Basic Types of Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) Systems

EAS was invented in 1966 by an American inventor Arthur Minasy. Since then, the EAS technology has evolved, and different types of it have come and gone.  The two most common ones that are still widely in use today are AM (acousto-magnetic) and RF (radio frequency) systems.

A deep technical discussion about the differences between the two systems is beyond the scope of this article, so we will just go over the basic differences that matter most to retailers. The AM systems work at the frequency of 58 kHz (kilohertz), while the RF systems work at the frequency of 8.2 MHz (megahertz). Visually they are very similar, and to an untrained eye they look the same.

The most important thing to know is that EAS tags only work with the type of a system they are designed for. This means that AM systems can only detect AM tags, and RF systems can only detect RF tags. It doesn’t matter if the system, tags and labels in the store are from different manufacturers – it only matters that they work on the same frequency (AM or RF).