Professional Windows® Embedded CE 6.0

Chapter 18. RFID Security Access Control Applications

Working to resolve modern security concerns, the security industry has evolved rapidly to develop more effective and cost-efficient solutions, creating new technologies and improved products and services. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is one of these technologies that has gone through tremendous growth and gained widespread global adoption in different segments of industry, government, and academia.

Following the home automation sample applications in the previous chapter, we'll now work through the exercises in this chapter to add RFID applications to the project. The sample application for the exercise in this chapter shows how to interact with the RFID reader using the PhidgetFramework library and can be used as the building block or starting point for a security access control application.

Radio Frequency Identification — RFID

The application potential for RFID technology is huge. We can find RFID tags in the everyday products we purchase, embedded in credit cards, and tracking inventory in warehouses. RFID is part of the employee card for security access control, of contactless payment for mass transit, and of government and academic identification cards. It's even embedded in casino chips. This book is not about RFID and does not go into technical detail about RFID technology. But it will tell you enough for a general idea of the subject.

The RFID tag is like a transponder, responding to the RFID reader's radio frequency ...