The Benefits of Wireless Technology

Some of the first applications of wireless technology, developed more than 30 years ago, were led by Wal-Mart for inventory management purposes in the 1980s. The company needed to integrate stocking-level information from hundreds of stores into its business enterprise. This marked the beginning of the wireless scanner, bar-code reader, and, more recently, RFID tag industry. The next wave of wireless adoption was driven by consumers who wanted to take the PC off the desktop. Integrating wireless into laptops drove broad adoption and standardization, and removing wires from the PC allowed PC vendors to attract new customers and address a whole new range of applications. Today, in the third wave of wireless adoption, removing the wires on distributed devices like cell phones and measurement systems offers new levels of mobility. For engineers and scientists, wireless measurement and monitoring systems provide an opportunity to reduce installation and system costs, simplify system deployments, and address a new set of applications that were previously challenging or impossible with wires.