They have to be pretty obvious because they need to have a directed beam running at something like 12W per direction to get more than a few meters of range, and that assumes you have a massive antenna (credit card shaped at the very least) in visual range. In theory you could use beamforming to hide the antenna better but you’d be sucking in and continously transmitting a lot of power just to scan tags on cars.
It doesn’t make sense anyway. Everyone carrying at least one 4G capable device with them at all times these days. It they’re not, they probably have a mandatory cell phone/WiFi beacon/Bluetooth beacon of some sort embedded in their cars. The government can track everyone’s moves exactly if they wanted to, from kilometers away. Why waste kilowatts per street on RFID scanners when people give their location away for free anyway?
If these tags worked well enough for location tracking, I would’ve expected a lot more presence detection hardware for smart homes to use them.
The tower is where you can put an rfid scanner. There’s lots of them, they support power and network, and they aren’t obvious.
They have to be pretty obvious because they need to have a directed beam running at something like 12W per direction to get more than a few meters of range, and that assumes you have a massive antenna (credit card shaped at the very least) in visual range. In theory you could use beamforming to hide the antenna better but you’d be sucking in and continously transmitting a lot of power just to scan tags on cars.
It doesn’t make sense anyway. Everyone carrying at least one 4G capable device with them at all times these days. It they’re not, they probably have a mandatory cell phone/WiFi beacon/Bluetooth beacon of some sort embedded in their cars. The government can track everyone’s moves exactly if they wanted to, from kilometers away. Why waste kilowatts per street on RFID scanners when people give their location away for free anyway?
If these tags worked well enough for location tracking, I would’ve expected a lot more presence detection hardware for smart homes to use them.