26 Object-Oriented Solutions for Information Storage on RFID Tags Cristina Turcu, Remus Prodan, Marius Cerlinca and Tudor Cerlinca Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava Romania 1. Introduction Already moving into the real world through a wide variety of applications, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology uses radio waves to uniquely identify an entity (object, animal, or person). This data collection technology uses electronic tags to store identification data and other specific information, and a reader to read and write tags. A tag is a chip with an antenna. Tags fall into three categories: are active (battery- powered), passive (the reader signal is used for activation) or semi-passive (battery-assisted, activated by a signal from the reader). In certain tag types, the information on the tag is reprogrammable. There are existing and proposed RFID standards that deal with the air interface protocol (the way tags and readers communicate), data content (the way data is organized or formatted), conformance (ways to test whether products meet the standard) and applications (how standards are used on shipping labels, for example). RFID solutions run at several frequencies: • Low – from 125 KHz to 134 KHz (LF) • High – 13.56MHz (HF) • Ultra High – 860-960 MHz (UHF) • Micro Wave – 2.45 GHz The cost of simple RFID tags is likely to fall to roughly $0.05/unit in the next several years (Sarma, 2001), while tags as small as 0.4mm × 0.4mm, and thin enough to be embedded in paper are already commercially available (Takaragi et al., 2001). Such improvements in cost and size will ensure a rapid proliferation of RFID tags in many new areas. The use of RFID is becoming more and more popular in industry, logistics, retail and other branches as an alternative to the barcode. In fact RFID tags are expected to replace conventional barcode labels due to their major benefits: high data storage capacity, read- write capability, read-speed rate, multiple entity identification, information updating, no- line-of-sight scanning, durability, and environmental resistance. But how much data should be placed on RFID tags? There are two schools of thought: 1. as little as possible (just an ID); 2. more in support of efficiency and performance (e.g. item name, security data, etc.). In the former case, the electronic product code (EPC) is a typical example. While the EPC standard continues to be adopted in various markets and employed in a wide range of applications (e.g. the retail supply chain), many RFID users are particularly interested in high-level functionality features to meet their own requirements. Using the EPC number as Open Access Database www.intechweb.org Source: Development and Implementation of RFID Technology, Book edited by: Cristina TURCU, ISBN 978-3-902613-54-7, pp. 554, February 2009, I-Tech, Vienna, Austria