RFIDTags.com

The moment of truth is close in determining the winner of the battle for the RFID pharmaceutical market. While the FDA has not and probably will not back one frequency or technology over another California’s ePedigree mandate will provide the market with the de facto standard UHF or HF. California’s 2009 ePedigree mandate for all drug packages coming into the state explicitly requires package serialization…can you say RFID? All of the major drug distributors AmerisourceBergen, McKesson and Cardinal Health are scaling up to met the mandate. The distributors, while they will not declare the winner being UHF or HF, are either testing both HF and UHF or only UHF – another sign UHF will probably win.

The impact of using RFID tags at the item level for the pharmaceutical market will finally provide the hockey stick demand curve the industry has been waiting for. So all of us in the RFID business will be watching the success or failure of the RFID California mandate very closely.

I would like to reference a very good article on this topic of UHF vs. HF (California RFID Mandate). The performance of RFID Readers and RFID Tags as well as the cost seems to be in favor of UHF so it will interesting to see who will win.

It seems I hear less and less each week about how High Frequency (HF) is the best frequency for item level tagging. As near field UHF (Ultra high frequency) continues to mature one by one the advantages and myths continue to disappear.

1. UHF RFID tags are affected by liquids

• UHF far field is affected by liquids – TRUE
• UHF near field is affected by liquids – FALSE
• UHF near field not only works on water but in water!

2. UHF RFID tags won’t work on tags in close proximity

• UHF Gen 2 singulation and anti-collision algorithms are superior to HF protocols – TRUE
• UHF can read >1000 tags/sec – TRUE
• UHF has more reliable reads on large tag populations – TRUE

Stay turned for at least one more posting in this series on HF vs. UHF. If you are interested in experimenting with near field technology you can contact BlueBean or if you are ready to purchase a RFID Reader or RFID Kit you can go line at www.rfidsupplychain.com

Ok… the question of UHF vs. HF for item level RFID tagging is bigger than Beta vs.VHS or for the younger people Blue-ray vs. HD-DVD. This is an all out war between the established HF companies and the new up-and-coming UHF companies. There is so much propaganda out there it is difficult to determine fact from fiction or truths from half truths. In order to compare these two technologies it would be fair to state that I will discuss near field UHF not far field UHF. Some of the HF folks like to compare HF to far field UHF to tilt the playing field in HF’s favor

I am actually going to start with discussing the cost of making each type of RFID tag. If history teaches us anything is that the low cost producer usually wins all else being equal. Assuming the performance of both HF&UHF tags are the same (I will discuss and contrast performance in the next few posts) then tag costs will determine the winner.

I also look at the large companies that would have an impact on pushing the decision to UHF or HF. Wal-Mart has already committed to UHF far field for case and pallet tagging. So I would summarize that Wal-Mart would not want to have two different RFID technologies.

Also the major distributors; Cardinal, McKesson and ABC have come out in favor of near field UHF.

Back to the question at hand…”UHF vs. HF” for item level RFID tagging? If I was a betting man there are several reasons why I would pick near field UHF to become the item level tagging standard:

1. UHF is much easier to manufacture

2. Simple antenna geometries

3. Inexpensive conductive ink process

All else being equal the low cost producer wins. In this case UHF would seem to be the logical choice.

Stay tunned for more posts about RFID hardware and deployments costs and I will contrast performance issues between these two competing technologies.