Design Opportunities Proliferate As RFID Gains Traction

By the time you arrived in the office this morning, you may have used radio-frequency identification (RFID) four times without being aware of it: when you inserted the key in your car, disabling the immobilizer circuit; when you drove through an unmanned toll booth, automatically paying your fee; when you used your cell phone to pay for your morning cappuccino; and when your ID badge registered your entry into the office. RFID may not be everywhere, but it is getting there. The first passive transponders powered by incoming RF date back to the early 1970s, as does the vision for most of today’s manifold RFID applications. Yet only with advances in semiconductor technology, not to mention Moore’s Law, did RFID really start to take off.