To many, “The Internet of Things,” a predicted, transformative moment in time when nearly all “things” in the physical world will be interconnected, wirelessly, with communication capabilities linking the physical and virtual worlds for a variety of cooperative applications, is a distant point in the future. To others, the internet of things is now.
RFID “Smart Tags” Connecting
Physical Things to Virtual Things
Radio-frequency identification technology (RFID), a technology that uses “smart tags”, tags with microchips, to provide information to a virtual network, is considered to be a primary technology in advancing “the internet of things.” In 2011, RFID revenue is expected to exceed $6 billion, with more than 750 million so-called “item-level” RFID tags used in global apparel markets alone. In Europe, about one billion “smart tags” are expected to be used in 2011, linking many “things” to the virtual world.