Wednesday February 20

Main Conference Day 1: Users Needs and Experiences

In addition to learning the insights from the Worlds largest RFID orders, hear from adopters of RFID, segmented into key market verticals. What is the reality, potential and what do they need to get there? Adopters will analyze the paybacks and the technology.

Retail, Consumer Goods and Item Level RFID

Ultimately the biggest RFID opportunity, but dogged with technical problems and slower than anticipated growth in some areas, other RFID applications in retail are booming. For example, item level RFID will shortly be the largest and most prosperous sector, driven by anticounterfeiting, archiving, standing assets and supply chain efficiency of high priced products. Even today, many companies are getting significant paybacks by tagging clothing, books, and other high value items. Hear it straight from the key adopters.

Aviation

RFID is an extremely powerful enabling technology in airports and aircraft, serving to improve security against criminal attack, safety against general hazards, efficiency, error prevention and data capture and to remove tedious tasks. It can even create new earning streams where it makes tolling feasible without causing congestion and where new airport "touch and go" cards offer new paid services without delays. Hear from the industry regulators, IATA, airports, aircraft manufacturers and airlines.

Logistics/Postal

RFID is an idea whose time has come in postal, courier and high volume light logistics. The Worlds largest RFID network system is in this category, implemented by the International Postal Corporation (IPC), who will be presenting. From China post tagging mail bags to Saudi Post tagging postal boxes, the big innovations are now happening.

Healthcare/Pharmaceutical

The market for RFID tags and systems in healthcare and pharmaceuticals will rise rapidly from $85.24 million in 2007 to $2.05 billion in 2017. Healthcare is one of the fastest growing RFID sectors thanks to the tagging of drugs, real time location of staff and patients and other developments including automated error prevention. This session focuses on the unique challenges and benefits of RFID adoption in healthcare, with perspectives from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), hospitals, pharmaceuticals and medical device suppliers.

Military/Security

The Military is one of the biggest RFID users - from secure cargo containers and tradelanes to the requirement for temperature sensing for food and pharmaceuticals. Learn from the US Military and other security applications.

Thursday February 21

Main Conference Day 2: Technologies and Integration

RFID technology is developing at a rapid rate and being combined with other technologies such as GPS, Wi-Fi and infrared, while developments in the manufacturing of RFID tags is also pushing costs down. There have been significant developments recently in other aspects such as auto tuning HF tags, printed RFID tags with no silicon chip, near field UHF tags and much more. All these developments will be assessed in the sessions below by leading vendors, consultants and users, along with integration issues, security and software.

Cards/NFC/Tickets/Passports

Contactless smart cards are the largest RFID sector by far and the business is booming. From the $6 billion China national ID card scheme to the large sales of transport cards and tickets, transport-based purse cards replacing cash and secure access cards, this is a sector with many profitable suppliers, issuers and outlets. Added to this, RFID enabled mobile phones are making a significant imapct in East Asia and the west is catching up.

Manufacturing and integrating RFID

Here new novel methods of tag manufacture and application are covered, from patterning metal antennas on paper to embedding tags in packaging.

Active RFID and Real Time Locating Systems

The term Active RFID incorporates many technologies including Real Time Locating Systems, Ubiquitous Sensor Networks and Active RFID with Zigbee, RuBee, Ultra Wide Band and WiFi. Active RFID, where a battery drives the tag, is responsible for an increasing percentage of the money spent in the burgeoning RFID market. It will rise from 12.7% of the total RFID market in 2007 to 26.3% in 2017, meaning a huge $7.07 billion market. If we include the market for cell phone RFID modules (another form of active RFID), the market is an additional $0.44 billion in 2007 and $1.2 billion in 2017.

The primary factors creating this growth will be Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), and ubiquitous RFID sensor systems (mainly disposable). Conventional active RFID used where passive solutions are inadequate and RFID modules for mobile phones will make up the rest.

At this session you will hear from the range of different active RFID solutions from vendors and users, market segments, case studies, standards and emerging technical developments.

Printed electronics and the progress to printed RFID

The biggest opportunity for RFID is the item level tagging of all things - demanding trillions of tags yearly. This ultimately calls for a tag costing 0.1 cents and deposited directly onto the item itself, such as by printing. Printed and Chipless RFID technologies have already demonstrated or have the potential to achieve this. Interestingly, few of the biggest chip RFID suppliers are working on these technologies. Instead, printers, packagers and electronics companies are leading development, some seeing the ultra low cost RFID tag as just the beginning - with integrated ultra low cost components such as displays, sensors and power to come. Over 10 "chipless" RFID technologies exist, with many commercial successes. Now over 250 companies are working on replacing the silicon chip with a printed "chip", and companies have demonstrated that they can make these to meet existing RFID protocols and standards.

UHF - cutting edge developments

From near field UHF to software, readers and RFID integration, the latest technical and commercial progresses will be covered here.

Security and data sharing

As RFID is being rolled out in major projects there is an increasing need for secure systems. The challenges and options will be discussed here. 

HF - the next big leap forward

HF (13.56MHz) systems are still the most favored in 2007/8, used for contactless cards, ticketing, NFC, item level tagging and many other sectors. While most attention has been on UHF, which will also be covered in detail at this event, there have been some ground breaking developments at HF, such as auto tuning circuits drastically improving range or power consumption, 100% reads in high densities of tags, long range (several meters) from HF passive tags, and fully printed RFID circuits with no silicon chip, but which meet existing HF standards. All these developments will be presented and discussed by the companies working on them.