IEC/ISO radio standards now available on CD

The IEC has just launched a second thematic collection of standards on radio frequency identification on CD-ROM

Following the recent release of the IT Security Standards Collection, the IEC has just launched a second thematic collection of standards on CD-ROM.

The present JTC 1 collection contains 25 IEC/ISO standards on radio frequency identification.

RFID is a wireless technology that uses a transponder and an interrogating device to communicate with an embedded electronic tag that can contain a variety of information that can be used to identify and track any type of item, from individual products to shipping containers, livestock and even people.

RFID systems, like the ubiquitous barcodes of recent decades, can carry information such as size, colour, weight and product identifier data, but, in addition, they are contactless, ie do not need to be placed directly on a reader for the tag to be read.

Instead, they use internal antennae to communicate using radio waves.

Another major advantage of RFID over the older barcode systems is their storage capacity.

It enables them to have additional tag data added to the stored information as items move through a process.

Standards are critical for many RFID applications, such as payment systems and tracking goods or reusable containers in open supply chains.

The ISO/IEC joint technical committee JTC 1, Information technology, has worked for the past decade to develop standards for a variety of RFID frequencies and applications.

Existing and proposed RFID standards deal with the air interface protocol (the way tags and readers communicate), data content (the way data is organised or formatted), conformity (ways to test that products meet the standard) and applications (for example, how standards are used on shipping labels).

The new CD-ROM, JTC 1 Collection on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), includes 25 ISO/IEC standards on RFID application identifiers, which range from topics such as the Syntax for high capacity automatic data capture media to Radio frequency identification for item management, Automatic identification and data capture techniques (AIDC) as well as Radio frequency identification device conformance test methodology, data protocols, registration procedures, syntax and terminology.

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