The following is an excerpt of RFID: Applications, Security, and Privacy. This chapter is written by EPC pioneer Sanjay Sarma¹.

Although the concept of radio frequency identification (RFID) is not new, the term RFID has been in use for only a couple of decades.² In the 1980s and 1990s, long after the early use of RFID during World War II, innovations in RF circuitry enabled passive RFID tags (tags without batteries, which scavenge power from the reader’s field) to provide enough range to become viable. Today, RFID tags are seemingly everywhere: in toll passes, card-keys, automobile keys, payment systems (like the Mobil Speedpass system), and animal identification.

What has changed is the emergence of the Electronic Product Code (EPC) system, which is a suite of standards and technologies that weaves basic RFID into a standardized scheme for keeping track of material in the supply chain. The EPC was created at MIT by a few researchers involved in a research project called the Distributed Intelligent Systems Center (DISC). Later, this research effort morphed to fulfill a growing need in the retail supply chain and became the Auto-ID Center. This chapter presents a brief history of the Auto-ID Center, talking mostly about the technology, the industry, and the adoption of the EPC system.

My own first, forgettable, brush with RFID occurred in the early 1990s when I was a graduate student at Berkeley. At that time, I was interested in identifying and locating work-pieces for manufacturing automation. I had looked at RFID as a possible positioning device in automation and rejected it as being far too imprecise and expensive. Little did I realize then that our paths would cross again!