Wal-Marts shift to Radio Frequency Identification Essay

Wal-Marts shift to Radio Frequency Identification - Essay Example With money, people could easily purchase exactly what they wanted or needed. This continued on for a few centuries and is still in use in the world though not in the same sense as it used to be before. Today science and technology have revolutionized each and every aspect of human life. Shopping and business are no exceptions-they too have been profoundly modified by technology. Credit cards, billing systems, shopping on the web, internet bank accounts and the system of barcodes on products are some of the examples that depict the extent to which technology has penetrated into this frontier. Even though many advances have been made, global concerns are growing regarding aspects like shoplifting, piracy and misappropriation of products. To check these many solutions have been proposed like the bar code system and most recently the RFID technology. This technology has both merits and demerits as does every other technology ever conceived. Wal Mart's decision to make use of it has given it an impetus. This essay describes about the prospects and aspects of RFID technology keeping Wal Mart in the background. RFID, an emerging technology, stands for Radio Frequency Identification. ...An RFID tag is a small object, such as an adhesive sticker, that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person. RFID tags contain antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. Passive tags require no internal power source." The tags are generally miniaturized electronic circuits enclosed in protective cases. When they absorb signal from a reading device they get activated and send out data to the reading device. When an RFID tag passes through the electromagnetic zone, it detects the reader's activation signal. The reader decodes the data encoded in the tag's integrated circuit (silicon chip) and the data is passed to the host computer for processing(RFID: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2005). In this way details like its location etc can be ascertained by the reading device. Based on power consumption tags are classified as active or passive. Passive RFID tags have no internal power supply. They do not contain any batteries inside them. The minute electrical current induced in the antenna by the incoming radio frequency signal provides just enough power for the tag to transmit a response. Lack of an onboard power supply means that the device can be quite small and light weight: commercially available products exist that can be embedded into many products. As of 2005, the smallest such devices commercially available measured 0.4 mm 0.4 mm, which is thinner than a sheet of paper; such devices are practically invisible to the naked eye (RFID: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2005).