The result is the NEC RFID Gateway, a standalone process ‘automator’ designed for high volume use and large enough to allow forklifts to pass through. Its advantages are many, including:

Speeds up the process by enabling large amounts of goods to be scanned;

• Eliminates human error in forgetting to scan; 
• Faster scanning enables quicker turn around times; 
• Reduces operating costs; 
• No direct line of sight needed to scan objects on a pallet or inside cartons.

NEC’s RFID product manager in Australia, Kelvin Slade, said the RFID Gateway uses an innovative method for making significant improvements in readability rates which has been able to significantly reduce null points or dead spots inside the radio field.

“This has been achieved by more efficiently reflecting the signal within the required read range, not across the entire range of the antennae. It is a bit like playing squash vs. playing tennis; in squash the ball keeps bouncing around the walls, while in tennis the ball is always being hit out of the court. The NEC RFID Gateway uses the same amount of energy but significantly improves read results.”

Slade said RFID had come a long way. “No one is getting the read rates that the gateway is getting.’’

He said NEC’s core competencies in technical innovation across a broad range of disciplines has enabled NEC to solve many of the technical issues associated with reading passive RFID tags.

“That background has been invaluable in enabling our R&D centres to solve some very technical issues that had been a barrier to the greater acceptance of RFID technology and its readability rates,’’ he said.

Slade said he expects RFID tags to gain wider acceptance in the business world outside that of providing solutions for the supply chain.

“The applications for RFID tags are unlimited – and are being adapted to many of our normal everyday functions. A library, for example, can have RFID tags on its books to check them in and out and perform shelf checks, which speeds up manual processes and saves hundreds of hours. They can be used in the health sector for tracking patients in hospitals and for tracking inmates inside and outside of jails,’’ he said.

Slade said that for companies with established vendors, the gateway could be integrated into existing solutions.

NEC has been heavily involved in the federally funded National Demonstrator Project and is the technology partner with Telstra. The project was funded by the ‘Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Information Technology online division involving RFID tags and readers across an entire supply chain through partners Acco Australia, Capilano, Chep, Franklins, GS1 Australia, Linfox, MasterFoods, P&G, Retriever Communications, RMIT, Telstra and Westgate Logistics.

Additionally, NEC has also had the gateway installed at its Australian headquarters in Melbourne where it is being used for comprehensive testing and calibration. Combined with NEC’s ability to provide comprehensive maintenance and support throughout Australia 24/7, the gateway is expected to be in high demand when it is released for commercial production in Australia.

For the bigger picture Mr Slade said: “At NEC we also leveraging our vast experience gained from building equipment for telecommunications networks to make RFID a ubiquitous technology that can be adopted by SMEs and large corporations to improve productivity across a wide range of industries. This will make ordering, provisioning and maintaining RFID readers and systems as simple as opening a broadband or mobile phone account. We are moving RFID toward critical mass.”