Chipless RFID
by Raghu Das
May 1, 2007
RFID
tags that do not contain a silicon chip are called chipless tags. These
chipless tags could eventually be printed directly on products and packaging
for 1¢. Far more versatile and reliable, the tags could replace 10 trillion
barcodes per year. This article reports some of the findings from a new study
on the topic.
RFID is a powerful enabling technology with ever-expanding
application. However, the largest potential applications of RFID, such as
consumer packaged goods, postal items, drugs and books, can only be fully
addressed if tag prices drop to less than 1¢, including fitting them in place.
These applications offer potential sales of ten trillion tags per year, but
silicon chips will always represent a small proportion of such tags due to
cost. Even without the expense of a silicon chip, a fitted cost means that,
like 95% of barcodes today, the majority of highest volume RFID tags must be
applied directly to products and packaging to achieve a fitted cost of well
under one cent. A new report based on new research by IDTechEx analyses the
situation. Chipless RFID Forecasts, Technologies & Players
2006-2016 is the only report to assess all the technologies,
barriers, players and forecasts for chipless RFID.
What is Chipless RFID?
RFID tags that do not contain a silicon chip are called
chipless tags. The primary potential benefit of the most promising chipless
tags is that they could eventually be printed directly on products and
packaging for 1¢, thus replacing ten trillion barcodes per year with something
far more versatile and reliable.
The mainstream types of chipless tags are digitally encoded and work at a range
of more than one-millimeter, like silicon chips. Their potential markets go
beyond the lowest cost/highest volume potential markets because they have other
benefits beyond cost. Today they are sometimes sold for a higher price than
silicon chip tags, and at a lower price at other times; this will continue to
be the case. Unique signature and analog artifacts, such as the magnetically
encoded stripe in a banknote or microwave-reflecting fibers in security paper,
can be sensed at one millimeter away and therefore fit into our definition of
RFID, but they have little application beyond anti-counterfeiting. Therefore,
we discuss them only briefly in this report and omit them from our statistics.
The next 10 years will see chipless tags gain market share rapidly. The numbers
sold globally will rise from 5 million (0.4%) in 2006 to 267 billion (45%) in
2016. By value, chipless versions will rise from $1.2 million (0.1%) in 2006 to
$1.39 billion — a more modest 13% of all income from RFID tags in 2016, because
most of the increase in penetration will be due to price advantage. Including
infrastructure, software and services, this represents a $2.8 billion market
for chipless RFID systems in 2016. Thereafter, chipless tags will rapidly come
to dominate the RFID market, though the most technically capable chips — such
as financial cards containing microprocessors, 5.8 GHz tags for non-stop road
tolling or ultra wide band tags for real time location systems — will continue
to be made using silicon chips.
Many Chipless Technologies but Few Winners
The
first generation of chipless technologies did not meet open standards for use
by many service providers, and no attempt was made to write such standards for
them. Many chipless technologies were offered, including acoustomagnetic, swept
RF inductor capacitor arrays and electromagnetic RF sputtered film — each a
multi-bit version of one of the three types of anti-theft tag in common use.
Others have come in the form of diode arrays, surface acoustic wave (SAW)
devices and chemicals that emit high frequencies when moved. However, only
acoustomagnetic tags for error prevention in healthcare and SAW tags for
non-stop road tolling and manufacturing have achieved sales above one million
tags. AstraZeneca’s acoustomagnetic tags sell to the tune of 4.5 million every
year. However, this design is difficult to cost-reduce further, and it has
performance limitations such as rigidity. The main characteristic of most of
the first generation chipless technologies was that they were pursued by small,
undercapitalized companies whose technical limitations were troublesome in the
marketplace.
Second-Generation Chipless Tags
In contrast to first-generation chipless tags, SAW tags can
be improved technically and cost-reduced a great deal. They also store plenty
of data and operate at a popular frequency used by conventional chip RFID. This
means they can be the basis of large closed and open systems. Indeed, initial
work has been done by EPCglobal to incorporate SAW capability in the standards
it develops within ISO.
Two other technologies are also very promising. New participants have created
electromagnetic tags based on nothing more than printed stripes of conductive
ink on paper or low cost plastic film. In addition, about 40 companies are
working on thin film transistor circuits (TFTCs) — most of them capable of
being printed at high speed on low-cost plastic film. TFTCs can have the same
electronic circuit as that in the silicon RFID chip, so, subject to limitations
of the materials used, they can use the same frequencies and standards as
chip-based RFID. The ability to operate at 13.56MHz is extremely important, as
55% of tags ever made have operated at this frequency and the figure will be
over 70% in 2016. It is the preferred frequency for cards, tickets, library,
laundry, pharmaceutical and postal items.
The main business characteristics of second-generation chipless technologies
are that they are being backed by some of the world’s largest companies and
some well-capitalized small ones. Many of them are in a position to be both
sellers and users, including IBM, Hewlett Packard, Xerox, 3M, Toshiba, Dai
Nippon Printing, Toppan Printing, and Samsung. Packaging and paper giants such
as Mreal, MeadWestvaco and International Paper are also involved.
Best for Specific Applications
The
most promising chipless technologies will be geared toward certain
applications. Even then, they are not suitable for many opportunities within
these sectors, and in some — such as air baggage and animals — the standards
are already against them. The best sectors for chipless are nevertheless items
(books at manufacture, library, laundry, pharmaceutical, consumer goods, archives,
postal); smart tickets/banknotes/ other high-volume secure documents; air
baggage; animals; and people, such as prisoners, parolees, invalids, and
visitors to leisure facilities.
For more information, contact Corinne Jennings at c.jennings@idtechex.com;
call + 44 (0)1223 813703; or visit www.idtechex.com.
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