That is a very good question. And because I do not know what your answer is I try to explain what the “four-letter abbreviations” mean.
RFID stands for radio frequency identification, describing an identification system wherein an electronic device(transponder or tag) attached to an item uses radio frequency to communicate with other devices(usually a Reader).
There are various forms of identification(ID) and various mechanisms of identifying objects ,animals and people(using written tags and name badges). There is also electronic ID. The most familiar and probably the widely used electronic ID is the bar code but that won’t be any more, because it’s real: “RFID got legs” and walking faster thanks to the continued reduction in cost and size of semi-conductor components. Other forms of electronic ID include magnetic strips on credit cards; biometrics for identifying people; voice recognition systems; and facial capillary scans.
In a RFID system the two most important components are the tag – an electronic ID device attached to an item to be tracked, and the reader – a device that can detect the presence of a tag and read information stored in it. The reader communicates the information to another system running edge applications. The system usually runs RFID middleware – software that inteprets reader observations and passes them to the edge application.
RFID System Architecture
In future posts I shall discuss RFID application types, benefits and drawbacks, look at how to program RFID applications, evaluate deployment options, RFID project management, et cetera.