Summary

The rapid exchange of information stored in digital form in large networks via growing numbers of users and means of transmission is considered a central characteristic of information and knowledge societies. Manmachine communication is being complemented increasingly by the communication and networking of machines – without the direct involvement of human beings. The term “ubiquitous computing” describes an “unobtrusive” technological vision in which today’s familiar appearance of the computer takes a back seat and “smart” objects communicate directly with each other. In the business world, this is described as “Pervasive Computing”. It also describes the omnipresent information processing and networking but, as opposed to ubiquitous computing, focuses on solutions that can be realised in the near future. RFID systems (RFID = Radio Frequency IDentification), that have attracted increasing public interest in the past months, constitute an important area of development within the framework of automatic identification processes. It is the task of automatic identification to make available clearly defined and structured information about persons, animals, goods or products in such a way that such data can be mechanically recorded and processed further. In the future, RFID is destined to replace or complement the automatic identification processes at present in widespread use, such as barcodes, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) or contact-type chip cards. RFID systems can be used as highly efficient identification systems with which a large volume of data can be recorded and updated, if necessary. But RFID technology realises its full performance potential where it is used to control and monitor processes. From entry control via tracking goods workflows from the manufacturer to the consumer – the range of already tried and tested applications is growing constantly. RFID is not a new technology. The U.S. military has been using RFID or its predecessor technologies since as far back as 1940 to track the whereabouts of replenishment supplies of fuel or munitions or to permit friend/foe recognition of allied airplanes. RFID systems have been released for civil applications since 1977. [OERTEL, 2004]