Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) radio band. Key benefits are reduced cost, proprietary (closed system) network, low power and various speeds of data transmission. If a system does not need to be open, this might be an economical way to transmit/receive data.

• Frequency: 315 MHz ~ 2.4 GHz
• Encryption: Available
• Network Size: Unlimited
• Battery Life: Years
• Speed: Up to 2,000 kBs

ISM Products For Inventory Management

If the objective is to determine the presence or absence of products or goods inventory control may be inexpensively accomplished with passive RFID systems. Passive RFID tags contain no power source and rely upon a magnetically induced energy from the reader for power. The result is long life, although passive tags do not have the ability to communicate until a reader is within range, typically several feet or less. When inventory environment monitoring is needed wireless sensor networks monitor and report temperature, humidity, shock, smoke and more. Panasonic modules with integrated SNAP firmware allow engineers to quickly test different protocols – ISM, 802.15.4, Bluetooth -- and determine the best solution for a specific application. Panasonic offers nearly fifty different modules to build a wireless sensor network fine tuned to specific application requirements.

RFID Radio Frequency Identification

RFID systems fall in to two major categories, passive and active. Passive RFID tags contain no power source and rely upon a magnetically induced energy from the reader for power. As a result, passive tags do not have the ability to communicate until a reader is within range, typically several feet or less. Passive RFID tags are a good choice for supply chain management of lost cost goods, but may prove inadequate for high value asset tracking applications where additional information and range have value. Active RFID tags are battery powered and have ranges of 30 feet or more and may use sensors that allow the tag to communicate alarms based upon some event, i.e. broadcast an alarm when a box has been dropped or opened. Panasonic’s tiny footprint in combination with power efficient designs make Panasonic RF modules good choices as active RFID tags. Panasonic broad line of part numbers will satisfy nearly all range and bandwidth requirements.