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EPCglobal

EPCglobal is a non-profit organization with over 700 member companies, resulting from the merger of the European Article Number(EAN) organization and the Uniform Code Council( UCC). EPCglobal develops standards for the uniform use of RFID for the cross-border and cross-industry movement of goods. The exchange of product data between trading partners takes place via EPC's ownnetwork: EPCglobal Network.

For this use of product data, EPCglobal has developed an architecture with RFID middleware, the Object Naming Service( ONS), a central directory of all manufacturers using the EPC code, the EPC Information Service( EPCIS) with the product information, the EPC Discovery Service (EPCDS) for finding the EPC information and the EPC Security Service (EPCSS) for managing access rights. The central component of this EPCglobal architecture is the EPC code.

In this concept, the RFID middleware filters out and prepares the RFID data even before it is transported. The EPC services from EPCIS are based on the RFID middleware by transmitting the processed data to the relevant company department. For example, to merchandise management or logistics. The Object Naming Service (ONS) ensures that the EPC codes are assigned to the corresponding products and provides information on where the systems with the corresponding product data are located.

As far as RFID tags are concerned, EPCglobal advocates both the mature HF tags, which operate at 13.56 MHz, and UHF tags in the frequency range between 860 MHz and 960 MHz. For the UHF range, EPCglobal has defined an interface protocol for the air interface: the Class 1 Generation 2 UHF Air Interface, or "Gen 2" for short.

As a standard protocol, Gen 2 defines the physical and logical requirements for a transmission procedure between a passive RFID tag and the RFID reader in the UHF range between 860 MHz and 960 MHz. The Gen 2 protocol has several additional features. One feature indicates when the formatted data is in the usermemory, and another protects the content that has just been written to the memory.


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