DESCRIPTION AND OUTCOMES
Project summary
The implementation of RFID and EPCglobal standard solutions is hindered by a number of technical, social and educational constraints. The objective of the BRIDGE project is to research, develop and implement tools to enable the deployment of EPCglobal applications in Europe. The BRIDGE project consists of a series of business oriented clusters, technical development clusters and horizontal activities.
Business Application work packages
The Business clusters identify the business opportunities, analyse the requirements, establish the business case, map the requirements with the available technologies and standards, identify problem areas that should be researched. They perform pilots and implementation, evaluate the results and issue application guidelines for using the technology in their particular business context. The business sectors addressed in BRIDGE are:
- Anti-counterfeiting
- Pharma traceability
- Supply Chain Management European Textile industry
- Manufacturing process
- Reusable Asset Management
- Products in service
- Item level tagging
Hardware, Software, Network and Security
The technical development clusters perform the research based on the needs expressed by the business clusters. They address technical issues as well as organisational and policy issues. The result of their work is provided to the business groups to enable pilots & implementations.
Hardware The Hardware work package develops solutions in the following areas: Sensor-enabled tags, Miniature tags, Metal and dielectric object tags, Low-cost readers, High read-rate antennas for readers, Ambient intelligent RFID systems.
Serial-Level Lookup Service and Serial-Level Supply Chain Control work packages develop software and network solutions to support the management of information related to items marked with RFID tags.
Security A sophisticated Security work package analyses the requirements and develop solutions in areas such as RFID Tag Security, Anti-cloning RFID Tag, RFID Trusted Network, Network Confidentiality, Data Integrity Preventing and Detecting False Information.
Training and Dissemination
The project comprises a comprehensive set of training activities aiming to educate a large number of parties on the RFID and EPC technologies but also on the specific results of the project itself.
The Dissemination and Adoption tools activities deliver conceptual animations, a portable demonstration, studies on the economic impact and on the consumer impact of the technology as well as a web portal and a cycle of conferences.
The deliverables will be widely disseminated throughout Europe by the GS1 organisations whose membership is primarily composed of SMEs.
Outcomes of the project
The outcomes aim at providing implementable solutions for:
Network
- Simple and cost-effective software tools targeted at SME’s
- Serial-Level lookup service to enable unique item level product information storage and retrieval
- Identification and authentication of tags and readers
- Data Management of extremely large amounts of real-time data
Application Software
- Serial-Level inventory management
- Management of large networks of EPC readers
- Models to exploit environmental data (temperature, humidity, etc.)
Security
- Security for privacy and to prevent illicit use of the EPC
- Prevention of cloning and emulation of tags in EPC
- Secure transmission of data between readers and tags
Hardware
- High performance readers for the European Requirements
- Low-cost and scalable tag disabling technology
- Low cost sensors (temperature, humidity) linked to EPC tags
Implementation
- Impact on information Systems design and functionality
- Pilot projects demonstrating the effective benefits of the technology
- Social Implication of RFID Network
Europe
- Increase the influence of the European organisations in global standard processes
- Address through relevant research the barriers to successful implementations of the EPC technology in Europe
- Practical application guidelines and adoption tools enabling the roll-out of the technology in Europe.