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Radio Frequency Identification ( Rfid ) Technology

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Introduction
History of RFID
How does it work?

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has a long-standing history despite its more recent application in society and infrastructure. The understanding of electromagnetic energy in the early 1800s followed by the discovery that light and radio waves are a form of electromagnetic energy by Michael Faraday in 1846 began the process to RFID technology. The advances led to German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz being the first to transmit and receive radio waves in 1887. (Landt, History of RFID, p. 7). RFID technology became known because of its use in World War II aviation technology. The British Royal Air Force used early RFID during the war in its Identify Friend or Foe systems (IFF) to distinguish allied aircraft from unknown aircraft. The military continues to use more advanced forms of IFF technology today. But early patents in radio transmission for automatic object detection preceded early RFID technology – including the Radio Detection and Ranging system (RADAR) by Robert Watson-Watt in 1935. (Weis RFID) The key difference between RADAR and RFID is the ability to determine what is being detected, not just that it is present. The Germans developed the first known passive RFID system by simply rolling their planes while returning to base to change the signal received using RADAR (RFID Journal). Because RFID functions similarly to RADAR “it is not unexpected that the convergence of these two radio disciplines and

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