Host Michael Graen is joined by Dr. Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P, Director of Research and Technical Professor at Auburn University, about the past, present, and future of the RFID tag. They discuss their views on RFID including:

• Evaluating technology for business needs with a focus on RFID tags.
• RFID technology and its applications in various industries.
• RFID tags and their components.

Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening,

everybody. Welcome back to a another conversations on retail.

With on shelf availability, focus, my name is Mike grain,

and I'm your host. And I get to introduce a guy that I have been

working with for at least 22 years in the RFID space. And

everybody knows him as sinful. But the interesting thing is

nobody knows his last name, because it's like 47 consonants,

17 vowels, and a couple of dashes. So Senthil, why don't

you give us your full name, and give us a little background

about yourself.

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: Sounds good, Mike. Thank you, thanks

for having me on the podcast. You know, your ask for my full

name, we realize we have only 60 minutes, so we'd be tough

getting through. But as you said, most of the folks that

know me, know me as Senthil and pretty much everyone that I grew

up with knows me as Senthil. And I do really have a very, very,

very long last name. But it's essentially my dad's name and my

granddad's name. So that's pretty much it, you know. So I

come from, you know, a system where they, you know, instead of

a typical family name, they basically attach your father,s

and sometimes your grandfather's name. So that's essentially it.

And whenever people try to address me with my last name,

I'm like, 'Who's calling my granddad?' You know, so. Nice to

be here.

So what is it? We're all waiting? Give us your entire

full name not that you use. Not when you go to a restaurant,

say, Who's Who's the name of the table and given his name? What

is your full name? Because I don't think most people know

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: No and that is not a system that

that.

can fit everything. Yes. So the only place where I have my full

legal name is my passport, but every other system, there is not

a single system that can fit my full name. So depending upon

where you go, whether it's a university, whether it's the

driving license, or whether it's an airline reservation, they

chop it up. So it's always try, you know, fun trying to figure

out what part they chopped out. But, you know, my full legal

name is first name is Senthil Kumar. And the last name is

Chinnappa Gounder, which is my grandpa's name, and ..... ,

which is my dad's name, and I think it's 40 or 50 characters,

but I have not had the time to count through all of it.

Longeset name in the world. Now. I've also seen it as

Senthil Gounder P, what is that?

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: Different people chopping in different

ways. The biggest challenge I had was, I don't really pay

attention to it. And like, Yeah, let's have fun with it. As long

as people know me as central of the guy with the longest name,

you know that that gets me to places. But as you know, Mike,

you alluded to, we've known each other for 22 years. And we all

started at the University of Arkansas. And one of the things

amazing things that the University of Arkansas does when

you graduate from Arkansas is they put your name on the

sidewalks. Right. So, you know, and I got two degrees from

Arkansas one, I was my master's and one was my PhD. And had both

of those instances, they came back and said, Hey, we can't fit

your whole name in a sidewalk because our sidewalks are only

six feet long. You know, you got to chop it out, you know? And

that was the largest and hardest had to think of, do we get more

of my father's name? Or do we get more of my grandfather's

name, and that's where I had to get my PhD to because when I got

my master's, I had to give for my grandfather. But then I felt

bad for my father. So I had to go and get a PhD to you know,

get him in. So I'm there twice on the sidewalks of Arkansas,

but two different versions.

And most of the six by six squares that Arkansas

there's 150 names outdoors, there's one at around 14 times

real good so ... well let's let's get to it a little bit as

a podcast that's always fun to talk a little bit about the fun

part of part of part of your name and stuff and I always

tease you though we had a board meeting couple of weeks ago and

you also sent on I go What's your last name I thought about

yet. So 2005 .... You and a guy named Justin Patton were I think

relatively new out of school and Dr. Bill Hargrave came and said,

Hey, why don't you like to come and be part of an RFID Lab and

you went what? So tell us about you in the lab? And what exactly

does the lab do? I think a lot of people have heard of the

Auburn RFID lab, I'll bet you that most of them don't know

everything that you do. But just talk a little bit about what you

do at the lab.

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: Yeah, so we got started at the lab

when we were still students at Arkansas. So I was getting my

master's at that time, Justin was almost done with this

master's at that time. And I was in computer science, he was in

computer engineering. And Dr. Hargrave was in the Business

College. And you know, and he has been working with Walmart

for a couple of years, at that point, trying to figure out,

hey, will this technology be relevant to what Walmart is

trying to solve from a business perspective? And around 2005,

they had arrived to the conclusion, yes, there is value

in this technology, this technology is feasible. So let's

try and make this as a reality. And at that point, you know, Dr.

Hargrave, and the team at Walmart decided, hey, it would

make sense to create an RFID Lab that would serve as an

educational resource to the community, to the suppliers to

the technology providers that are getting onboard a you know,

really quickly and, and also do some of the fundamental research

that's required on the business side. And at that time, he

basically reached out to us and said, Hey, do you guys want a

job? And you were like, Okay, is it? Is it a paid job? And the

answer was, yes. And we said, Yeah, we are, we are up for it.

Right. So, you know, we're hungry grad students. And, you

know, we started in the lab in 2005. And, you know, it has been

a shock 19 years, we didn't really think we would be doing

this for 19 years, because in a typical academic environment,

you know, you work on a research project for two, three years,

wrap it up and move on to the next thing. But with RFID, it

has been a fantastic journey, where we have sort of grown with

the industry, and I wouldn't have it any other way. And we

were at University of Arkansas for the first nine years. And

then we moved to a place called Auburn University. And we've

been there for officially 10 years now. So we have now been

longer in Auburn than in Arkansas, but it doesn't feel

like it, you know, the early days where I would still

consider the early days were a lot more fun than today, you

know, today, we're still having a lot of fun. But the early

days, we were literally, you know, building things in the

lab. And the role that we have played in the industry has sort

of evolved as the industry has evolved, but the core mission of

the lab, which is to focus on the business case, and the

business value of the technology, educating the

community, both on the business and the technology side, and

then serve as a platform for everyone to sort of come

together and work. And then one of the things that we have been

doing not really quite for 20 years, but more for the past 15,

16 years is do a lot of things that helps with the

implementation of the technology as well. Because early in the

days, we figured out our role was pretty, you know, we

thought, hey, once we see the value once people make the

decision, without our work was done, but we were realizing that

there is a lot more work that happens while you deploy this

technology and roll this out, then you know, even in the

initial decision of choosing something like RFID. So we have

focused a lot on that. And we are here we are. Here we are.

So your your role specifically. Here's the way I

like that rather than giving giving us a 20 minute

dissertation about your role description. Typical day looks

like for you because what what I would say is you are the

technical expert, you probably don't really like to be referred

to that. But when somebody wants to know how RFID really works,

they don't ask anybody the lab except you tell us how this

works. Right. So give us the understanding of the so what is

it typical day look like for you and weave into that kind of

what's the role that you have at Auburn?

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: Absolutely Mike. So my official title is

Director of Research and Technology. But as you refer to

whether or not there is a tech question, 'hey lets ask Senthil'

is not unusual. My typical day, you know, it serves, you know,

let me step back a little bit as well. So when we started the

RFID lab, the mission has always been to support the business

case on the business value. But, you know, someone like me and

even Justin come from an engineering background, right?

So we learned technology growing up, and it's still our passion.

So what we tend to do is, we tend to have a fundamental

understanding of what the technology can do, and more

importantly, what the technology cannot do. So it's really having

that and then working with businesses. And when they come

to us with problems they would like to potentially solve with

RFID. It's basically guiding them saying, Yep, that is

feasible. It's something that we can currently do, it has been

done. Or it could be something like, Hey, this is something

that's currently not feasible, but might have a solution in the

near future, if we really put our efforts through it, or this

is not something that RFID cannot do. And we need to

probably look at something else. In that way, we are setting the

right expectations. You know, on the inducer side. Typically, on

a typical day, you know, I sort of look at my role in three

different buckets. The first bucket is, you know, I tend to

work with a lot of technology companies, both in the mature

market space where people have developed technologies and have

been using it for years and months at this point, try to

understand how, how it works. But we also spend an equal

amount of time with technology companies that are developing

stuff that might not be ready for real time. But you know, is

up and coming. And with that interaction, by sometimes we

work back with the community, getting them my perspective on,

you know, what their technology can do. And what are the things

they could potentially do that could help fill the gaps,

because a lot of times the technology, especially in the

second category, where companies are developing technology for an

anticipated market need, they have done their market research,

they understand the product. But we also tend to work with a

broader set of end users. So we give our perspective as well on

Hey, these are things that would be a fantastic fit, there is a

market need for it. But there are certain things that you

might not have focused on, but there is definitely an

opportunity there. But then that's probably about 30% of my

day, if you will, working with the technology companies. The

second, I would say part of it, you know, the other 30% is I

tend to work with end users as well, trying to understand the

business challenges that they are trying to currently solve

and what do they have down the pipeline? Because we know we

believe firmly that, you know, technology development for the

sake of technology development is not as impactful as

developing a technology to match a business need, right. So we do

spend a lot of time getting into the weeds of you know, day to

day business operations, whether it is retail, whether it is

aviation, whether it is logistics, whether it is food,

trying to understand how their businesses work. And then you

know, in that way, when we get to evaluate technology, whenever

we work with technology companies, we bring that

perspective and and then I would say the last part of it would be

in a lot of scenarios where we are bridging the gap between

both the technology companies and the end users. So we work

with both of those individual entities in a standalone manner.

But there are enough projects and programs where sort of the

rubber hits the road, and where there is things happening. And

we sort of act as a bridge between translating what the

business needs are to the technology companies and vice

versa as well. And then, you know, and if you look at the

people that we work with, you know, 50% of our time is spent

with the industry, but the other 50% is actually working with the

ARC team as well. You know, we used to be a really small team

back when we were in Arkansas, you know, it was half a dozen

people and that will look a lot. And you know, by the time we

moved out of Arkansas, it was 30 people and we had to really, you

know, build a team from scratch when we moved to Auburn that

looks like a lot and currently we have about, under in pretty

students about a 12 or 13 full time staff. So it's really

coordinating what's happening externally with our industry

partners to our teams internally and vice versa. So it's a good

mix as well.

Alright, so I was I was trying to interrupt you, or

you threw out an acronym, which we love to do: ARC. Spend time

with the ARC team, I don't know that most of the people in the

audience maybe even knows what that means. What does the ARC

team?

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: So the ARC team was created in

2009? To answer the question, what tags should I use? Right?

So whenever we started working with end users, you know, we

were focusing on the business case and the business value, and

then when they made the decision that they are going to do RFID.

And the question that invariably came in every single deployment

was, hey, I got all of this figured out, there are these,

you know, that time 10, 15 tags in the market, which tags will

work, right, and the way the technology works is, we are

still at a phase where we have to choose the right tag for the

right application. I mean, that broadly applies to a lot of the

other technology decisions as well. But you know, more than

anything with tags, where the physics world, you know,

depending upon the product, you're tagging, depending upon

the reader infrastructure that you're having in place. And the

use cases that you have in mind, you have to sort of choose the

right tag, if you will. And we were answering these questions

on a one off basis until 2009. And in 2009, without Hey, that,

you know, since this is a question we are answering, can

we do this in a more structured and scalable way? In that way?

You know, when this question goes from, you know, being asked

from five different companies to 50 companies or 500, companies,

can we still answer that question? In that way, you know,

to support their needs, right. So that's the whole idea behind

the program. So the our team does a lot of work, you know,

understanding the requirements or needs of the application, and

then creating what we call a specs for for the use case. And

then once we have the spec, they test a lot of products that come

into the market, RFID tags, and then they approve the RFID tags

for different specs, if you will. So if you are an end user,

and if you identify that I need spec y, then you have a list of

tags that are already quality and performance certified. So

they can you can basically use those tags and be confident that

they are going to work and deliver, you know, the value

that you're expecting from it. And it was something that was

originally created with the end users in mind. But it also, you

know, did a couple of other things that we were not

anticipating back then. One was, it helped the technology

community get a clearer understanding on what the

expectation from the end user was. Because before then they

were developing tags, you know, tags were being developed in a

way before our course, you know, created. But a lot of

assumptions went into place. You know, and there was a lot of gap

between the people who are really developing the technology

or really developing the tags, and the end application. And the

data that typically flowed from that end user application to

those engineers that were building those products went

through two or three layers. And a lot of things were lost in

communication, right. So our helped standardized the

requirements from an end user perspective. So in that way, if

you are an engineer, sitting anywhere in the world, you have

a document in front of you that says, This is what is needed

from an end user perspective for this application. So if I build

a product that meets that spec, then I don't have to, you know,

figure out what they really need. So it really helped

standardize and communicate the requirement. That then the last

thing that happened, especially with the way the industry scaled

was, it helped align and create a standard across the industry.

So if you are a retailer that's going into tagging electronics,

and you're the first one you do, in fact do a lot of work in

creating that spec and standardizing it. And you know,

when an end user number two comes on board, they have a

standard for electronics already, and then they can, you

know, make a clear decision on whether their use case aligns

with that standard. And if it does, So then, you know, they

use the existing standard. And if it doesn't, they, they might

create a different spec. But what really happens in this

scenario is, if I am a manufacturer for televisions,

and and I sell my televisions to five different retailers, now

the requirement is aligned across multiple retailers, right

in that way, you know, different retailers communicate what they

expect to see in again, in a standard way. So if I'm a

television company, I know this is the requirement for retailer

a retailer B retailer C. So that's what ended up happening.

Again, we started doing this for a few retailers. But what has

happened over the years is, other industries saw it and felt

like this is something that they could use in their own industry.

So for example, the, you know, the second industry that arc has

worked, and the longest after retail is aviation. So they have

similar problems, right, they don't have retail stores, but

they have different airlines, different airports and different

entities, or, you know, putting tags or let's say bags, but it

has to work across the whole system. People buying the tag

and putting it on the bag may not be the one only ones who are

scanning it. So the same approach of you know, defining

requirements, and then evaluating product against

requirements and communicating requirements has been, again,

not, you know, something that's new, it has been done in other

industries. But from an RFID perspective, we sort of

inadvertently did that. Right? So that's what ARC is.

Perfect, thank you so much. So let's, let's take it

all the way back, whether it's airlines, whether it's retail,

whether it's food, whether it's, you know, even things like toll

roads, etc. RFID has been around for a long time, when I first

got involved with this one, this, somebody said RFID tag.

And I'm gonna show this slide here, because I think it helps

to tell the picture. A lot of components to this thing. So

when you say RFID tag, to walk us through, and I've got several

follow up questions here, but walk us through the foundations

of a tag the difference between a tag versus an antenna versus

an inlay. I've got a picture on the slide, but a walk because I

think it's confusing. When people say tags, you could mean

several different things. When somebody says RFID tag, what do

you think?

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: Absolutely. RFID is a very broad term.

Right? You know, and we have discussed this in another

podcast, where to, you know, even in the name RFID, there are

two parts of it, right? One is the ID. That's the data piece of

it. And the RF is the radio waves that's used to communicate

this ID. So that concept, you know, is used broadly across a

whole slew of technologies, you know, you got what we call is

passive UHF RFID, which is what we use in retail, logistics, and

that sort of applications, people still use the word RFID

for active tags. So the difference between a passive tag

and an active tag is the active tag has a battery in them. So

anything like a BLE, or even the apple hat tags, that you could

call them out of as RFID as well, but they have an onboard

power supply. And, you know, we use the same term for HR for NFC

RFID, which is really short range. And the stuff that's used

for financial payments or access control in your hotel room key

that you tap or a credit card that you tap and pay. That's

RFID as well. But you know, we it's more for close range

applications. But you know, what we tend to spend a lot of time

on is the UHF RFID, which you know, which works about 10 to 15

feet in applications and knees doesn't have an onboard power

source. And it's really well suited for applications that you

you need to read items, you know, and to know what's in a

given area, so it's not really a one to one, it's a one to many.

So you have one device that's trying to scan a lot of items.

So on this picture, so there's a tag on the left

hand side, what exactly is the tag? What is What am I looking

at here?

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: So what you're really looking at

two things on the screen. So the one on the left is RFID in its

old call the rawest form are in its most basic structure, if you

will. So on the side of the middle, you see a dot, that's

the IC or the chip. So that the brains behind the whole tag if

you will, not the brains behind the whole device.

So that's just to be clear, that's where the ID part

goes. Right? What we have in that small chip is the ID

information. And we'll get into tags datacenter 2.0, later, but

really, it's just what the UPC and the serial number.

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: Exactly, it's the HG 10. You know, it's G10 process serial number, where, you know, we typically use G10 strident for things at a, you know, item level, but at a unit level, you take, you know, a G10, add a serial number to it, it becomes an SG tag serialized, a unique ID. And it's typically, it used to be a 96 bit number, but we're moving beyond that in certain applications. But that 96 bit number is stored in that chip. So that's, you know...

We're showing on the screen here, what, what

constitutes the ID part, which is the UPC and unique serial

number together. That's basically the SG 10 serialized

G10. And what and what that does is it gives you not just a UPC

quantity, which the retail industry loves, but a UPC and a

actual individual selling unit that you can track throughout

this budget. I always say it's like a UPC and a VIN number and

a car together, it's probably a fool. But that's the way I can

think of it because you may have 1000 F150, trucks, but they're

all different, they all have a different VIN number. So now, in

retail, every single selling unit has a unique serial number,

SG 10 for it. So that's what's stored in the tag, well, what's

what's around the tech as a tag, the tag looks like it's a big

about as bad as a big as a pencil lead. So what is around

this tag?

Senthil Chinnappa Gounder P: So everything else that you're

seeing other than that little chip, in the middle is an

antenna, using your car reference. With the Wind

numbers, think of this the.as, the radio in your car, and

everything else as the antenna that's connected to your radio

rings, you have a device that has the data in it, it has the

capabilities to you know, communicate with other devices.

So you got the brains there. And you know, you need an antenna to

facilitate that communication to sort of enable the RF side of

it, the radio side of it. And that's essentially what you're

seeing. So you have a chip that's connected to an antenna

and antenna is typically made of aluminium, it could be made of

other materials as well. But it's a really thin, thin thin

sheet of aluminium that's connected to the antenna. And

then it is, you know, you see antennas with all shapes and

sizes, we have one on the screen that is typically used in you

know, automotive applications like tires, or you know, it's

even sometimes used in aviation applications for bags. But then

if you go and find an RFID tag and you know, an apparel item or

home or Home Improvements store, you will see that shape of the

antenna or change. And that is typically done depending upon

what you're building the tag for. So the chip remains the

same. And then people design different antennas, if you will,

depending upon the application. And then those are the two core

components. So if you have a chip and you are connecting it

to an antenna, you got and working RFID tag at that point.

And then anything else that you're doing to it is really to

protect it or package it packager or make it look good or

integrated with another application. So you know, you're

essentially converting the tag to, you know, to integrate it

within the product. So the picture that you have on the

right is sort of a converted RFID tag. So wherever you're

taking the chip and the Antara and sandwiching it between two

materials. And you know, the one side of the material could be

essentially a paper that you can print on and then the other side

could be paper as well if it's a hang tag, or it could be

adhesive with the release liner if you're making a sticker, or

that same tag could be sandwiched between two pieces of

corrugated cardboard if it's going on a carton and at that

point it really you know you're getting into the package.