125KHz & 148KHz Differences
125 KHz to 148 KHz
This frequency range was the RFID industry’s first, since the early 1980’s. In 1984 our R3 148 KHz product line debuted and are still supported today! In the late 1990’s the RFID industry began to gravitate toward 125 KHz as a standard for electronic components within our industry thus our R3-1 125 KHz product line began to take shape in 1998. By 2002 we had learned a few things and introduced a more advanced networkable product line, or what we call R3-2 125 KHz, and is today our premier LF (low frequency) product offering. New users and projects in the LF realm should look only to this line given it’s advancements and broader hardware offering. These 3 products are not interchangeable.
Typical applications include:
- Access Control & Security.
- Identifying widgets through manufacturing processes or in harsh environments.
- Ranch animal identification (ISO 11784/11785).
- OEM applications.
Tags are made of a hard copper coil and eeprom chip then packaged into a housing appropriate for the application.
Tags can cost from $1 to $75, highly dependent upon quantity and packaging. The more robust a Tag is, the higher its cost. Less expensive Tags are typically flimsy and will not survive harsh environments. Custom Tags, the tooling of eeprom silicon wafers specific to an application, can result in a Tag price of 20 to 30 cents, in quantities of millions.
Read ranges are typically inches to several feet. Although Tags can be placed on metal and embedded into metal with some loss of performance, the KHz spectrum is the most adaptive to a metal environment. No RFID Tag can read through metal.
Current users, if you are not sure which frequency you have installed please refer to a product manual, cross reference the part number (Assy Number) on the part to a price list or product brochure, or contact us via our contact page
