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July 18, 2003

RFID Tags and Smart Dust

RFID tagging will create not just a tidal wave of data, but lifetime employment for data warehouse designers

by Ralph Kimball

A tidal wave of data is approaching the data warehouse that could easily deliver 10 to 100 times more data than we have ever seen. The data is incredibly potent, potentially tracking every tangible object, person, and location on the globe.

Is this some Big Brother scheme? No, it's an incremental revolution that's been quietly proceeding in manufacturing plants, retail stores, and development labs in many locations. The revolution consists of two related technologies: radio frequency identification (RFID) and "smart dust."

RFID is the next generation of bar-coding technology. Instead of a series of bars simply printed on a label, an RFID tag is a miniature electronic circuit. The simplest RFID tag can be packaged in a label very similar to a bar code label. But instead of being scanned by a laser that must "see" the bar code, the RFID tag merely needs to pass near a specially equipped RFID transceiver. The transceiver bombards the tag with invisible radio waves, thereby activating the RFID tag's circuitry which transmits its information back to the transceiver. The tag is entirely passive: It doesn't need to contain a power source. RFID tags typically store a 64-bit unique code. A standard printed bar code such as a universal product code may store only 11 digits, but the 64 bits — roughly equivalent to a 19-digit number — allow for vastly more combinations.

RFID tags will take advantage of this larger code storage to allow every instance of every product to be tracked. And because the RFID tag simply needs to pass near an RFID transceiver, every doorway can be equipped to detect the passage of an RFID tag on an object. Companies involved in supply chain management are already tracking the movement of individual products off an assembly line, onto a pallet, across the shipping room floor, onto a truck, and off the truck at a remote delivery location. Each of these physical locations is equipped with an RFID transceiver, and of course, this flood of data goes into a database.

At the retail end of the supply chain, RFID technology would let a shopper fill their shopping basket and then simply walk past an RFID-enabled doorway. The entire basket would be detected. The shopper would probably have a credit card with its own RFID device in it. The shopper would then approve the purchase and exit the store. A few little privacy and security details need to be worked out.

RFID tags come in many sizes and shapes. Livestock and pets have had implanted RFID devices for a number of years that allow easy tracking and identification. Don't even suggest that humans get these implanted ... On the other hand, the special bracelets that parolees sometimes must wear are based on related technology.

RFID tags don't need to be completely static. The simplest RFID tags are write-once devices that are configured with their unique codes at the time of manufacture. But more sophisticated RFID tags can be updated by an RFID transceiver in the field. One ambitious scheme being considered in Europe is the embedding of an updatable RFID tag in high-value currency banknotes so that the history of their whereabouts can be determined. Supposedly this use would combat counterfeiting and money laundering.

The RFID revolution is well underway. In January, Gillette announced that it had placed an order for up to 500 million RFID tags to be used in its supply chain, including "smart shelves" in retail stores. Another major manufacturer is rumored to be preparing an order for several billion RFID tags. Avery Dennison, the well-known label maker, is deeply involved in developing RFID technology. Obviously these order volumes will drive the unit price of RFID tags down. The five-cent price point is thought to be a threshold where the RFID tidal wave will really pick up.

Lifetime Employment

The biblical flood of data coming from all these RFID sources will dwarf our current databases. We have an insatiable desire to manage by the numbers, and someone, somewhere, is going to want to see all the detail. If we are routinely pushing the terabyte boundary in our larger databases today, it wouldn't surprise me to see 10TB or even 100TB fact tables before the end of this decade. Such large tables must be simple in order to be processed efficiently. Dimensional modeling provides the kind of simplicity to make these large tables queryable in a cost-effective way.