RFID <> It Ain’t GPS

Well, Dave, if it isn’t GPS then why do we want to know about it here on GPS Tracking, the world’s most comprehensive repository of GPS trends, facts and trivia? 

Well, I’m really glad you asked that.  RFID is extremely important in the GPS world because of several factors:

• People hear “tracking” they think GPS.  So if you sell GPS tracking, are thinking about using GPS tracking, are a student wanting to learn the technology or just want to win bar room bets, you need to know the difference.
• RFID is “better” than GPS for many tracking applications.  The technologies are both complementary and in opposition to each other … and, as with any high-tech product you can’t find out the difference from typical media sources … even specialized trade publications don’t always do much of a job explaining things. And fast talking salesman? Haa, you just know his technology is best … for him, anyway.
• My last factor borrows strongly from the second bullet.  As the consumer or potential consumer of any high-tech product, you are the one single person who knows your own processes best.  There is no one size fits all solution.  For years I gave a lot of business to a communications technology provider.  I spent more time fighting with their engineers attempting to show them how their product would fit my process than I did with any of the rest of the acquisition process.  Learn the technology at the basic level and you may find you are a lot smarter than any of the “industry experts” who know their “black box” but don’t know your business.

When we talk RFID — Radio Frequency Identification products we are basically talking about a whole spectrum of offerings that need to be carved up into manageable pieces.  The first and most common way to divide and conquer is to split the offerings onto Passive RFID abs Active RFID. 

The Passive RFID designation simply means you use some sort of tag device to identify something you want tracked and the tag is totally passive … it can only make itself known to the world by be scanned or read using some sort of sensor/reader that “excites” the tag and gathers the information.  The key point to take away about passive RFID technology is that it only “works” when someone does something to make it work … kind of like a book on a library shelf … no information flows unless someone takes it down and opens it.

Active RFID uses some sort of device attached to the object of interest that has a power source (typically a battery) and actively sends out information to the world.  Often this information is sent out even if there is no one to receive it … the person who wants to know information about the object being tracked has to set up a method to receive the data … and, of course, make sure no one else is reading it.  Think of active RFID as the opposite of the book analogy … it’s a battery-powered “boom box” broadcasting the contents of the book whether anyone wants it or not