"... truly frequency agnostic company" (UK)

"... frequency agnostic – write tags at HF and UHF frequencies" (USA)

"... tag agnostic (Gen 1 & Gen 2)" (USA)

"... reader agnostic ..." (USA)

"... technology and frequency agnostic. Our main objective is to ensure that we have common data structures and command sets to make it easier and less costly to implement." (President of EPCglobal)

"... frequency agnostic, advocating that the optimal tag should be used for various applications" (UK)

"... will develop new RFID solutions with a frequency agnostic approach, as wireless frequency ranges are assessed and recommended based on the exact needs of the individual application." (Netherlands)

The use of the word "agnostic" itself is a kind of stretch from the original meaning that comes from the Greek words of "a" (not) and "gnostos" (known), which literally means unknown. A person who believes in neither God's existence nor God's non-existence can be called an agnostic. If you have no commitment in an opinion, you can also be called an agnostic.

The earliest account of the word "agnostic" in use within the RFID industry dates back to May 2006, when EPCglobal started to look into HF RFID technology and formed HF Air Interface Working Group.

"EPCglobal is happy to begin work on extending the very successful EPCglobal Gen 2 standard to support the healthcare industry" said Chris Adcock, president of EPCglobal. "EPCglobal is technology and frequency agnostic. Our main objective is to ensure that we have common data structures and command sets to make it easier and less costly to implement."

The statement came out after a reality check of UHF technology performance on item-level tagging in the pharmaceutical supply chain. The result is clear: HF technology performs better than UHF technology for item-level tagging in the pharmaceutical supply chain. This harsh reality has forced EPCglobal, who has been very aggressive in promoting UHF technology, to embrace HF technology rather than ignoring the global pharmaceutical industry worth of US$492 billion, in which the United States has become the major market for drugs, accounting for almost half of all global drug sales (*).

So now, EPCglobal is officially technology and frequency agnostic.

In the real world, each application usually has its own unique needs. RFID systems designed for Access Control applications may not easily be adapted for Supply Chain Logistics applications. RFID systems working for Supply Chain Logistics may not give an optimal performance for Retail Logistics applications. Even for the same area of applications, as demonstrated in the pharmaceutical supply chain, the unique environment, different standards and regulations have made RFID applications more complicated. This reality has created an awareness in the RFID industry that one size does not fit all.

On the other hand, some RFID vendors that always follow the latest fads are a little bit carried away. They have stretched the use of the word "agnostic" even further. The stretch ranges from support for dual frequency equipments to anything under the sun that operates on frequency, i.e. tag agnostic, reader agnostic, etc. At one extreme, some RFID vendors are racing to produce RFID products that support multi-spectral RFID applications. At another extreme, some vendors who are cautious with multi-spectral RFID products only recommend specific frequency solutions based on the assessment of each individual RFID application and call their approach frequency agnostic.

While both extremes propose different values to different markets, these agnostic phenomena have shown an important trend, i.e. The RFID industry has become more sophisticated and provided more values from RFID technology.

Yet, a question remains: Has the RFID market become more mature during the course of time?

(*) Industrial Surveys, Global Pharmaceuticals, reportSURE, December 2004).


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Labels: epcglobal, reader, rfid, scm, tag, technology