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home > March 24, 2008 issue > article
Finding the way with RFID
By Brian Robinson
Special to Defense Systems
Radio frequency identification is already established in the
realm of defense logistics, helping to keep tabs on the mountains of
materiel moved through the military services’ supply chain. But
RFID applications are also moving beyond those needed for supply
chain visibility.
“It’s increasingly now also about property accountability within
four walls,” said Maryam Esfarjani, a senior associate at consultant
Booz Allen Hamilton and the lead for its RFID information technology
business. “It’s being used to track secure servers on a rack, for
example, so that people know — if they are not where they are supposed
to be — that they’ve just been moved and not stolen.”
Some military installations are picking up on the concept. Walter
Reed Army Medical Center is planning to use a real-time location
system that employs active RFID tags to track some 4,000 pieces of
equipment in the hospital. The Defense Medical Logistics Standard
Support system is planning for greater use of RFID throughout the military health system in fiscal 2008.
The technology is also beginning to be used to more closely track
items used for repairs at large depots. A pilot that began in 2005 at
the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, which repairs and overhauls
surveillance and radar systems, proved
the worth of active RFID technology by cutting
the number of days needed for system
repairs and eliminating the need to reorder
parts that can’t be located.
The Navy is also using RFID as a part of
its Advanced Traceability and Control program
to track the movement of various materials
and failed parts sent from overseas to its
Naval Aviation Depots and civilian repair
yards.
Those innovative uses for RFID, Esfarjani
said, are being driven from the grass roots at
these facilities, which are under pressure to do more with the
resources they have. She said she knew of at least two fairly large
Army organizations that are using or planning to use RFID this way,
though she wouldn’t name them.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Following mandates issued several years ago by the Defense
Department, RFID technology has become one of the major elements
of the military’s Automatic Identification Technology logistics
tracking program. The goal of AIT, which also includes technologies
such as bar codes, satellite tracking systems, smart cards
and optical memory cards, is to provide military commanders with
the ability to continually track where assets are in the logistics
pipeline, giving them close control over the deployment of personnel
and materiel.
Active RFID tags broadcast their data in response to a signal from
a reader. Because they are powered by a battery, their information can
be read from as far away as 300 feet. And they can carry more data
than passive tags. But they are more expensive and generally reserved
for tracking larger assets such as vehicles, containers or pallets.
Passive RFID tags, on the other hand, are basically printed circuits
on a sticker. They have no battery, generating their signal from the
power of the reader scanning them. Passive RFID tags carry only
basic identifying data and can be read only from a few feet away, but
they are relatively inexpensive.
Active RFID is now a relatively mature technology, said David
Dias, chief of the Asset Visibility Division at the Transportation
Command, which has been given the lead to expand the implementation
of AIT and RFID throughout DOD. Passive RFID, on the other
hand, is a work in progress.
“By its nature, passive RFID is not as mature as the other technology,”
he said, “but we believe it’s the next revolutionary step for AIT.”
It has the potential, for example, to provide a
live delivery record that would automatically
feed information into a payment system, dramatically
speeding payments for supplies and
cutting out the need for people to physically
enter that payment and contract information.
However, it could take until 2015 to fully evaluate
passive RFID, Dias said.
Meanwhile, the technology is changing.
Active RFID tags, for example, are getting
smaller and cheaper and being integrated
with different communication mediums, such
as the Global Positioning System, General
Packet Radio Service and satellites to give their capabilities a
broader reach.
“When you combine RFID with satellite, vehicles in motion can
transmit the real-time location and condition of their cargo,” said
David Stephens, chief executive officer at Savi Technology, the primary
supplier of active RFID technology to DOD. “You can keep
track of all kinds of cargo that way to provide a common operating picture
of logistics on the battlefield.”
Without satellite communications, cargo bearing active RFID tags
would have to pass by land-based readers before they could be
tracked. However, that gives only a historical sense of where any
cargo has been, because the location is based on the last tag reading.
RFID with satellites provides an as-is understanding of location.
Satellites also promise a way to track supplies in remote areas
that have no fixed infrastructure for reading tags, the kinds of environments
warfighters usually find themselves in when they request
supplies.
It could be some time before RFID technology is widely used in the
military, but DOD has been testing it. The Defense Logistics Agency
began proof-of-concept work several years ago on a system called
Third Generation Radio Frequency Identification with Satellite
Communications, combining RFID with GPS and Iridium satellite
communications.
Meanwhile, the private sector is increasingly getting in on the act.
Orbit One, for example, an established provider of satellite–based
solutions for emergency and disaster work, recently introduced its
Global-RFID technology platform, an active RFID tag that includes a
field-replaceable lithium battery, an internal motion sensor and an integrated GPS chipset that communicates with
low-Earth orbit satellites.
BARRIERS TO TRACKING
RFID does have a problem working properly
in environments that are full of metal or
are saturated with liquids. Many of the wireless
frequencies used with both active and
passive RFID bounce around between metal
objects. Some frequencies are also absorbed
by liquids.
There are work-arounds using different ways
to mount the RFID tags on objects and using
lower frequencies, but they also have trade-offs
in terms of read ranges and the speed at which
tags can be read.
That was the problem Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (ORNL) faced in trying to design
a solution to track the guns used by the
Energy Department’s security force. DOE
requires all issued firearms to be counted at the beginning of each
shift and inventoried weekly. This took a significant amount of time
and manpower to complete manually.
Last year, ORNL began testing the prototype of a Weapons
Inventory Tracker System that uses RFID tags integrated into the grip
of a weapon. The most innovative aspect, however, is that they use a
different kind of wireless technology that is unaffected by metals, liquids
and electromagnetic noise.
Known as RuBee, it uses magnetic waves rather than radio waves
to send its signal to a reader and can be used in active or passive tags.
It’s a slow technology, and only a handful of RuBee tags can be read
in a second, but for the kind of deliberate inventorying application
being developed by ORNL, it’s ideal.
RuBee tags typically have a battery life of 10 to 15 years and can
be read from as far away as 100 feet.
“We are also one of the [few] technologies on the planet that has
dynamic range management, which means there are no attack or
eavesdropping threats against it,” said John Stevens, chairman at
Visible Assets, the developer of RuBee. “That means we won’t be
banned from high-security areas, and in fact, we are in some of the
most secure places already.”
Visible Assets is working with Sig Sauer, one of the world’s largest
weapons manufacturers, on the ORNL system, and Stevens said his
company has gotten interest from DOD following demonstrations of
the technology at recent trade shows. The RuBee protocol is set to
become an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standard
soon, probably this year.
COUNTING SHOTS
RFID is also turning up in places that few people probably thought it
would, such as the barrel of a gun.
In September, the Army’s Benét Laboratories awarded Augusta
Systems a $1.18 million task order to develop and implement an
RFID-based system to track how many rounds are fired from tank
guns or mortar equipment. Warfighters now have to do that, by hand
to tell when the guns need to be serviced.
The automated system Augusta is developing uses a piezoelectric
sensor that measures the force each time a round is fired from the barrel.
The RFID tag in the system stores the number of times the gun
fires, and that information is automatically read from the tag each
time the tank or mortar returns to the weapons depot.
The system is expected to be ready for production before the end
of 2008. The company said it is already talking with a number of
defense agencies and prime contractors to assess their needs for distribution of the system.
“This really is on the leading edge of such RFID developments,”
said Patrick Esposito, president and chief operating officer at Augusta.
“But I think what’s being produced here is a part of the tangible benefit
of the weapons supply chain, and it’s of direct advantage to the
warfighter.”
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