Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is one of the fastest growing wireless technologies in recent decades. The market volume of the RFID-related hardware and software exceeded $5 billion in 2009 and is expected to have an exponential growth of $25 billion within a decade. Contrary to other wireless mobile terrestrial and satellite communications that have only a few dedicated sectors of applications, RFID enjoys an infinite number of applications of tracking items, resources movement, supply chain management and logistics, and even monitoring the settlement of an implanted organ in a human body.
The derivatives of developing RFID for goods and services accelerated after the largest retail chain, Wal-Mart of USA, made it mandatory to tag each item they purchase from their vendors. The objective is to track the goods and services from their origin to the end of sale when boxes are crushed after the goods are sold. The process needs a huge amount of data gathering and processing.
However, the benefit is enormous because the data may provide not only the health of the goods and their inventory control and logistics, but also the customers’ buying patterns that can leverage the sales of items in a timely manner. Other organizations such as the US Department of Defense, K-Mart, and Myer in Australia followedWal-Mart’s practice. The outbreak of mad cow disease motivated Australia to implement a mandatory national livestock information management system. This is another step forward for mandatory RFID applications on a massive scale.
