Editor's note: Some of our most popular posts have been by guest blogger Atul Salgaonkar, Founder of RFID Solutions, who provides more insights:Tech hurdles in RFID are no big deal -- they merely force us to experiment with RFID and learn more about it.



Take the recent IBM report about RFID signals getting disrupted by bug zappers and the like. The technical issues are not insurmountable.

It is, though, particularly maddening that this IBM report continues to make headlines and amaze industry executives. Perhaps the only certainty -- at the risk of sounding overly Dilbert-ish -- is that senior management has graduated beyond the three-letter-acronyms (TLAs) and are now able to handle four lettered ones such as RFID!

Before the R of RFID can be written, the Physics, with a capital P, has to be understood.

IBM's report about bug zapper interference is significant insofar as it highlights the frailty of low power RFID transmission, in an inverse square power universe of ours. Retail applications are looking for the high range promised by the UHF tags, while power radiated has to be limited within regulatory limits.

This means that the tags themselves have to be incredibly sensitive. In turn, incredibly sensitive tags are susceptible to spurious interference from sources of all kinds. In our experiments at RFID Solutions, for instance, we have seen how fluorescent light ballast or spark plugs can lead to RFID operational error.

There are questions that the IBM study does not answer. What about the effect of RFID readers on other equipment installed, say, at patients' bedsides in hospitals? Will there be similar interference that will cause a monitoring ECG machine to malfunction?

Fortunately, the answer is no. With exhaustive research to back up the claim, all available data says that if RFID equipment is used correctly and within permitted specifications, there should be no cause for concern.

The important thing now is to learn the hard technical realities of RFID engineering. Companies need to experiment now, before problems Arise, to flush out the issues and challenges so that they can be addressed and managed.

To do no trials with RFID because of bug zappers -- that would be saddening for sure!