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. This includes things like radio frequency-enabled credit cards and infrared cell phones. On its Web site, the company indicates that a major barrier to the adoption of contactless payment systems is the cost of replacing or upgrading magnetic stripe terminals. With this in mind, ViVOtech has developed solutions that make such upgrades fast, safe, and affordable.
 
“Customers simply wave their contactless cards or point their cell phones or PDAs to make a payment transaction,” the company explains on its Web site. “Using ViVOtech's enabling plug and play technology, financial institutions, wireless operators and retailers, can increase revenues significantly.”
 
ViVOtech’s solutions fall into four main product lines:
 
  • ViVOpay—products that transform merchant devices into next-gen contactless payment systems
  • ViVOnfc—Integration of three of ViVOtech’s software apps (ViVOwallett, ViVOplatform Issuer Server and ViVOplatform Control Server) into a flexible solution that enable scard issuers, telecom operators and service providers to offer mobile contactless services.
  • ViVOfob—Contactless cards and fobs designed to generate revenue for providers of credit cards and prepaid loyalty products.
  • ViVOplatform—An online, real-time transaction processing system that supports contactless cards or fobs.
Gemalto is a company that manufactures end-to-end digital security solutions. This includes everything from the development of software apps through design and production of devices like smart cards and tokens. The company’s products are used in a variety of industries including telecom, financial services, e-government, identity management, multimedia content, digital rights management, IT security and mass transit.
 
On the Smart Readers & Tokens section of its Web site, Gemalto explains that it makes secure card interfaces, including readers, chipsets, contactless interfaces, USB tokens, and dongles. During 2006, its installed base of readers and card interfaces reached 30 million units.
 
So there you have it—two relatively unknown companies that top the list of vendors providing a type of wireless technology that we may someday take for granted.
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.
 
These displays “combine item-level RFID tracking and RFID-based access cards to maximize loss prevention and provide retailers with unprecedented asset visibility.” 
 
The ideas is that retailers can account for all items on the sales floor in real-time, while protecting high-value merchandise. Only employees with an RFID access card—which is tied to that person’s employee identification number—can open the case. If someone removes an item, they’re responsible for it until it’s either sold or returned to the case.
 
Software for the system tracks the number of items each employee shows to customers, including how often and for how long each item is removed, cross-referenced with how many sales the employee makes.
 
“This allows the retailer to not only protect against lost or stolen goods, but to be more responsive to customer needs, provide better customer service and increase employee accountability and productivity,” explained Wolf Bielas, co-founder and CEO of RSI, in a statement.
 
Seems like a pretty nifty idea. If you want to take a look for yourself, RSI is exhibiting the new cases at the RFID World show in Dallas, Texas this week (booth #513).

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.
 
In the meantime, here’s a question for you (courtesy of CTIA’s home page): what word do you feel best describes “wireless”?
 
a. Everywhere
b. Marketplace
c. Fashion
d. Exhibits
e. Freedom
f. Global
g. Cool
h. Other
i. None of the above

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.
 
RNCOS concluded that, in China:
  • Applications of both low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF, 13.56 MHz) RFID are relatively mature.
  • During 2008, there will be massive applications of ultra high-frequency (UHF) RFID—especially in supply chain management.
  • RFID’s growth during 2008 will be supported by well-developed standards and technologies.
  • The three key areas for RFID application development are Beijing, Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta.
  • The retail sector—lead by Wal-Mart—is increasingly using RFID to improve supply chain efficiencies.
  • Two key drivers for RFID’s use in supply chain management are reduced costs and enhanced automation.
  • HF RFID is used in ID card applications, and UHF RFID is part of the country’s railway systems project.
  • The Ministry of Science and Technology is planning 20 major RFID programs, for which the government is allocating more than $16 million. One of the largest is China’s second-generation resident identification card program.
What strikes me most about these findings is the Chinese government’s embracing of RFID. In the U.S., applications for the technology often have been stymied by privacy concerns (people worry the government and/or corporations will use it to track behavior and buying habits). In China, where the government is a much, much more heavy-handed, there is no such restriction.
 
I wonder: will China’s use of RFID in ID cards make Americans more or less concerned about adoption of the technology? Probably more. What do you think?
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. Its versatility, compactness and accuracy in embedding inlays is a major advancement in Smart Label converting technology and makes this machine one of its kind.”
 
Other features of Worldlabel’s machine include:
  • Independence from downstream conversion processes
  • Buffer station capable of catering up to 800 mm of completed reel
  • Can inspect and embed reading RFID tags from inlay reel into conversion process
  • Touch pad enables operator to key in length metrics
  • Can be modulated with current label converting systems or operate stand-alone
According to Worldlabel’s announcement, the machine is being manufactured in Singapore; current lead time for orders is about 12 weeks.

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. More specifically, the new protocol could be useful for applications of “real-time inventory under harsh environments, even near metal and water and in the presence of electromagnetic noise.”
 
Walko notes in the report that RuBee’s main appeal lies in its ability to deal with harsh environments; “getting accurate RFID reads around liquids and metals has been the most significant obstacle to widespread, cost-effective deployment of the technology.”
 
Because RuBee operates at slower speeds than RFID, it is an alternative rather than a replacement—useful in situations where, since RFID doesn’t work, something slower but relatively comparable could be used instead.
 
IEEE’s RuBee working group will be meeting Feb. 20 in Boston, just before the RFID Smart Labels Conference kicks off. So watch for news about development plans for the protocol. Walko reports that already RuBee has some pretty powerful backers, among them retailers Tesco (in the U.K.), Metro (Germany), Carefour (France), and Best Buy; plus manufacturers and system developers including Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Sony.
 
RuBee-based produced are expected to become available in the next 12 to 18 months, Walko reports.

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. This allows “tall, forklift-style machines that run on tracks” (the robots) to put away and retrieve materials in a three-story-high storage facility.

“The computer knows where everything is and can hustle the correct bin to the circulation desk for checkout,” Wired explained in its report.

I am both fascinated and repulsed by such a system. From the standpoint of librarians, I can see the appeal. No more lost items caused by well-meaning but unhelpful library users who insist on putting books back on the shelf—in the wrong place.

From the standpoint of the library user, however, the invasion of the RFID robots seems a sad turn of events indeed. No more browsing through the shelves of books, looking through each one before making your selection? The loss of browsing, to me, would make a visit to the library very hollow indeed.

Maybe that’s the point, though—no-one has time anymore to visit the library and spend time choosing just the right book. I admit that I rarely indulge in the activity myself anymore. Most of the time, it’s more convenient simply to place whatever items I want on reserve, and stop by the library on my way home from work to pick them up. If my library were equipped with a system like the one in Chicago, I could simply stop by the circulation desk without even pre-ordering books and have five items delivered to me in the span of 2 ½ minutes.

Perhaps I’m dating myself (youngish though I am) with a nostalgia for a simpler time when libraries were a hands-on affair and the endless battle between order and disorder that took place within those walls made any such facility an organic and fascinating place to hang out.

Then again, you have to admit there is a certain ring to “RFID library robots.” Might make a good name for a rock band…

What do you think—are automated retrieval systems a good thing for libraries? Or are we losing something in the process of wanting to do everything faster, better, and more efficiently?

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. The Wikipedia entry for RFID says that “The technology used in RFID has been around since the early 1920s,” and “The United States Department of Defense has successfully used active tags to reduce logistics costs and improve supply chain visibility for more than 15 years.”

But, RFID tags remain controversial because some people believe their ability to efficiently track consumer goods (and, as a result, consumer behavior) poses a threat to privacy.

My first, uneducated prediction based on the ABI report and what I know about RFID and WiFi was that WiFi will win out. Why? Because WiFi seems more ubiquitous than RFID, and RFID is controversial.

But then, I did some quick research and learned that, apparently, some of the vendors ABI mentions seem unsure themselves regarding which technology will catch on for RTLS applications. For example, the introductory blurb on Aeroscout’s Web site indicates that the company’s system uses both WiFi and RFID.

The got me intrigued, so I took a quick look at the other vendors mentioned. PanGo advertises several product lines, including Active RFID Tag, which uses RFID tags and 802.11 signal to track inventory.

Of the three WiFi vendors mentioned, only Ekahau makes a point of stressing that its inventory system is based only on WiFi and not RFID. So, apparently, the issue isn’t quite as clear cut as I first thought. Maybe it will take both technologies to deploy RTLSs the work for hospitals.


I also performed a related search on Google that included both “RFID” and “Wifi” [+("health care" OR hospital) +(inventory OR "asset management") +(RFID OR wifi OR wi-fi)], and an interesting thing happened—the majority of results on the first page were about RFID-based inventory systems for hospitals, rather than WiFi.


Hmm…. So does that mean there really are more vendors out there selling RFID RTLS products for hospitals, or just that they are better at SEO than their WiFi counterparts? <wink>


The jury obviously still is out on this one. What do you think?

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. coli outbreak represents an opportunity for the RFID industry to proactively advocate for use of the technology, “instead of always being on the defensive.”

The entry also noted that “RFID tags on produce would make it much easier for public health officials to identify the specific source of the E. coli infestation.”

Using RFID tags in this way, the blog says, would be beneficial to consumers, retailers, and farmers. Make sense to me. What do you think?

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. Last Friday (Sept. 15) Dole recalled bags of spinach thought to possibly be involved (with Best-If-Used-By dates from August 1-October 1, 2006).

Despite the detective work, as of this morning CBS reports that authorities have only been able to narrow the source of the tainted spinach down to one of nine California farms.

Okay, so it’s been almost a fortnight since the problem was first detected, and all we know is that the spinach came from one of nine possible farms in California ?! In this day and age of high-tech, it seems to me that the source should have been traced a lot quicker than that.

Perhaps spinach distributors should consider using RFID tags to prevent such a drawn-out PR nightmare in the future.

For those of you not familiar, RFID tags are small devices that can be attached to people or objects for identification purposes. The tags contain stored data that can be read by scanners using radio waves and transmitted to computers for analysis.

According to RFID Journal, this technology has been around since the 1970s, but only recently has it become cheap enough to be practical for commercial applications. Wikipedia notes that RFID tags are now used in to track a variety of items including library books and airline baggage. So why not spinach?

If the tainted bags had been affixed with RFID tags containing data about their origin, it should have been easy to figure out where the E. coli came from. Some commentators on this subject have expressed concerns that RFID technology could take on a Big Brother function in our society, by enabling companies and the government to track people based on the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the types of activities they engage in.

There may be a real danger of loss of privacy from RFID, but the technology also could have beneficial applications—like tracking food so outbreaks of bacteria can quickly be confined).

What do you think?

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