RFID Circle Event: DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION: The Internet of Things & Long-range RFID + Sensors -Improving the Retail Flow of Goods November 5, 2012, Range matters! Tag size matters! Sensing often matters! All at a very low cost! TODAY’S PROBLEM: Humans manually collect visibility data – it should be automatic! Data on the Internet has been largely created by human beings—typing, bar code scans, digital photos and more. Initial deployments of RFID solutions have relied heavily upon human intervention. Manual data collection is very time consuming and prone to errors. Implementing RFID solutions is a lot of hard work! THE SOLUTION – Smaller, Cheaper, Faster, Longer, Better! Long-range, low cost RFID takes the human out of the loop. The market for visibility solutions is soaring. The “Internet of Things” is hitting the mainstream. Today sensors, cameras, RFID, bar codes, and a variety of visibility viewing platforms are commonplace throughout the working world. In 2012 over 4 billion long-range RFID tags are expected to be produced for retail apparel. We are experiencing the initial stages of an onslaught of BIG Data automatically generated by an abundance of highly distributed wireless devices. Long-range RFID to track elements of the physical world couples with ubiquitous connectivity to the Internet to distribute BIG DATA and view information generated by these ubiquitous digital identifiers and sensors. TODAY’s CHALLENGES End users are confronted by an overwhelming number of questions. What to buy? What’s good? What to avoid? Typical pitfalls? How best to organize? How to install the systems? ‘Peaceful co-existence’ with legacy systems and business processes . . . . . POS, bar code, inventory management . . . . . How to blend the old with the new? Seamless adoption, integration and deployment? How best to analyze BIG DATA? For what purpose? ‘Fit’ with other innovative technologies? Costs? Tags, Infrastructure, Integration . . . . . Speakers: Sprague Ackley, Technologist, Intermec Christophe Loussert, VP, RFID integration, Tagsys Greg Morello, CMO, Port Logistics Group (PLG) Thomas Reese, Sr. Director, Business Development, Intelleflex Corp. Moderator: Michael Ohanian, retired President of Intermec Technologies

1. Implementing RFID without
disrupting already successful
bar code systems?
MIT Enterprise Forum
Auto-ID & Sensing Solutions Group
MIT Stata Center
5 November 2012
Sprague Ackley
Intermec

2. Is there a trick to encoding my bar
code data in RFID?
 How did RFID data end up so different
from bar code data?
 How can my primary serialized bar code
data be encoded directly into RFID?
 Is there ever going to be a simple way to
encode bar code data into RFID?

3. How did RFID data end up so
different from bar code data?
 Initially, RFID only encoded a unique set of bits,
i.e. not specific letters and/or numbers
 Later, users wanted to encode their own data
 Parallel developments ensued
– MIT Auto-ID labs à EPCglobal
– ISO/IEC 15962

4. While chip technology marched on …
 UHFGen 2 has four memory banks (MB)
 MB01 encodes primary serialized identity
 MB11 encodes “user” data
– GS1 user data is the AIs
– ISO user data is the DIs

5. MB01- Primary serialized identity
 GS1 uses Electronic Product Code (EPC)
– 96 bits (12 bytes), very space efficient
– All numeric
– Requires buying a “GS1 Company Prefix”
 ISO uses 15962
– Variable in length, less space efficient
– Can be alpha-numeric
– Low or zero cost enterprise identification

6. MB11- Secondary “user” data
 GS1 EPC Tag Data Standard (TDS)
– Highly complex but efficient encoding method
– Numbers and letters are separated, mapped
and compacted
– Has IP ramifications
 ISO/IEC 15962
– Very simple but less efficient method
– Every character is 6 bits
– Public domain IP

7. MB01àEPC from MIT Auto-ID labs
 MIT scientists envisioned an “internet of
things” where everything was unique
 Part of their plan identified enterprises

8. EPCglobal from MIT Auto-ID labs
 GS1 (then UCC) first joined, then bought
Auto-ID Labs, then replaced enterprise
identification with their own system (i.e.
“Company Prefix” as used in EAN/UPC)
 GS1 established an independent company
which they called EPCglobal

9. EPCglobal
 Early management actively resisted
unifying EPC encoding with bar code
 Method for encoding a unique item number
broke GS1 rules in place for >25 years
 Encoding methods actually prevented data
in bar code symbols from being encoded in
an RFID tag
 GS1 now “fixing” the inconsistencies

10. EPC tag encoding overview
 EPC is 12 bytes, e.g. in hex
30 30 25 7B F4 6D 5B 20 00 00 01 90
 12 bytes is 96 bits
0011000000110000001001010111101111110100011011011011011001000000000000000000000000000011001000
0
 Bits are counted and assigned meaning
EPC Header Filter Partition
length:8 3 3
bits:00110000 001 100 (7-digits)

11. EPC tag encoding overview
00110000001100000010010101111011111101000110110110110110010000000000000000000000000000110010000
GS1 Company Prefix
bit length (depends on Partition value):24 in this example
bits:000010010101111011111101
digits:0614141
Indicator digit and Item Reference
bit length:20 in this example
bits:00011011011011011001
digits:112345
Note: GS1 Company Prefix can be 6 to 12 digits

12. EPC tag encoding overview
00110000001100000010010101111011111101000110110110110110010000000000000000000000000000110010000
Serial Number
bit length:38 (fixed)
bits:00000000000000000000000000000110010000
digits:400
EPC
URI urn:epc:id:sgtin: 0614141.112345.400

13. Bar code to an EPC tag*

14. Bar code to an EPC tag*
*Note: the number of digits in the GS1
Company Prefix is not known
*The Partition Value must be determined
* Leading digits of the GTIN determine the
partition value (e.g. compare with a
database of GS1 Company Prefixes)

15. GS1 fixing the problem
 2007 “60-Day Review” identified concerns
about bar code / RFID interoperability
 2008 GS1 Missing Identification
Replacement (MIR) Guideline
 2009 GS1 BarCodes & EPC
Interoperability Requirements
 2012 GSMP BC EPC Implementation
Guideline
 Result – a clear need for an offline tool

16. Length of Company Prefix tool
 2012-08-23 First meeting of ad hoc to
develop an offline tool
 Each Member Organization (MO) has a
different way of assigning numbers
 The numbers which are assigned and not
assigned must remain confidential
 Early discussions point to an algorithm
based on a “table of ranges” that can be
downloaded into a portable device

17. MB01àISO/IEC 15962
 First RFID data
encoding
standard
 Developed with
the idea that
“RFID data was
different” than
bar code data

18. ISO/IEC 15962
 An elaborate system
of “Object IDs” was
invented so each
piece of data was
addressable
 Different encoding methods are flagged
by an Application Family Identifier (AFI)
 A particularly simple AFI (A1) is useful for
encoding UII data

19. 15962 AFI A1 encoding overview
 UII = 25SUN043325711MH8031200000000001
– Where 25S is the UII Data Identifier (DI)
– UN is the issuing agency ID
– 043325711 is the enterprise ID
– MH8031200000000001 is the item number and serial
number combination
 Each character is replaced by 6-bit ASCII
 The bits are grouped into bytes (32x6=192à24)
 Pad to a full byte if necessary with some or all of
the string “100000”

20. 15962 AFI A1 encoding overview
 Replace each character with 6-bit ASCII value

21. 15962 AFI A1 encoding overview
 Group bits into bytes (8-bit groups) and convert
to hex
 Insert AFI for final encoded data stream
A1 CB 59 AA E3 0D 33 30 2D 77 C7 1D 20 E3 C0 F1 CB C0 30 E3 C0 30 E3 C0 31

22. Is it ever going to be simple to encode
bar code data into RFID?
“Peace is at hand.” Henry Kissinger, 18 October 1969
 ISO à Application groups are adopting 15962 with
AFI A1 to have a direct method of encoding bar
code data in MB01
 GS1 à Has an online method of determining the
length of the GS1 Company Prefix using GEPIR
(Global Electronic Party Information Register)
 GS1 à Developing an offline tool that should lead
to seamless data collection functionality

23. The answers
 How did RFID data end up so different from bar code
data? Early proponents thought RFID would replace bar
code so little effort was made to insure that they could
work together.
 How can my primary serialized bar code data be
encoded directly into RFID? ISO – by using 15962 with
an AFI of A1hex. GS1 - With the EPC TDS, a GEPIR
utility, zero filling and a default filter bit setting.
 Is there ever going to be a simple way to encode bar
code data into RFID? Yes. The user community is not
going to rest until there is.

24. The future
“It is difficult to make predictions -
particularly about the future.”
(Confucius, Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx, 'Yogi' Berra and
several others: Nature 455, 729, 9 October 2008)

25. The future
 It took almost 20 years for the bar code
supermarket system to become ubiquitous and
it will probably take about the same time for
RFID to do the same
 Applications changing from internal closed-
systems to fully open systems are forcing more
emphasis on data interchangeability
 Within the next five years, application data will
be data carrier independent

26. Implementing RFID without
disrupting already successful
bar code systems?
MIT Enterprise Forum
Auto-ID & Sensing Solutions Group
MIT Stata Center
5 November 2012
Sprague Ackley
Intermec