UHF RFID FEASIBILITY RESEARCH: THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES OF ITEM-LEVEL TAGGING IN A RETAIL STORE

This article investigates the effects of the environment on ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in both the near-field and far-field. Item-level tagging has always been challenging due to the negative impact of metals on RFID. Full-scale RFID item-level tagging has always been difficult to integrate in retail (department) stores. This UHF RFID feasibility research examines the technical differences between near-field and far-field coupling by testing theoretical hypotheses through empirical experiments. These experiments are based on a specific case-study, where a distributor wants to tag multimedia objects. Based on the results obtained, we found that metal had less effect on the RFID tags in the near-field than in the far-field. In both cases the RFID tag was not readable, when placed directly onto metal. When the multimedia object itself was tagged, the reading range decreased to around half the free-space reading range in near-field and far-field. We can conclude that the RFID implementation in the retail store is feasible, but depends to a large extent on the product and its environment. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.