From the Editor's Desk

Welcome to the latest issue of the High Tech AIDCourier.

Is your company keeping up with the rapid changes in international standards that relate to RFID? Are you aware of how the Internet of Things will affect your business? High Tech Aid can provide detailed, customized reporting, monitoring and meeting attendance for your company needs. Email steve@hightechaid.com  for more information.

Since the last newsletter I have been to standards meetings in Florida (it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it) and a series of meetings on the Internet of Things in Wuxi, China.
The meetings in China were very interesting with a start at the Wuxi New Site industrial area where we visited several of the organizations involved in the IoT. The organizations we visited included:
• Wireless Sensing Networks
• China Research and Development Center for Internet of Things
• China Academy of Sciences R&D Center for Internet of Things
• Jiangsu Research and Development Center for Internet of Things
• Jiangsu Zhonge Internet-of-Things Technology Development Co.
• Cool Clouds
• The National Engineering Research Center of SensingNet
• Wuxi SensingNet Industrialization Research Institute
• Wuxi Hi-Tech Micro Nano SensingNet R&D Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences
And the area has many other organizations and companies based there. This is the home of the IoT in China.

We also attended a conference day to discuss the IoT from both the Chinese and the European perspectives. The event was very well attended (about 180 people) with some great presentations being made. Prior to my arrival, there had been several days of academic teaching sessions, to help teach academics about the topic.

After I left, several of the members of the group headed over to Kuala Lumpur where they gave the academic sessions to 100+ people and a general IoT session to 300+ people.

If this interests you, then you should be aware of some events coming up:

In April, the same group that held the China meetings (and the KL meetings) will be giving a one day pre-conference special session at RFID Journal Live in Orlando. Join us on April 12, 2011 to learn all about the IoT. More info can be seen at http://www.hightechaid.com/IOT/Orlando%20flyer.pdf

In June 2011, there will be a major IoT event in Europe. Details will be available soon

In September 2011, there will be a series of events in South America (Brazil, possibly Columbia, Argentina, Mexico) followed by a session at the AIM Expo in Las Vegas. Details will be available soon.

I suggest you get signed up for one of these events as soon as possible.

Finally, a new magazine on the Internet of Things will be available soon. I have seen the first draft and it looks great. To be published in electronic format (rather than paper), we should have more details next month.

If you are interested in RFID things you can follow my tweets at @RFIDMan.

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Technology News Briefs

RFID Standards

We had a great set of ISO meetings in Sarasota Florida, USA. The full details of the various meetings of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 31 WG 4/SGs 1, 3, and 6 and WG 7 can be read on the http://www.UnderstandRFIDStandards.com web site. Look for the blog entries about the four standards updates.

In summary:

WG 7:
• Discussions on the integration of ISO/IEC 29167-6 (UHF) and ISO/IEC 18000-63. These standards are so closely inter-dependent they are being combined into one standard. It was agreed that the work in 29167-6 should be transferred into 18000-63 to ensure that the standard has the least chance for mistakes and/or misunderstanding.
• Agreed to request the WG 4/SG 3 accept the work into ISO/IEC 18000-63
• Agreed to continue work on 29167-6 until the work item to open ISO/IEC 18000-6 has been successfully opened.

WG 4/SG 1:
• Discussions on File Management as it relates to this group and the work of WG 7
• Discussions on the use of RFID in Libraries
• Discussions on the impact of a lack of Registration Authority for ISO/IEC 15961-2 and -3
• Demonstration of a concept for a proposed new ISO/IEC 24791-4
• Discussion of ISO/IEC 15961-4 work

WG 4/SG 3:
• Review of regulatory issues around the world, including the changes proposed in Japan
• Discussion of a problem with the spurious emissions requirements in ETSI 302 208.
• Discussions on the work to break the ISO/IEC 18000-6 standard in to sub-parts to allow for easier reading and understanding. The group agreed that the new documents should be sent to CD ballot as soon as the Project Editor has incorporated the changes discussed.
• Discussions on the new work item on ISO/IEC 18000-7. We created an adhoc group to start the process of modifying the standard.
• Discussed the need to accept the inputs from WG 7 on ISO/IEC 29167-6 and build them into the ISO/IEC 18000-63 standard

WG 4/SG 6:
• Comment Resolution Meetings were held and the following documents were sent to the next stage of the process:
o DTR 18047-3 – comments resolved, sent to publication
o CD 18047-2 – comments resolved, sent to FCD ballot
o FCD 18046-1 – comments resolved, sent to FDIS ballot
• Discussion on a new document that summarizes the need for conformance and performance standards for the RF projects in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 31. This document was approved and sent to WG 4 with a recommendation that it become an SC 31 level standing document covering all of the work of SC 31
• Discussion on the need for Interoperability standards. Agreed they are important, look to see this submitted as a new work item in the future.

If you want more information on ISO standardization or on any issue of RFID standardization, then email steve@hightechaid.com.

Radio Frequency Identification