RFID in Retail

We were engaged to develop the electronics for a retail display incorporating a responsive tablet to augment the display for a leading designer brand. Their prototype RFID reader and display functioned but did not have enough discrimination for the readers and RFID tagged products to be as close together as the client wanted. There were two challenges, reading one tag in the vicinity of others and ensuring that a reader at an empty position did not read the tag on a product in an adjacent position. Simply making the readers field weaker increased discrimination but reduced the reliability of reading. We developed the electronics and embedded software and devised a method of controlling the magnetic field using ferrite materials which directed the field rather weakening it.