As
far back as 1960s, the barcodes were used in industrial work
environments. In the early 1970s, common barcodes started appearing on
grocery shelves. To automate the process of identifying grocery items,
UPC barcodes were placed on products and were used to mechanize the
process of checking out in store. They are in use today also for
allotment, supply chain, retail stores, apparel shops, book stores,
movie galleries and libraries etc.
REID is also in use since 1990, to find out the friend and foe military
airplanes. Its use in supply chain management is the new concept. The
RFID based Electronic Product Code (EPC) are much in use because in Bar-code technology
an optical reader is required to read the data manually while in RFID
based EPC, data is read through the radio signals from the RFID tag with
an RF reader automatically.
RFID
tags can even be implanted in human and animal bodies. They work
efficiently across visually and environmental challenging conditions
such as human body, paint, smoke, fog, snow ice, and other, where
barcodes and other optically read technologies do not work.
For
RFID tags to replace barcodes they must present a convincing value
scheme at reasonable cost. Some of the advantages of RFID tags over
barcodes are associated with the ability to store information in the
tags which is dynamic i.e. can be updated as and when required. They do
not require line of sight for readouts and the tags can be read in a
multiplexed fashion. Since the RFID tags contains memory elements and in
barcodes the information is only printed in some sort of codes so the amount of information which can be stored in RFID is significantly greater than barcodes.
RFID
tags have ability to incorporate additional functionalities like
environmental monitoring of temperature, humidity, pressure through
implanted circuitry. This functionality is not available with barcodes
and the information stored is also static.
Despite of all the above advantages of RFID over Barcodes, they also have some disadvantages because of which barcodes are still in existence.
Firstly,
Bar codes are printed directly on the paper or plastic objects.
Henceforth implementing an Barcode system if far cheaper than the RFID
technology.
Secondly,
RFID functions like a wireless network so the system may have areas
with weak signals. It's also possible that the system may experience
intervention from other source signals. Weak signals and obstruction
from other sources might damage an RFID tracking system which is not the
case with barcodes.
Thirdly,
the RFID system is not restricted to line-of-sight which means
malicious high-intensity directional antennas could be used to scan
susceptible tags. Scam is always an opportunity when the technology is
used for high-security operations, such as payment authentication.
Fourthly, a
bar code can be put on an any object regardless of whether it is RF-
lucent or RF-opaque. RFID tags can be read with difficulty if they are
placed on metal and some liquids in UHF and microwave frequency ranges.
Therefore, if an atmosphere has too much metal in it, an RFID system
might not work well.
Fifthly, Bar
code technology works on optics principles, whereas RFID technology
works on the principle of RF waves. There are no restrictions on
frequency of light, but are there on RF waves. Extensively varying
global limits apply on RFID system frequency ranges.
Lastly, increasing RFID technology uptake also depends on standardization of the society.
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