Introduction - RFID: Fundamentals and Applications in Contactless Smart Cards and Identification - page 2

500

Security/access control
Asset management
Transportation
Supply chain management
Point of sale
Rental item tracking
Toll collection
Automobile immobilisers
Baggage handling
Animal tracking

400

300

200

100 Real time location systems

Other

0

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Year

Figure 1.1 The estimated growth of the global market for RFID systems between 2000 and
2005 in million $US, classified by application

Barcode
system

Fingerprint
procedure

Optical
character
recognition
(OCR)

Biometric
MM

Auto-
ID

Voice
identific-
ation

Smart
cards

RFID

Figure 1.2 Overview of the most important auto-ID procedures

1.1 Automatic Identification Systems

1.1.1 Barcode systems

Barcodes have successfully held their own against other identification systems over the
past 20 years. According to experts, the turnover volume for barcode systems totalled
around 3 billion DM in Western Europe at the beginning of the 1990s (Virnich and
Posten, 1992).