Klaus Finkenzeller & The RFID Handbook
When Klaus Finkenzeller, a graduate in electrical/communications engineering, published the first edition of the RFID Handbook in 1998, he opened a door to a niche technology. At the time, he was working at G+D (Giesecke & Devrient) as a specialist and developer of smart card technologies.
Today – 25 years later – he looks back on past eras of RFID technology in an interview and also ventures a look at the future of wireless IoT. Klaus Finkenzeller has been working for the Bavarian company Elatec, based in Puchheim near Munich, as an Innovation Manager since 2019.
Interview powered by: the Think WIOT Group and Elatec
The first edition of the RFID Handbook was published in 1998. However, RFID technology was not even listed in the Gartner Hype Cycles in 1998. What assessments of RFID technology do you remember when you look back 25 years?
"At the time, RFID technology was already being used for animal identification, simple access systems, ski tickets, container and tool identification and electronic immobilizers in cars. Nevertheless, unlike the contact-based chip card, RFID technology was not considered a hype topic. From 1994, two technologies were available, Mifare and Legic, which made it possible to encrypt data transmission between the reader and transponder. This was seen as a prerequisite for implementing RFID applications with sensitive and valuable data, such as eTickets.
In 1996, I took part in a plenary meeting of the ISO/IEC committee SC17, which was held in Seoul to mark the introduction of contactless ticketing in public transportation. At that time, we worked intensively on the development of the two standards ISO/IEC 14443 and 15693 relating to the form and functionality of contactless smart cards and data transmission between card and reader. Among other ideas, contactless chip cards should also be able to be used as a replacement for paper tickets in public transport. Promising field trials of contactless local transport tickets were also carried out in Germany in the 1990s."