As we stated above, we use a particular flavor of the EPC Gen2 standard called SGTIN-96.  This is used where each individual physical object is to be assigned its own serial number.  While we use SGTIN-96, there are other acceptable data formats – some with different bit lengths. 

To remove any possibility of confusion, we have to state explicitly what protocol was used to interpret the RFID information sent from the tag.   To do that we prepend a 16-bit Protocol Control word (PC) - that is reported by any RFID tag reader - to the actual EPC.  So, for our SGTIN-96 encoded tags we record and provide the user with a number which is the PC plus EPC  which is 16 + 96 = 112 bits or 28 hexadecimal characters in length.  Thus, using the example above a tag with EPC 30-28-32-C2-18-4C-02-29-39-90-F4-1D will be reported as 30-00-30-28-32-C2-18-4C-02-29-39-90-F4-1D.