ISO/IEC 18000-6:2004 defines the air interface for radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices operating in the 860 MHz to 960 MHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band used in item management applications. Its purpose is to provide a common technical specification for RFID devices that may be used by ISO committees developing RFID application standards. ISO/IEC 18000-6:2004 is intended to allow for compatibility and to encourage inter-operability of products for the growing RFID market in the international marketplace. ISO/IEC 18000-6:2004 defines the forward and return link parameters for technical attributes including, but not limited to, operating frequency, operating channel accuracy, occupied channel bandwidth, maximum EIRP, spurious emissions, modulation, duty cycle, data coding, bit rate, bit rate accuracy, bit transmission order, and where appropriate operating channels, frequency hop rate, hop sequence, spreading sequence, and chip rate. It further defines the communications protocol used in the air interface.

ISO/IEC 18000-6:2004 contains one mode with two types. Both types use a common return link and are reader talks first. Type A uses Pulse Interval Encoding (PIE) in the forward link, and an adaptive ALOHA collision arbitration algorithm. Type B uses Manchester in the forward link and an adaptive binary tree collision arbitration algorithm. The detailed technical differences between the two types are shown in the parameter tables.