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ANSI/NCITS T6 256-2001 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology

Published

PART 1            Introduction

NCITS 256 defines a standard for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for use in item management. This standard is intended to allow for compatibility and to encourage interoperability of products for the growing RFID market in the United States. Because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations do not restrict physical configuration options, this is an enabling standard that supports and promotes several RFID implementations without making conclusions about the relative technical merits of any available option for any possible application. This standard defines a single Application Program Interface (API), which will serve as a unifying platform shared by all compliant RFID implementations and provide a common interface to application programs. This common API will help to encourage widespread manufacturer competition and subsequent market expansion while the market for RFID for item management becomes established.

The item management applications this standard addresses typically require ranges greater than one meter. Item management spans a wide range of applications, from simple item identification to the accumulation and transfer of dynamic information of the item throughout its useful life. Items may vary in size and value, may be mobile or static, may pass through a portal or be arbitrarily located within a large volume, and may be few or many in number. Design of a single system to cover this wide range of possible application requirements would require many compromises for an individual application. Such disparate needs are better addressed by multiple systems offering varying levels of price and performance.

Furthermore, availability, price, and performance of RFID implementations will change with time. RFID technology is evolving rapidly. As observed in personal computing and network connectivity, advances in memory size, communication speed, and other technical performance features often exceed expectations. The relative cost of emerging technologies—perhaps prohibitive in early development—decreases as they mature. A useful standard for item management must handle new implementations as well as accommodate changes to existing implementations; therefore, this U.S. standard does not mandate any specific RFID implementation for all item management applications. Instead, it provides a common application development platform to accommodate today’s technology and future system development.

The goal of this standard is to serve current and future users and manufacturers by encouraging the development of open, dynamic systems. Through a common API and limited RFID implementations, the standard advocates the development of backward-compatible solutions and promotes a future of interoperable systems.

PURPOSE

This document establishes a technical standard for a family of compatible RFID devices, specifically, RFID devices operating in freely available international frequency bands at license-free power levels. Its purposes are as follow:

Promote interoperability and compatibility between RFID devices by defining a common API and limited physical and data link layer options.

Support item management applications and provide flexibility in the physical layer definitions to allow additional features for users that value such enhancements.

SCOPE

Frequency: This standard addresses RFID devices operating in the HF, VHF, UHF, and Microwave frequency bands.

Interface definitions: This standard defines a standard API (Part 2) and standard air interface implementations for wireless, non-contact information system equipment for item management applications (Parts 3–5). Typical applications operate at ranges greater than 1 m.

RFID system definition: The RFID system includes a host system and RFID equipment. The host system runs an application program that controls and interfaces with the RFID equipment. The RFID equipment is composed of two principal components: tags and interrogators. The tag, intended for attachment to an item a user wants to manage, can store a tag ID number and other data about the tag or item and communicate that information to the interrogator. The interrogator is a device that communicates to tags in its field of view. The interrogator controls the protocol, reads from or writes to a tag, and ensures message delivery and validity.

Minimum features: RFID systems defined by this standard provide the following minimum features:

• Identify tag in range
• Read data
• Write data or gracefully handle read-only systems
• Select by group or address
• Gracefully handle multiple tags in the field of view
• Detect errors.

Compliance requirements

To be compliant with this standard, an RFID system must comply with Part 2 of this standard and one of the physical or data link implementations described in Parts 3–5.