in050548 - INCITS Subgroup Annual Report

Annual Report for: T-20 RTLS

Covering the Period from 7/2004 to 7/2005

Title of INCITS Subgroup: Real time Locating Systems

Links:

• Subgroup's web site (if applicable)
• Executive summary
• Link to Subgroup's area on the Secretariat's Projects Database
• Significant accomplishments
• Significant challenges
• Expected challenges
• Previous year's meetings
• Next year's meetings
• Liaison activities
• Membership and Officers
• Future Trends
• Other administrative information

Informal Description of Work:

Provide a set of technology standards for Real Time Locating systems (RTLS). The standard includes 3 parts, two air interfaces between the asset and the readers which receive the transmissions from the asset tags, and a common API for the multiple air interfaces that are specified.

1. Executive Summary

Currently the T-20 committee is in a semi-dormant state. The first iterations of the standards were released slightly more than a year ago. Since then, membership has dropped back to 4 participants. We are awaiting the output of the ISO JTC1/SC31 WG5 for RTLS which is developing a global standard. It is anticipated that once that committee has completed its initial work, changes to have been made will be rolled back into the 371 series of INCITS standards.

2. Significant Accomplishments

No Activity; waiting for ISO 24730 to complete.

3. Significant Challenges

No significant challenges at this time.

4. Expected Challenges

We will roll in the changes from ISO. This should include an expansion to include the air interface from Exciters and from Tag Programmers to the Asset Tag.

5. Committee Activities

a. Previous Year's Meetings:

No meetings have been held this year. There has been no new business.

b. Next Year's Planned Meetings:

Meeting Number	Date	Location
2006 -1	TBD	TBD

6. Liaison Activities

No official liaison. However, Dan Kimball and Tim Harrington are both members of the ISO WG5.

7. Membership and Officers

a. Officers:

Position (and training date)	Name and organization represented
Chair	Tim Harrington - WhereNet
Vice Chair
Secretary
International Representative
Vocabulary Representative

b. Membership: 

See Attachment A

8. Future Trends and Related Technical Activities

RTLS is of growing significance in the tracking of assets through the supply chain. Recent market inflection include the adoption of INCITS 371 compliant tags by the MTO organization for the identification and tracking of drayage vehicles in all of the Long Beach area marine terminals. There is increased activity in solutions and investments by multiple Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Cisco and Intel.

RTLS will increase in significance as it is adopted by the DoD for tracking of assets and personnel. Additionally, as more portions of the commercial supply chain adopt this technology it will become a bridge between isolated islands within the supply chain.

RTLS will become part of a nested architecture of traceability that encompasses traditional RFID, including standards developed by T6 ISO, and EPC.

In the future fine-grain locate solutions such as those enabled by UWB, Ultra Wide Band, technologies will become viable. This is restricted by current regulatory restrictions with the US and Europe which severely limit the range of commercially available systems..

9. Other Administrative Information

No additional administrative information is available or required at this time.