February 12, 2006

Book Review: RFID Essentials

From O'Reilly - Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is rapidly changing the way business is being conducted. From Wal-Mart to the Department of Defense to small businesses, the benefits of RFID are quickly being realized. Although the software, integration, and data processing side of RFID still presents a challenge in many organizations. Reports have told us that over one billion RFID tags were produced in 2005 and in five years that could be over thirty billion. What exactly is RFID? How does it work? What can it do? Is it more than that little bit of something under the skin of my cat?

These and similar questions prompted Himanshu Bhatt and Bill Glover to write "RFID Essentials" (O'Reilly, US $39.99). Bhatt explains their thinking, "To some extent we thought about writing this book as we were looking for one like it when starting out with our work on RFID at Sun. What we found were books that were either focused on the physics and the RF/electronics side of RFID and some that were on 'marketecture.' We thought, with RFID technologies and standards in their inception phase, it would be good to have a book that would somehow demystify the workings of
an RFID system."

"RFID Essentials" is for developers, system and software architects, and project managers, as well as students and professionals in all the industries impacted by RFID who want to understand how this technology works. As the title suggests, this book is about RFID in general and not just the most recent developments, but it will provide readers with the information and understanding they need to start designing, building, or integrating with RFID systems. Topics covered include:

-Tags and Tag Protocols including Electronic Product Code (EPC)
-Readers and Reader Protocols
-RFID Middleware
-Security and Privacy
-Managing RFID Devices
-Architecture

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