RFID Journal Staff asked 10 years ago I am seeking an active RFID tag that we can sew into women's clothing. Is there a tag you would recommend for this application? Thanks.
—Name withheld
———
Active tags are, generally speaking, around the size of a pack of cigarettes. They have a hard plastic housing to protect the printed circuit board, antenna and battery. I've never worn women's lingerie, but my guess is that adding an active tag to such garments would be very uncomfortable for the wearer. I would suggest that you look into passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tags.
Checkpoint Systems offers a pocket tag in the form of a textile label that can be sewn into garments (see Are Any Tags Designed to Be Sewn Into the Hem of a Garment?). TexTrace also offers a tag that can be sewn directly onto a product, survive washes and remain largely invisible as an RFID tag (see Luxury Apparel Maker to Test TexTrace's Fabric RFID Label). Smart Res offers a tag set in a thin layer of glue, thermal-transferred and attached to fabric, making the tag an imperceptible part of the final product. And Primo1D offers E-Thread that can be sewn into a garment for anti-counterfeiting applications. The thread has a tiny embedded RFID chip with a thin antenna (see E-Thread Provides Discrete Anti-Counterfeiting or Tracking Solutions).
—Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal
Previous Post How Can I Use RFID in a Simple Web Application Project? »