How much time does your company spend looking for lost items per year?
V-Tag Asset Tracking
Asset tracking is a concern for many businesses and government departments. Although a company may have many high value assets on its books, these assets are of little or no use if they cannot be located. In addition, if employees have to spend valuable time locating assets, the added costs to the enterprise can be a burden. For example, a hospital may have to send staff searching through its facility looking for unused wheelchairs or stretchers to meet its patient needs at peak times. Perhaps a technician is delayed running key tests for airline maintenance because the test equipment cannot be located in a timely manner.
The solution is asset tracking using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). In this white paper, we compare two approaches for tracking assets:
V-Tag Active RFID Tags
V-Tag Active RFID tags from InfinID Technologies are battery powered tags that have a read range of up to 300 feet. In addition, when the tag powers up, it coordinates with other tags to form a mesh network for communications purposes. Location is done by using fixed position tags that never move. The asset tags then calculate distances to those fixed position tags based on radio signal strength. V-Tag RFID tags were introduced to the market in 2013.
Passive RFID
Passive RFID uses small tags similar to the security tags seen in stores. Each tag does not contain a battery. Instead it is energized by radio energy from a nearby reader. Tag read range is limited to 10-20 feet depending on the size of the tag and the size of the reader. These tags have been available for more than 20 years and come in a variety of sizes and form factors.
Four key advantages to V-Tag vs Passive RFID
Cost
The V-Tag active tag solution had a big advantage over a passive RFID solution because it avoids the need to place fixed readers at every key chokepoint within a building. These readers can cost thousands of dollars each. Each reader needs to be supplied with network connectivity either wireless or wired as well as power. If the desired granularity of item location is small, then many readers must be deployed. In contrast, the V-Tag active tags coordinate to form their own mesh network for communications purposes, eliminating the need for expensive readers. A single low cost V-Tag gateway unit per floor is sufficient to relay asset location information to a central database.
Ease of Installation
The V-Tag active tag solution had a big advantage over a passive RFID solution because it avoids the need to place fixed readers at every key chokepoint within a building. These readers can cost thousands of dollars each. Each reader needs to be supplied with network connectivity either wireless or wired as well as power. If the desired granularity of item location is small, then many readers must be deployed. In contrast, the V-Tag active tags coordinate to form their own mesh network for communications purposes, eliminating the need for expensive readers. A single low cost V-Tag gateway unit per floor is sufficient to relay asset location information to a central database.
Room Level Accuracy
The third and most important advantage is that V-Tag active tags allow for item location to room level. If you tried to do this with passive tags, you would need an expensive reader at the door of each room. In contrast, with V-Tag, the tracked asset shows up as a dot within a room on a map display, and can be tracked from room to room as the asset location changes.
Sensor Measurements
V-Tag active tags can take periodic sensor measurements of the environment including temperature, battery level and light level. All V-Tag tags incorporate a sensitive acceleration sensor to detect tag movement. The tags can be configured with thresholds to provide immediate alerts whenever tags are moved from their current location or environmental limits are exceeded. In contrast, passive tags are unpowered when at a distance from the reader, and therefore cannot take periodic sensor measurements or generate alerts.
V-Tag Active RFID tags are easy to deploy. One option is to deploy V-Tag as a turnkey system using InfinID Technologies AssetWorx! software, which is a fully featured asset management system including a map display, asset database and label printing capabilities.
Have more questions? Call 888-475-RFID for answers.
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