Recently in RFID Category

ABI Research recently published its latest report on the contactless technology industry, including vendor matrixes showing which companies lead the pack. For those not familiar, contactless technology (also sometimes referred to as “near field communications”) refers to systems that use short-range wireless signal to transmit information from a small tag or transmitter to a receiver. Two examples are E-Z Pass for paying highway tolls, and key-fobs that provide access to corporate buildings.
 
Two companies that I have to admit I’d never heard of before topped ABI’s matrix of leading contactless reader and contactless inlay vendors: ViVOtech and Gemalto, respectively.
 
ViVOtech is a company that specializes in technology for next-generation, electronic payment systems.
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So much news coming out of CTIA today is flooding the newswires that I’m gonna do something unimaginable—blog about a news item I received today that’s not connected with the wireless show. Gasp!
 
Don’t worry, I’ll definitely be blogging about CTIA this week. Just not this second.
 
Okay, here goes…
 
RSI ID Technologies, which was founded in 1991, is primarily a manufacturer of RFID antennas, inlays and tags; it also offers a line of HF and UHF RFID labels, readers and software. The company’s self-described mission is to “deliver complete, innovative solutions to complex RFID problems across global markets.”
 
Today’s announcement from RSI ID Technologies targets the retail market: the company is now offering two RFID-enabled display cases, under the brand name Pressica, designed specifically for eyewear and jewelry.
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CTIA Wireless News Starts Now

March 26, 2007 9:18 AM | 0 Comments
The CTIA Wireless 2007 show kicks off tomorrow in Orlando, Florida. Already the newswires are starting to get flooded with announcements from wireless industry companies promoting their latest products, services and achievements. A quick search on Google News for “ctia” turned up the following:
  • Announcement that the creator of BlackBerry (Mike Lazaridis) has replaced Motorola’s CEO (Ed Zander) as the CTIA keynoter.
  • Announcement from TCS that it has been selected as a CTIA Wireless 2007 E-Tech Award finalist.
  • Announcements from Pantech and Nokia about their displays at the show.
I’m bracing for continued deluge of news as the show gets underway, and will be blogging, albeit from afar, on events and news that catch my eye.
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Chinese Government Embraces RFID

March 13, 2007 1:03 PM | 1 Comment
Asia generally, and China in particular, tends to get a lot of play in wireless/mobile technology news, because often the latest, coolest products originate from there. Usually, in this context, China is discussed regarding cell phones. But there are other wireless technologies out there for which the Chinese market is of interest.
 
Take radio frequency ID (RFID), for example. In a recent report, RNCOS (an India-based research and consultancy firm) examined the outlook for RFID in China, including government policies.
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One of the impediments to implementing real-world radio frequency identification (RFID) systems is the cost of embedding the tag inlays on paper or film labels. Although RFID has many practical applications in a variety of industries—including pharmaceuticals, baggage tracking, consumer packaging, and supply chain—the printing cost of tags can be prohibitive.
 
At least one company is moving to find its niche by helping to lower the cost of RFID tags. This is Worldlabel, a division of Singapore-based Innotech Resources Pte Ltd. The company recently launched its Infinity V1 RFID tag and inlay embedding system.
 
Worldlabel says that its system “provides a low cost method of converting RFID tags/inlays to be embedded accurately into a paper or film label, even though each production batch has varying size labels and requires a different type of RFID tag to be embedded in a different area of the label.”
 
This is achieved with a machine that was jointly developed by Worldlabel and TÜV SÜD PSB Group.
Wordlabel Infinity RFID Machine
 
The company explains that the machine is highly flexible and features “compact catering to many different sizes of labels and it can insert all types and sizes of RFID tags, accordingly to exact customer requirements.” It can product up to 100 labels per minute.
 
In a news release about the system, TÜV SÜD PSB Group assistant vice president of PSB technologies, said: “We are very confident that the machine will meet the most demanding RFID label converting needs of industry.
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RuBee Fills in Where RFID Fails

February 2, 2007 6:53 PM | 0 Comments
An EE Times item in the Jan. 27 edition of Information Week reported on the potential uses of RuBee, a new wireless networking protocol announced by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) last June.
 
IEEE describes RuBee (a.k.a. IEEE 1902.1) as “a bidirectional, on-demand, peer-to-peer, radiating, transceiver protocol operating at wavelengths below 450 Khz. This protocol works in harsh environments with networks of many thousands of tags and has an area range of 10 to 50 feet.”
 
EE Times reporter John Walko notes in the report mentioned above that RuBee looks promising as a way to fill in some of the gaps left by radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.
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RFID Robots Invade Library

January 9, 2007 9:15 AM | 0 Comments
In a former life, I worked as a librarian. So, an article about the use of radio frequency ID (RFID) chips at Chicago State University’s library, in the January, 2007 issue of Wired Magazine, caught my eye. At this particular library, students have been banned from the stacks, because robots now are installed to quickly retrieve any item that is desired.

Here’s how it works: every item in the library (books, CDs, DVDs) is tagged with an RFID chip. Continue Reading...

We’d all like to believe that the medical equipment found in hospitals is efficiently managed, so that if we need it, it’s readily available. But apparently, that’s not always the case.

In a new report out today, ABI Research says that, at any given moment, much of the expensive equipment owned by hospitals—everything from low-tech wheelchairs to high-tech machinery—is hard to find because it’s either already being used, or is in storage. The result is that hospitals tend to over-purchase this type of inventory, and then not utilize it efficiently.

Two wireless technologies currently are vying for position to provide hospitals with better systems for managing their equipment inventories, ABI says: WiFi and active RFID (tags with internal power source).

ABI quotes analyst Sara Shah as saying that less than 5 percent of North American health care facilities are equipped with what are known in the industry as real-time locating systems (RTLSs), so the market truly is up for grabs.

The advantage of WiFi-based RTLSs, Shah says, is that most hospitals already have WiFi networks in place, and many medical devices are equipped with WiFi functionality.

“The value proposition is that they can keep their existing infrastructure and add new elements,” Shah said of WiFi-based RTLSs for hospitals, in the report.

She added that WiFi RTLS vendors such as Aeroscout, Ekahau and PanGo market their products based in part on the fact that they’re standards-based and non-proprietary. The downside of WiFi-based systems is that hospitals will need to install additional access points to bring the needed functionality to existing networks.

“On the other hand, RFID vendors such as RF Code and Radianse point to the wide application of RFID for asset tracking, and their longevity in the industry,” ABI says.

It is true that RFID technology has been around for quite a while. Continue Reading...

More on RFID and Spinach

September 22, 2006 10:29 AM | 0 Comments

Yesterday in this blog, I suggested that RFID tags might have been useful in containing the recent spinach-borne outbreak of E. coli. Apparently I’m not the only who had this idea. On Wednesday, an entry on the RFID Law Blog (published by McKenna Long & Aldridge, LLP Attorneys at Law) covered the same topic.

In the blog entry, the law firm suggested that the E. Continue Reading...

RFID Useful for Tracking Spinach?

September 21, 2006 11:42 AM | 0 Comments

One of the biggest news items this week was that spinach tainted with E. coli was endangering the health (and in some cases, lives) of Americans. The problem was first identified by authorities almost two weeks ago, and since then has affected people in at least 23 states.

Health authorities tracked the E. coli outbreak to bags of spinach distributed by Natural Selections Foods, LLC, and sold under a variety of brands including Dole.

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