RFID active tag market boom on the way

Active radio frequency identification (RFID), where a battery drives the tag, will drive an eleven-fold increase in the RFID market over the next ten years, says a new IDTechEX report.

The demand for active tags in more sophisticated mobile applications will be responsible for an increase in its percentage of the total RFID market from 12.7 per cent this year to 26.3 per cent in 2017, amounting to a huge $7.07 billion (£3.52 billion) market.

When the market for mobile phone RFID modules - as another form of active RFID - is counted, the total market grows by an additional $0.44 billion in 2007 and $1.2 billion in 2017.

Raghu Das, managing director of research group IDTechEX said: "Whether a user or supplier, you need to keep up with this under-reported market or get left behind."

He said the primary applications creating this growth will be real time locating systems (RTLS), and mainly disposable, ubiquitous RFID sensor systems, including smart active labels (SALs). Conventional active RFID used where passive solutions are inadequate and RFID modules for mobile phones will make up the rest.

Das also pointed to much stronger market demand for applications that can track, locate and monitor people and things, as driven by security, safety, cost and customer satisfaction needs, for example.

And this demand has been met by the development of tag technology that is reducing the cost and size of the tags and systems. This is evidenced by the growing availability of open standards, notably ISO 18000-7, IEEE 802.15.4 and for near-field communications (NFC) that can exploit more of the popular forms of short-range wireless communication technologies, including mesh networks and particularly Wi-Fi, Ultrawideband (UWB) and ZigBee.

The development of ubiquitous sensor networks (USN) where large numbers of active RFID tags with sensors are radio networked in buildings, forests, rivers, hospitals and many other locations is another driver of demand, while the use of mobile phones for purchasing, mass transit for consumers in growing, particularly in Asia.

Das added: "We have ended the decade of active RFID consisting of large tags in systems always generating their own radio waves, usually in the 305-433 MHz range. To the beginning of 2007, 614 million active RFID tags have been sold with the vast majority used for car clickers (593 million). Like these, a large percentage of active RFID tags being sold in the future will replace nothing: they will perform new functions. The second biggest use for active RFID to date has been by the military, using 6.3 million active RFID tags so far."

IDTechEX research shows that in 2007, 63.9 per cent of the spend on active RFID will be on the system, including readers, networks, installation and software, as opposed to the tags. As the number of tags per application increases, this focus will shift so that, by 2017, the spend on everything other than tags is 57.3 per cent. "Companies involved know that this is not like the highest volume uses of passive RFID tags where disposable labels are usually involved and the label cost can be 50 per cent of the total cost. Most active RFID, such as RTLS, is more of a systems business," said Das.

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