Select a page
Call: +49 - 337 01 22-0
RFID-Tag

To complement its g e o l o g g e r® and s m a r t e x® monitoring solutions for real-time monitoring of structures, PROGEO now also offers its customers solutions based on RFID technologies to capture information about the structural condition of buildings.

“It has always been our approach to first analyze the problem of a project and, based on this, to develop an optimal solution for metrological information acquisition before committing to a metrological method,” says PROGEO Managing Director Andreas Rödel. “In this way, we have been able to gain extensive experience, including with RFID technologies, in a number of special projects in recent years, such as the construction of the Niagara Tunnel in Canada.”

PROGEO now wants to make the expertise it has gained in this way available to its customers as an independent toolset to complement its online expertise. PROGEO sees areas of application for RFID technology above all where it is sufficient to record conditions manually at longer intervals, e.g. in the course of maintenance work. However, the prerequisite for this is that the long time intervals do not give rise to risks due to the late detection of faulty conditions or that the causes of damage can no longer be analyzed correctly.

With its new offer, PROGEO wants to distinguish itself from suppliers who have been promoting RFID as a miracle solution for quite some time without pointing out the systemic limitations. This can currently be observed in particular in the marketing of RFID-based monitoring of roof superstructures.

“As a company that has been established in the market for many years, we therefore see as a prerequisite for sustainable market development above all a need for serious education among building owners, architects and processors, so that the RFID technology, which is in itself highly interesting, does not fall into disrepute due to exaggerated expectations that ultimately cannot be fulfilled,” says Rödel.

RFID is a radio technology in which so-called RFID tags can be read contactlessly with a reader without a direct line of sight, whereby the tags obtain the energy required for measuring and transmitting from the radio radiation emitted by the reader. Unlike classic radio sensors, RFID tags thus do not require a self-sufficient energy supply that would otherwise necessitate regular battery replacement. RFID thus represents an interesting supplement to real-time monitoring by means of monitoring systems.