A plethora of books have been published on radio frequency identification in the past few years, some useful, and some less so. A welcome new addition to any RFID library is RFID Technology and Applications (Cambridge University Press, July 2008), edited by Stephen B. Miles, Sanjay E. Sarma and John R. Williams.
Miles, Sarma and Williams are leaders of the Auto-ID Labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They’ve edited papers from some of the leading academics and researchers in the RFID field, who address critical topics and bring to bear their lab work and real-world experience in applying that research.
The book covers passive and active RFID systems and a wide variety of topics, including the challenges of RFID implementations, common integration issues, optimization of tag performance, and methods for evaluating RFID, real-time-location systems (RTLS) and sensors. It also covers the use of RFID in the retail supply chain, and applications in product life-cycle management, anti-counterfeiting and cold-chain management.
One thing that makes this book different from others is that it includes contributions from many of the world’s leading RFID researchers, who have been working with end users and vendors to solve implementation issues. Among the contributors are:
• Hao Min, director of the Auto-ID Lab at Fudan University, China
• Marlin H. Mickle, the Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering
• Gisele Bennett, professor and director of the GTRI Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory
• Bill C. Hardgrave, executive director of the University of Arkansas’ RFID Research Center
• Duncan McFarlane, Alan Thorne, Mark Harrison and Victor Prodonoff Jr. , who run the Aero-ID program at the Auto-ID Lab at Cambridge University
• J. P. Emond, co-director of the Center for Food Distribution and Retailing at the University of Florida, in Gainsville
• Thorsten Staake, Florian Michahelles, and Elgar Fleisch of the Auto-ID Lab at the University of St. Gallens, Switzerland
• Dieter Uckelmann, manager of LogDynamics Lab and a professor at the University of Bremen, Germany
RFID Technology and Applications is scheduled to be available this July, retailing at $120.