Manufacturing Cost Simulations for Low Cost RFID

In a previous Auto-ID publication, “Towards a 5¢ Tag”, we speculated on manufacturing and system methods to approach the elusive goal of a 5¢ Radio Frequency Identification (or RFID) tag. We extend our cost analysis in this paper and simulate manufacturing and assembly processes to examine the feasibility of the 5¢ tag. We do so assuming that large volumes are being manufactured achieving which is, of course, another challenge entirely. We experiment with variations in process, throughput and component variables to estimate what will be required to approach the 5¢ goal. As part of this experiment, we examine both the semiconductor manufacturing and the assembly of RFID tags. Our approach consists of two steps: bench-marking the processes employed and the equipment used, and 2) cost model simulation using this benchmark data. Our simulation models are inspired on earlier work on semiconductor costing at SEMATECH and at the University of California at Berkeley