RFID File Tracking

There is no list price for a records-room deployment; it is quoted against a written specification. Five things move the number: how many file jackets need labelling, which is a consumable that recurs as new files are opened; how many rooms and doorways need fixed readers and antennas; how many handhelds the records team works with; whether your existing file register can consume tag reads through the reader SDK or needs software built; and the cabling and installation at each read point. The labelling effort on an existing archive is usually a bigger line than the tag cost itself. On spectrum there is no licence fee to budget: as of 2026 India's RFID band of 865-868 MHz is delicensed by the WPC for low-power use under the 2021 short-range-device rules, and Identium's UHF readers and antennas are WPC-approved for that licence-exempt UHF band. Identium is BIS certified. Confirm the current WPC and BIS position before you sign off, then send a file count, room count and doorway count for a quote.

Tagging an existing archive is a one-time exercise, and it runs off the register you already keep rather than off the RFID system. Export the file identifiers held in your current register or file-tracking software, then run the batch through an RFID label printer once so the printed reference and the encoded serial are applied together: the printed number is what a clerk reads on the shelf, the serial is what the reader picks up. Keep that serial opaque and resolve it to the case or account number in your own database, so the tag broadcasts nothing sensitive. Then work the racks bay by bay, applying labels and verifying each one with a handheld before the file goes back. Going department by department lets the manual register run in parallel until a section is commissioned, and the first department gives you a real labelling rate to schedule the rest against.

Passive UHF reports the read zone a tag was last seen in, not a coordinate, so your location resolution is only as fine as the zones you build. A doorway portal gives room-level movement. A circular-polarised antenna dedicated to each rack bay — 9 dBi and 12 dBi units are the common choices — narrows that to bay level, at the cost of more antenna ports and careful transmit-power tuning so neighbouring bays do not overhear one another. The last metre is normally closed by hand with a UHF handheld, working in as the signal strengthens; Identium's readers ship with an SDK, demo app and source code, so that search can sit inside your own records screen rather than a separate utility. What resolution you actually achieve depends on the jackets, the shelving and the antenna layout, so treat bay level as something to prove in a short trial on your own racks rather than assume.

No. A passive UHF tag has no battery and no transmitter of its own, so a file is visible only at the moments it passes a reader. What you get is a last-seen record: for a file signed out to a branch, an advocate or another office, that is the exit read point, the time, and the name the file was issued against. That is enough for accountability and for chasing files that have not come back, but it is not live tracking, and it is worth saying so plainly to whoever approves the project so the expectation is right from the start. If a file's position must update continuously while in transit, that is different technology — battery-powered active or BLE tags for live indoor location, or vehicle GPS, which is a telematics job rather than an RFID one. In a records room the question is usually who holds it and when it left, and last-seen answers that.

A passive UHF label draws no power, so there is no charging, servicing or scheduled replacement — a file left untouched in an archive room for years should read no differently on the day it is pulled, provided the label is still attached and undamaged. The risks in an Indian records room are mechanical and environmental rather than electronic: adhesive lifting off old, dusty or varnished card jackets, humidity in a room without climate control, and label faces abraded by repeated shelving and handling. Specify the face stock and adhesive against the jacket material rather than accepting a generic label, and keep a few spares so a damaged one can be reissued against the same file identifier. Memory on a Gen2 UHF tag is rewritable unless it has been locked, so a tag can also be re-encoded and reassigned when a file is closed and the jacket is reused.