name. For ISO-based structures, the use of the data identifier "25S" as the name serves the same purpose. The B-11 Rev 8 standard contains details on and examples of both schemes.

There are also several methodologies of encoding the additional data into MB11, outlined in the ISO and EPCglobal standards. Again, B-11 Rev 8 provides details and examples.

One example is a gas tank use-case that was pulled from the B-11 Rev 8 standard. It is a real example of how information can be stored on a 2D Data Matrix symbol or an RFID tag, while maintaining the data's syntax.

Note: The details provided in this example are highlights of the actual data-handling process. This example is provided as an overview to aid in understanding, and is not intended to be fully descriptive. The actual data shown is not real.

Figure 1: Components of a Gas Tank—"As Built'" Example