A global standard for RFID

ISO accepts EPCglobal's Gen2 protocol for UHF tags and readers

By Corinne Kator, Associate Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 7/17/2006

The RFID industry finally has an international compatibility standard for UHF RFID hardware. The International Standards Organization (ISO) has accepted EPCglobal’s UHF Generation 2 air interface protocol, making it the international standard for communication between UHF tags and readers.

“The publication of the amendment gives the EPCglobal UHF Gen2 specification global approval and makes it available to an even wider range of applications,” says Steve Halliday, chairman of the ISO subgroup responsible for the standard. “This was the first of hopefully many opportunities for EPCglobal and ISO to cooperate.”

EPCglobal, the nonprofit organization working to promote the use of RFID in the supply chain, ratified its Gen2 standard in December 2004. It has since certified more than a dozen RFID readers, tags and integrated circuits as Gen2 compliant.

Now that an international standard exists, makers of RFID tags and readers may be more eager to build hardware based on the Gen2 standard and end-users may be more comfortable investing in the technology.

“This is a watershed moment for RFID technology,” says Mike Liard, an RFID analyst at ABI Research.

Because the World Trade Organization supports ISO standards, lack of an ISO standard has been a stumbling block in China’s adoption of RFID technology, says Liard. Thus, the creation of this new standard “is a great stepping stone toward a truly global supply chain.”

ISO has published the new standard as an amendment to ISO 18000-6.