The European Telecommunications Standards Institute Task Group 34 (TG34) hosted a meeting between the vendors, as well as users of the technology, in Mainz, Germany as part of a review of the existing EN 302 208 RFID standard, which was first published in September 2004.
While there is currently no technical barrier for RFID tags moving between Europe and the US, there are specific regulatory requirements for usage of the technology in Europe. This leads to a situation whereby using current techniques means insufficient channel capacity when a large number of RFID readers that are in relative close proximity operate simultaneously.
The demonstration in Mainz showed that it is possible to overcome this limitation, said John Falck, who chairs the TG34. The next step will be to validate the concept in an ETSI test using many interrogators at a live distribution centre. If successful, Falck said he hoped the technique would permit as many as 200 RFID readers to operate simultaneously at a single site.
This is less of an issue in the US, partly because the frequency band assigned to RFID in the country is larger than that in Europe. In other words, there is more available frequency available in the US for a larger number of readers to operate in at once.
In the US, RFID technology can operate in the 902MHz to 928MHz frequency band. But in Europe, this band is occupied by GSM phones, so RFID has been relegated to the much smaller 865MHz to 868MHz band.
This smaller band has created the problem of fewer RFID readers being able to operate at once in close quarters. This issue has been compounded by less available physical space, in general, in EU countries compared to the US, Falck said.
Because of differences in material handling processes [in Europe], we are reading unwanted tags. For example, we are experiencing this problem at adjacent dock doors of warehouses. This appears to be less of a problem in the States, Falck said.
Of course, this limits the size of RFID deployments in the region.
To overcome this difficulty, members of TG34 have developed special portals that substantially resolve that problem, Falck said. These portals have already been proven in tests conducted by TG34 at the end of last year.
In parallel with its work on EN 302 208, TG34 has developed a Code of Practice.
What we were trying to do was ensure a minimum level of acceptable performance of the technology, Falck said. RFID users need to be able to operate the technology in such a way that they will not produce unacceptable levels of interference between both each other and with other users of the band.
