RFID FAQ
Q1: What will be the best RFID environment architectural design to graphically locate trolly movement in an Airport using either Active or Passive reader, Active or Passive Tags?
A1: Passive RFID if manual tracking, i.e. the pickers will be armed with handhelds.
Active RFID if automatic tracking required. The graph will show approximate location of the trolleys. See attached screenshots.
It’s most cost effective if the Active RFID readers are connected via Ethernet LAN, CAT5 or 6. In order to reduce cabling all readers are powered via PoE 802.3af.
Using WiFi to connect readers is not recommended. WiFi is not robust enough for mission critical systems.
Q2: Suppose in terms of cost and profit, and at the same time security and performance what will be the best real time scenerio to track Trolly movement in an Airport?
A2: We believe the most cost effective system will not use RSSI. RSSI will be overly expensive for this scenario. It’s not worth the additional cost from an RoI perspective.
Instead we use cost-effective active RFID tags.
You will also need readers that can handle a very large amount of trolleys at the same time. In our case the readers can handle 300 tags per second. This is needed because concentrations of trolleys can be up to 3000 trolleys in one single reader zone.
Therefore system performance is essential.
Q3: How could be RTLS considered or other technology will ease the solution to track trolly movement?
A3: Our view is that RTLS using RSSI is too expensive and will not meet RoI targets. Instead we use zoning to keep the cost per tag down. Zoning is sufficient to track the movements and approximate locations of the trolleys. This is good enough for trolley tracking in airports and meets the RoI targets.
Q4: What would be the best idea to exact localization of any trolly using Axis mapping(by calculating the X-axis, and Y-axis point).
A4: As mentioned above, we think doing this is total overkill. It will be too expensive. And exact location is not needed for airport trolley tracking.
Q5: How would it be to Map Graphically the Trolly movement?
A5: I have attached some screen-shots on how it can look like.
Q6: For example, we can assume there is a 100 Square meters area where there are five entry and exit points, and 10 dropping points of passengers luggages, and other things. We want to establish a RFID environment architectural zone, and want to view graphically the trolly movement.
A6: See above. We do not find any RoI in the exact location of trolleys. If you still want this we could of course provide RSSI enabled tags and readers but the price will go up.
Cost of tag at 10,000 units without RSSI: USD 9-12 per tag depending on enclosure and battery.
Cost of tag at 10,000 units with RSSI: USD 30-50 per tag depending on enclosure and battery.
Also take note that RSSI tags drain the battery much faster than non-RSSI.
Q7: What middleware will be the smart consideration to build and deploy the above scenerio?
A7: We use .NET from bottom up with MS SQL Server RDBMS. We use Free2move’s very fast FRAP protocol between readers and servers.