The use of passive UHF RFID tags in the Aerospace and Defense market goes back to 2003. At that time the global standards had evolved to a point where organizations such as McCarran airport in Las Vegas and Hong Kong airport moved forward with plans to use first generation EPC RFID tags for tracking baggage at those respective airports.

In 2005 Boeing announced an RFID initiative in support of the launch of the new 787 Dreamliner program. As part of this program Boeing suppliers were to apply high memory passive UHF RFID tags to a vast collection of parts being installed on the 787. The planning and education that took place to support this initiative has since spawned a number of RFID projects across the aerospace industry in areas unforeseen when the program was initiated.

There are numerous organizations in the RFID industry that offer product testing and evaluation services.  Many of these offer to sell the results of their evaluations for an often hefty fee.  For individuals interested in the physics of how RFID works this information may have some value.  For most though this information has little value since it a lab environment bears no resemblance of the actual environment in which your application will be deployed.

Our recommendation are as follows:

Standard EPC Gen2 RFID tags are made up of an integrated circuit (IC or chip) and a passive tag antenna (together called an inlay). Most often these are integrated into a label material. The key differentiating features of these tags are antenna design and storage capacity; the same label “packaging” can be used on any standard inlay. Often referred to as "Smart Labels", these are the tags most associated with supply chain applications such as those promoted by Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense.