Radio Frequency Identification Systems (RFID) are the preferred way to solve automatic identification tasks in demanding industrial environments. This is possible because tags can be constructed to survive many chemical environments, including solvents, oils, acids and caustic solutions. Tags for high temperature applications are also available.

Pepperl+Fuchs currently offers RFID solutions utilizing the following communication frequencies:

• 125 kHz – Ideal for environments containing structural metal. Tags can be flush mounted
• 250 kHz – High read and write speed combined with the ability to flush mount tags in metal make this solution ideal for many automatic machining lines
• 13.56 MHz – Tags based on ISO 15693 offer very high read and write rates
• 2.45 GHz – This frequency allows large read and write distances and very high data rates

Irrespective of the selected read/ write heads, users only have to familiarize themselves with IDENT Control once; independent of the selected network, the user interface and operation of IDENT Control is identical, simplifying programming, operation and long term support. IDENT Control offers interfaces to PROFIBUS, DeviceNet and RS232 serial plus a multitude of Ethernet based protocols (e.g. EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, Modbus/TCP, TCP/IP ...)

RFID systems usually consist of a control interface, read/ write heads and tags (code/ data carriers). Read only tags (code carriers) contain a unique unchangeable code typically 28 to 64 bits in length. This code is applied during the time of manufacturing. Read/ write tags (data carriers) offer user changeable memory that can be overwritten many times. Additionally, many read/ write tags also have a unique, unchangeable read only code allowing user applications to access data associated with a tag. The user changeable memory ranges from typically 1 kBit to 256 kBit allowing tags to operate as mobile data bases.

Write–Once-Read-Many (WORM) tags are user-settable read only tags. Once the user defined data is written to these tags, its memory is locked and can not be changed later. Read/ write heads can read both read only and read/ write tags. Reading or writing tags is triggered by sending a command to the IDENT Control interface, which in turn manages the data exchange with the read/ write heads. Up to four read/ write heads can be connected to an IDENT Control interface and all connected heads can simultaneously perform independent operations.

Pepperl+Fuchs has a wide range of RFID systems:

• System IDENT Control (125 kHz; 250 kHz; 13.56 MHz; 2.45 GHz)

In addition to the IDENT control line of RFID solutions, Pepperl+Fuchs offers the following industrial RFID systems:

• System IP (125 kHz)
• System IV (250 kHz)
• System MV (2.45 GHz)
• System MT (2.45 GHz)