The RFID industry chain is mainly composed of the following parts: standard formulation, chip design, tag packaging (including antenna design), identification system design and production, system integration and management software development. The following introduces the current situation of RFID industry chain at home and abroad from these aspects.
(1) Standard Formulation Due to the early development of 13.56MHz RFID technology, the relevant standards are relatively mature. The main international standards are ISO/IEC 14443 and ISO/IEC 15693, and the domestic 13.56MHz RFID standard mainly comes from these two international standards. In the typical application introduced above, the second-generation ID card in China is based on ISO/IEC 14443-B standard; Local bus cards and campus cards are mainly based on ISO/IEC 14443-A standard. The application based on ISO/IEC 15693 standard is relatively rare in China, and the typical application is the student ticket discount card of the Ministry of Education.
Compared with the maturity and wide application of 13.56MHz RFID international standard, there is no clear and unified international standard for UHF and microwave band RFID. However, in recent years, countries and regions with leading RFID technology have obviously increased their investment in standard formulation and are actively formulating their own standards.
At present, there are three main standards being formulated abroad: ISO/IEC 18000, EPC Global in the United States and Ubiquitous ID in Japan. These standards (organizations) are actively entering China, setting up institutions in China and recruiting their own enterprise interest groups, all hoping to influence the formulation of domestic UHF RFID standards and win the standard opportunities in the vast China market in the future.
At home, the relevant government departments have fully realized the importance of RFID industry and paid more and more attention to the formulation of industrial standards. At the beginning of 2004, the National Standardization Administration Committee established the China National Standard Working Group for Electronic Labels, with the purpose of establishing China's own RFID standard and promoting China's own RFID industry. However, the formulation process of national standards is full of twists and turns. At the end of 2004, due to various reasons, the working group on national standards for electronic labels was suspended.
However, the formulation of national standards for electronic labels has not stopped there. Although there are still many different voices on national standards, the idea of compatibility with international standards, support for independent intellectual property rights and protection of China's interests has been widely recognized. At present, 14 ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Information Industry, Science and Technology Committee and National Standards Committee, have completed the compilation of the White Paper on RFID in China to support the establishment of our own RFID coding system-NPC system. At present, the drafting group of the new RFID national standard has been established, with the director of the product department of the Ministry of Information Industry as the head of the drafting group, and the drafting of the corresponding standard has started. The new standard will seek mutual compatibility with international standards on the premise of having independent intellectual property rights. It is reported that China's independent RFID specification is expected to be officially promulgated in 2007.
(2) Chip Design Although domestic chip companies started late in RFID chip design, with the rapid development of domestic chip design industry in recent years, the gap between domestic chip design industry and international chip design level has narrowed, and domestic companies have every opportunity to catch up with or even surpass the technical level of foreign chip companies in RFID chip design. At present, the main domestic RFID chip manufacturers are concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai, and the representative enterprises are:
Beijing: CLP Huada Electronic Design Co., Ltd., Datang Microelectronics and Tsinghua Tongfang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. Shanghai: Fudan Microelectronics Co., Ltd., Shanghai Hua Hong Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Belling Co., Ltd.
At present, domestic chip companies have completely mastered the design technology of 13.56MHz RFID chips, and can provide corresponding reader chips. In the domestic bus card, campus card and other 13.56MHz RFID market, Fudan microelectronics, Shanghai Hua Hong and other companies have launched a series of mature RFID products, and gained more and more market share in the equal competition with large foreign companies.
Domestic chip manufacturers are highly concerned about the design of UHF and higher frequency RFID chips, but their strategies are different. Some manufacturers are in the wait-and-see stage, and some manufacturers have entered or are ready to enter the development of UHF RFID chips. Fudan Microelectronics has developed products supporting EPC Class0 standard in 2004, and will launch products supporting ISO 18000-6B standard at the end of 2005.
(3) Label packaging (including antenna design)
In China, the application of RFID is mainly in the form of cards (such as the second-generation ID card and bus card in China). ), after years of development, the packaging technology in the form of RFID card has been very mature. The packaging of card RFID mainly includes module packaging (chip assembly), business card printing (antenna production) and printing. At present, there are a large number of domestic manufacturers in all aspects, and the representative enterprises are:
Module package: Shanghai Changfeng Smart Card Company, Shanghai Yingnuo Information Technology Co., Ltd., CLP Smart Card Co., Ltd. and Shandong Lv Shan Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.
Business card printing: Eastcom Heping Smart Card Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongante Technology Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Minghua Aohan Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Pujiang Smart Card System Co., Ltd., Shanghai Luneng Zhongka Smart Card Co., Ltd., Huangshi Emerald Wanda Gold Card Co., Ltd., Tianjin Global Magnetic Card Co., Ltd., Helong Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Huayang Microelectronics Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Yinengda Smart Card Manufacturing Co., Ltd. and Zhongshan Dahua Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. ..
Printing: Shanghai Letterpress Printing Co., Ltd., Shanghai No.3 Printing Factory and many business card printing factories.
At present, the traditional wire bonding module packaging and winding business card printing technology is still the main method of card packaging in China. However, with the increasing demand for RFID applications in new packaging forms such as thin cards and self-adhesive electronic tags, new packaging technologies such as flip-chip and printed antennas have developed rapidly, and some manufacturers have been able to provide related packaging services, and new packaging forms have also entered practical applications, such as Shanghai rail transit one-way card (wave card) and Shanghai fireworks management electronic tag (self-adhesive electronic tag).
With the development of new packaging technology, new processing links have appeared in RFID packaging technology, such as bump fabrication of flip chip and antenna printing. The enterprises represented are:
Aotu Generation: Jiangsu Changdian Technology Co., Ltd., Helong Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Huayang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. ..
Antenna printing: Shenzhen Huayang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. and Huangshi Jade Wanda Gold Card Co., Ltd. ..
Although there is mature card RFID packaging technology in China, and the new packaging technology has developed rapidly this year, there is a big gap between China and foreign countries in advanced packaging technology, and we do not have the packaging ability of low-cost RFID products. With the development and application of RFID technology, packaging faces more and more challenges, such as how to reliably assemble smaller and smaller chips by chip assembly technology. How to greatly improve the packaging speed to meet the explosive demand? How to further reduce packaging costs and so on. At present, many far-sighted packaging factories in China are preparing to introduce foreign production technology to take the lead in the future RFID packaging competition.
(4) Design and production of identification system At present, the design and production of identification system (card reader) of domestic 13.56MHz RFID is mature, with a large number of manufacturers and products and strong competitiveness; In contrast, there are not many manufacturers and products in UHF band, and their technical strength is far from that of foreign manufacturers. The enterprises represented are:
13.56MHz RFID identification system: Shenzhen Minghua Aohan Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin Global Magnetic Card Co., Ltd., Shanghai Youtong Industrial Development Co., Ltd., Shanghai Hua Smart Card System Co., Ltd., Shanghai Liangbiao Intelligent Terminal Co., Ltd., Beijing Juli Technology Co., Ltd., Zhuhai Yida Technology Electronics Industry Co., Ltd., Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Technology Development Co., Ltd., Harbin Xinzhongxin Electronics Co., Ltd. and Guangdong Sanjiu Intelligent Electronics Co., Ltd.
UHF RFID identification system: Shenzhen Yuanwanggu Information Technology Co., Ltd.
(5) System integration is the same as the design and production of system software development and identification system, and the system integration between 13.56MHz and UHF RFID is also unbalanced: the system integration technology of 13.56MHz RFID is mature and there are many manufacturers; There are not many manufacturers of UHF RFID system integration, and there is a certain gap between their technical strength and foreign manufacturers. The enterprises represented are:
13.56MHz RFID system integration: Shanghai Software System, Zhuhai Yida Technology Electronics Industry Co., Ltd., Shanghai Hua Smart Card System Co., Ltd., Harbin Xinzhongxin Electronics Co., Ltd., Beijing Beikong Software Co., Ltd.
UHF RFID system integration: Beijing Shen Wei Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. and Harbin Weike Technology Co., Ltd.
At present, domestic system integration vendors have certain large-scale system integration capabilities, but mainly use foreign software products. RFID system software processes and analyzes a large amount of data generated by RFID system to provide users with really useful information, which is a key link related to the smooth promotion of RFID and the highest link in the future RFID industry value chain. Compared with the efforts of large foreign software companies to develop RFID system software, domestic software companies are relatively less involved in the development of RFID system software, and in this respect, there is a big gap between domestic and foreign capabilities.