Specifications

How Does a Sensormatic RFID System Work?
RFID is a simple concept that has been around since the 1940s. Until now, its application has been mostly proprietary
and closed-loop within the boundaries of a company’s operations. Only in recent years have technology and standards
advancements allowed for its practical application across entire supply chains to reduce shrinkage due to misplaced
items, errors, and inventory requirements so businesses can achieve better efficiencies, cash flow and asset
management.
To explain RFID briefly, a small electronic tag, comparable to a “license plate” for goods, is placed on a pallet, case
and/or item in order to track it through the supply chain. The tag features an embedded radio antenna and a
microprocessor encoded with a unique electronic identifier (its Electronic Product Code, or EPC). The 96-bit EPC design
ensures a virtually limitless supply of serial numbers for identification purposes. This tag can be applied at any point in
the supply chain, but ideally it’s affixed at the origins of processing or manufacture of goods.
To track these tags – and the goods they are affixed to – radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers are placed at
strategic points in the goods’ journey from source to shelf. These reader placements include the floors, doors and even
forklifts of warehouses, shipping docks, distribution centers, receiving docks, retail back rooms, and so forth, including
store shelves. RFID tags are identified when in the presence of an interrogation signal and do not need "line-of-sight" to
be read as bar codes do.
When an RFID tag passes through a verification point, the RFID reader will sense the tag’s EPC if it’s an active, battery-
powered tag or will emit RFID waves to induce a current in the antenna of a passive, non-battery tag. The data is then
read and sent to a database containing a larger data record of what’s tagged, plus information like where and when it
was manufactured, its current location and status, and so on.
Rev. 10/04