Information resources
EPCglobal glossary
There are many new terms and acronyms associated with the EPC Network. Below are some of the most commonly used.
| Electronic Product Code (EPC) | is a number which uniquely identifies an item down to the instance level. |
| EPCglobal | is a not for profit organisation, jointly owned by GS1 Global and GS1 US. Each of the GS1 Member Organisations are responsible for operating an EPCglobal service in their country. |
| EPC Manager Number | is the number allocated to an end user organisation upon joining EPCglobal. It is a globally unique number which identifies the organisation and is used to compose EPC numbers. |
| RFID (Radio frequency identification) | An automatic identification technique for identifying objects using radio frequency transmissions. An RFID system generally consists of a tag, reader, antenna and software. |
| RFID Tags | An RFID tag is simply another type of data carrier. Essentially tags comprise a semi-conductor chip with memory, processing capability and a transmitter connected to an antenna (aerial). Memory can vary with simple tags having a small amount of fixed memory (typically between 64-128 bytes) and more complex tags ranging up to 64 kilobytes. RFID tags can be passive, (meaning they have no power source and can only send information when powered up by a reader during the interrogation process) or active (meaning they have their own power supply and can generally store more information, transmit greater distances and may have sensing capability). |
| Gen 2 Class 1 Generation 2 tags (C1G2) | New UHF standard for EPCglobal, designed after extensive input from end users. |
| Air Interface protocol | The communication protocol between tags and their readers. It may specify things like which one of the devices talks first, anti-collision algorithms etc. |
| ALE (Application Level Event or Middleware) | The software layer between the readers and the EPC IS data base whose purpose is the filter, sort and log read events. |
| EPC IS | The data base component of the EPCglobal Network™ which stores individual item data and event reads and enables users to exchange EPC related data with trading partners through the Network. |
| ONS | The automated networking service that matches the EPC to the location of information about the associated tagged object. |
| EPC RFID Label Printers | A printer which is capable of printing barcode labels which also contain encoded EPC RFID tags |
