Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) is an important defense against the rise of casual and organized retail theft. Traditional approaches use Acousto-Magnetic (AM) or Radio-Frequency (RF) technologies developed for EAS (RF-EAS). Retailers are also investigating the adaptation of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for use in EAS.
The strengths and weaknesses of each approach depend on its underlying technology— in particular, on the frequency and frequency band used to detect tags and labels.
This paper outlines AM, RF-EAS, and RFID technologies, and compares their performance in real-world retail environments against the challenges of stores’ physical and electrical environments, product composition and packaging, and countermeasures by thieves.