Fits and starts toward a single standard means measuring wattage "differently"

In March, data encoding standards for the RFID tag were finally ratified. Now insiders say protocols for transmission of data between tag and RFID reader should be agreed upon by year's end. EPCglobal—the successor body to the Auto-ID Center, and a joint venture between America's Uniform Code Council and Europe's EAN International—is spearheading the work. Together these bodies represent more than 100 member organizations worldwide and claim one million members in 102 countries.

The talks have at times been torturous, concedes David Lyon, a London-based EPCglobal project manager. Not only has EPCglobal had to knock heads to get the members to formulate agreed-upon proposals, but also the proposals had to be ratified by government authorities. The European Technical Standards Institute, for example, must ratify proposals concerning the broadcast frequency and power output of RFID tags.

These have revealed a sticking point, although fears that European insistence on a lower-power output for tags would effectively torpedo a global standard have proved misplaced. While U.S. regulations allow tags to transmit at four watts, Europe would only permit two watts. Concerns over the impact of this reduced power on the range over which tags could be read diminished when it turned out that Europe's regulators measured wattage slightly differently than their U.S. counterparts. Europe uses a measure called Effective Radiated Power, as opposed to the Effective Isotropic Radiated Power referred to in the U.S. regulations.

"Effectively, read ranges in Europe will be about 90 percent of those currently achievable in the U.S.," says Lyon.

The imminence of a global RFID standard, coupled with high-profile mandates from the U.S. Department of Defense and retailers such as Wal-Mart, have moved RFID onto many manufacturers' "to-do" lists. Europe's pharmaceutical manufacturers, once relatively indifferent, are scrambling to follow U.S.-led initiatives to use RFID to reduce drug counterfeiting.