ISO/IEC 15961-4:2016 provides a set of application commands and their associated responses for the following functions:

- to start and stop battery assistance;

- to select and de-select a particular sensory function supported by the RFID tag;

- to set sensor parameters both initially and ongoing;

- to start and stop the sensor monitoring the environment;

- to access sensor data;

- to establish the battery status.

ISO/IEC 24753 defines the encoding rules for identifying sensors, their functions, their delivered measurements, and the processing rules for sensor data. As such, it receives commands as defined in ISO/IEC 15961-4:2016 and provides the information that is required for the appropriate responses.