The European Union has stepped up its activities in support of RFID and recently launched a group called CERP (Cluster of European RFID Projects) to bring together 13 major RFID projects it has funded.
The group, whose total funding from the EU tops 150m euros, was set up to facilitate networking of different projects in Europe using RFID, to co-ordinate research activities, establish synergies, avoid overlap, and to leverage expertise, talents, resources to maximise impact.
One of these projects, BRIDGE (Building Radio Frequency Identification for the Global Environment) has now been running for a year of its three-year life cycle, and is making progress in delivering on 15 work packages.
BRIDGE focuses on business-based research, and the provision of information services and hardware, including sensors and tags, and software development. An increasingly important element of BRIDGE's work is communication, getting the RFID message out to SMEs who may be unfamiliar with the technology and how it can benefit their business.
Two of the key work projects with which BRIDGE is currently involved cover making RFID applications more secure, and developing RFID applications for the European textile industry.
The Security project, WP4, seeks to secure the sharing of RFID data across different supply chain boundaries and provide mechanisms to control access to the data.
The work aims to develop lightweight implementations of standardised encryption measures to establish secure authentication of tags to readers (perhaps to prevent cloning or to establish proof of origin), for tags to readers (for access control) or for encrypted communication (to guarantee confidentiality or privacy)
To access the additional security functionality, the group has proposed a security layer built upon the EPC Gen2 communication protocol that will be fully compatible with existing RFID infrastructure.
The project, led by BT Labs, also comprises participants from AT4Wireless, Benedicta, Caen, Confidex, EH, Fudan, Raflatec, SAP, Graz University of Technology and GS1 UK.
The Textile Industry project, WP7, plans to promote the use of EPC/RFID technology in the European textile industry, working with partners such as Kaufhof, Gardeur, Carrefour, El Corte Ingles, AIDA Centre, GS1 Spain and GS1 Germany.
RFID is being considered as a solution to help European companies reduce their supply chain costs, optimise time-to-market and provide better service to customers to counter increased competition both inside and outside Europe. WP7's target is the delivery of an EPC/RFID implementation guideline to help SMEs and large clothing companies adopt EPC/RFID into their processes.
Other Bridge projects cover hardware development, anti-counterfeiting applications, pharmaceutical traceability, supply chain management, reusable asset management, item-level tagging, and innovation and policy.
These are the organisations involved in BRIDGE
GS1 Member Organisations: GS1 UK, GS1 Spain, GS1 France, GS1 Germany, GS1 Poland, GS1 China.
Research laboratories: Auto-ID Lab Cambridge, UK; Auto-ID Lab Fudan University, Shanghai, China; Auto-ID Lab ETH Zurich/St Gallen, Switzerland; Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain; Technical University, Graz, Austria.
Solution providers: BT, SAP, AIDA Centre, CAEN, Confidex, CETECOM Spain, UPM Raflatac, VeriSign UK, Melior Solutions, Unisys, Domino Printing Sciences, JJ Associates.
Business end users: Carrefour, Nestlé UK, Benedicta, Kaufhof, Sony, El Corte Inglés, Gardeur.
For more information on BRIDGE, visit www.bridge-project.eu
For more information on CERP, visit www.rfid-in-action.eu/cerp