By Jerry Banks and Les G. Thompson, co-authors of RFID Applied

In the previous article, “The principles of RFID: Hardware Basics,” we discussed the key hardware components found in most RFID solutions. This article will focus on the active tag, an RFID tag that has an onboard power source. This power source is, in most cases, a coin cell battery that can be found in many different types of electronic gadgets. The battery extends the functionality of the RFID tag so that it can be used in a multitude of new applications due to the boost in transmission power and the ability to integrate and power circuitry in the tag beyond that in a passive tag.