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TRANSCRIPT
Lead Author: Ann Grackin
June 2006
© Copyright ChainLink Research 2006 Distributing this report (or copies of) is prohibited without the express permission of the publisher.
RFID Technology Series
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
Understanding and Selecting RFID Devices
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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About ChainLink Research
ChainLink Research, Inc. is a Supply Chain research organization dedicated to helping executives improve business performance and competitiveness through an understanding of real-world implications, obstacles and results through supply chain practices, processes, and technologies. The ChainLink Inter-Enterprise Model is the basis for our research. It is a unique, real-world framework that de-scribes the multidimensional aspects of the links between supply chain partners. For more information, contact ChainLink Research at Harvard Square Center 124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200 N., Cambridge, MA 02138. Tel: (617) 762-4040. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.clresearch.com.
Technology Advisors for this Report
We gratefully acknowledge the support and input from these individuals: Mr. Peter Kuzma Vice President of Business Development RCD Technology
Mr. Toby Rush President Rush Tracking Systems Mr. Harry Newton Author Newton’s Telecom Dictionary * Dr. Dan Deavers RFID Alliance Lab Kansas State University Mr. Mark Roberti Editor in Chief RFID Journal
* Newton’s Telecom Dictionary the 22nd Edition—Wonderful reference guide on terminology for technology in RFID, Telco, and Computer Science.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................... 1 What You Will Learn in this Report ............................................................. 1 How this Report Is Organized ..................................................................... 2
Introduction to RFID...................................................................................... 3
What is RFID? The Basics .......................................................................... 3 RFID Tags................................................................................................... 5 RFID Readers ............................................................................................. 8
Understanding the Technology—The Science of RFID........................... 10
Basic Science............................................................................................ 10 The Electromagnetic Spectrum................................................................. 11 Understanding RF Frequency Options ..................................................... 13
RFID In My World......................................................................................... 19
Near Field vs. Far Field............................................................................. 19 Operating in Near Field Far Field—Making it Work .................................. 22 Detuning.................................................................................................... 23 Antenna and Field Characteristics ............................................................ 23 Dealing with Environments and the Impact of Physical Properties........... 28 Challenges of Readers.............................................................................. 31
Selecting the Right Solution—What Do I Use? ........................................ 34
The 3Pe is The Solution............................................................................ 34 RFID-Enabled Processes.......................................................................... 35 Active vs. Passive Tags ............................................................................ 37 Beware of Common RFID Myths .............................................................. 37
Myth: Passive Tags are Cheaper......................................................................37 Myth: Passive Tags Will Be Cheaper—Soon....................................................37 Myth: Passive Tags are Not Reusable..............................................................38 Myth: Items Use Only Passive Tags, Not Active Tags......................................38 Myth: RFID Cannot Be Used In the Home........................................................39
Standards vs. Mandates vs. Good Ideas................................................... 40
RFID Transmission Requirements............................................................ 41 RFID Bands Worldwide Regulations......................................................... 43 Taking a Total Systems Approach ............................................................ 43
Considerations Before Buying Technology ............................................. 45 Conclusions ................................................................................................. 49 Appendix A: Standards.................................................................................. 51 Appendix B: Tables of Survey Results .......................................................... 53
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Other ChainLink RFID Reports:
RFID Software—Middleware, Networks and Applications
RFID Service Providers
Cold Chains are Hot
RFID in Clinical Settings
RFID in Manufacturing
RFID for the Customer Experience
Value Consideration for RFID—Mini Report
Understanding EPCIS—Mini Report
It is the business of the future to be dangerous… The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
- Alfred North Whitehead
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
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Executive Summary RFID has hit the world like lightening! But the fact is that there is little understanding of how the technology works, or how to select solutions. Even firms under mandates to implement RFID understand very little about how to get the most value for their own firm, or how to recognize whether their vendors have solid expertise in RFID. Through a series of RFID reports, ChainLink Research will address these issues.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS REPORT This report—RFID Hardware—is for two audiences. This is a primer for those who have little or no RFID knowledge. We use the word primer, but it is comprehensive enough that we think most people, implementers and vendors alike, will learn more about RFID, even if they have already gained some expertise.
The second audience is those who are seeking knowledge about the players in the market. Though RFID is new in some applications, there are hundreds of RFID companies out there. It is hard for end-users to sort out the real players.1
We at ChainLink Research have spent the last few years learning about RFID. Prior to the RFID Era, we were working in warehouses and ocean ports, putting in bar-coding, mobility systems, real-time locating systems, warehousing systems, and retail in-store operations systems. We were researching the emerging RFID technology from many vantage points. We found that even though there is a plethora of information available, there are very few good approaches to learning and implementing this new technology. Through this and the subsequent reports on RFID, we will provide you with the basic background information you need to select the right RFID solution for your business.
We have included lots of graphics, charts and definitions to help you understand RFID, and we have several views of the solution providers to help you decide what hardware is right for you.
This report is not intended to rank the solution providers. There are far too many variables in each project to be able to make those judgments in a report. But the report will guide you in your discussions with RFID firms, as well as help you think about your RFID requirements before you go shopping.
1 Only firms with validated case studies were considered in this report. See Figure 20, page 47.
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HOW THIS REPORT IS ORGANIZED
• Executive Summary — Describes the purpose of the report and the intended audiences.
• Introduction to RFID — Explains what RFID means and covers the basic
hardware components of RFID applications. • Understanding the Technology — Provides definitions and explanations of
the science behind the RFID technology.
• RFID In My World — Explains the mix of environmental factors that need to be considered for each unique implementation.
• Designing the Right Solution — Tackles the business of defining policies,
processes and performance metrics, and finding the right RFID solutions for your business.
• Standards vs. Mandates vs. Good Ideas — Not all ‘suggestions’ are
mandates to implement. What are the RFID standards and mandates you will need to know?
• Considerations for Buying Technology — Helps you answer basic questions:
What do I need? What are my options? Who do I buy it from?
• Conclusions — A summary of recommendations. • Glossary and Appendices — Includes tables and charts of RFID Providers.
Definitions, sources of additional information, a summary of known standards, and vendor information.
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Introduction to RFID A basic understanding of RFID is required before you plunge into buying things. There are two fundamental levels we will address to get you up to speed on RFID: first, some really basic definitions; and second, the science of RFID. This report will help you decide what RFID approaches are ultimately appropriate for you by giving you an understanding of the frequencies, waves, and coverage (range) of the technology.
WHAT IS RFID? THE BASICS
Figure 1: What is RFID ?
RFID uses radio frequency waves (RF) to identify (ID) objects or people. Thus ─ RFID. Rather than jumping into a detailed definition of RFID, I’d like to start our discussion by us-ing the illustration above.
RFID systems are comprised of “tags” and “readers” (see Figure 1: above) which are within a reasonable proximity of each other and can send and receive data. As shown above, an RFID Reader uses radio waves (the same type of energy used to transmit AM or FM signals to your radio) to find/talk to a tag. You have seen this in other day-to-day applications. The antennas on your radios and TVs allow them to receive data. Where RFID differs from an earlier generation of radio frequency technology, is that the tag responds by sending (over radio waves) a unique string of data back to the source. Many RFID uses focus on uniquely identifying an object to which an RFID tag is attached, either for the life of that item, or for a specific business event (for example, passing through a dock door).
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Table 1: RFID Hardware Components
Radio Frequency or RF are electromagnetic waves propagated in free space. They can be generated at various frequencies and travel for various distances. The RF waves (such as radio & radar), carry digital or analog data. RF can operate with low to minimum power at close range (inches) and with power at longer ranges (hundreds of yards). Thus, it is useful in identification and security applications.
RFID Tag/Transponder A microchip attached to an antenna (there are also chipless tags ) that picks up signals from and sends signals to a reader. From one-bit tags to data-rich tags, these can store data, such as unique serial numbers, location information, and many other types of data.
Antenna The antenna is the conductive element that converts RF into electrical energy and vice versa, thereby enabling the tag or reader to send and receive data wirelessly. Antennas can be wire, an etched conductive pattern affixed to a plastic substrate, or conductive inks made from aluminum, copper or silver.
Reader/
Interrogator/Encoder
The reader (also called an interrogator) communicates with the RFID tag via radio waves, reading (interrogator) as well as writ-ing information (encoder) to and from the tag. A reader may store the data and/or pass the information in digital form over a network or directly to another device. Readers may also receive data from other sensory devices (e.g. motion detector) and/or they may control other devices.
Active Tag An RFID tag that contains its own power source. This power source is used to power the microchip to receive and transmit data. Active tags generally can be read at great distances (several feet to hundreds of yards).
Passive Tag A passive tag has no power of its own. The tag is powered solely by the RF energy emitted by the reader. The passive tags use this energy to power the microchip and transmit data back to the reader. Read distance is limited to the power received from the RF energy. Signal fall-off happens quickly. In other words, passive tags generally can receive and transmit data only sev-eral feet.
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RFID TAGS
Figure 2: Example RFID Tags
RFID tags are small electronic circuits attached to a metallic antenna. Most tags are con-structed of a silicon microchip. The microchip on the tag stores data. The size and type of data can vary depending on the particular application. In some applications, the data is comprised of a unique serial number plus additional space to store application-specific information. It can be a read/write tag that can store data, or it can be factory-programmed with read-only information. The attached antenna allows the data contained on the micro-chip to be sent to and from a reader device.
Figure 3: Explosion of RFID Applications
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The explosion of available tags in the market is mind-bending in terms of the increased di-versity, as well as the sheer numbers of tags. We are also seeing the very early days of chipless tags, which we expect to become increasingly popular in the market.
Specialized chipless tags with relatively small memories have already become available. These can be used effectively in extreme temperatures, with extremely low reader power, or in long-range applications.2 Long-term, these types of tags hold great promise. Printed chipless tags will be very cheap and are probably the type of tag that could replace many barcodes—but not until the technology is tamed—years in the making. We will not spend much time on Chipless technology in this report.
In considering which tags to buy, read distances are key. Passive tags have communica-tions fall-off within short distances. This happens quite quickly with UHF tags, which have a read distance of about 10-30 feet (this distance can be quite a bit lower, as you will read later on). HF passive tags have an even shorter range.
Active tags are able to project at greater dis-tances due to having their own energy source. Passive tags are reliant on energy from their readers, so as they move along in the process they are not interfering with their environment until they come in contact with a relevant energy source. This can be quite an advantage in a world exploding with devices and crowded airwaves.
2 Techniques such as SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) technology are based on chipless technology.
Printed technologies–inductive inks on thin films, are technologically possible and are beginning to be used.
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Now a Word About Chips
RFID chips are made of transistors, which are tiny circuits that carry instructions. The more transistors, the more instructions. Thus, as we add more functionality to tags, the more transistors are needed.
When users ask for more functionality, more security (this should be a standard requirement of supply-chain-wide devices) and more data, it requires cramming of technology into the chip, and the tag (and probably the reader) will be more expensive. This also reduces the read range, since it requires more energy to power up more transistors—therefore, the tag must be closer to the reader to receive enough RF energy to power its chip.
Chips, even when developed to the same standard, can have different capabilities:
• SIZE: Depending on the manufacturer and model, they can differ in size, and smaller is typically less expensive.
• POWER: Can differ in power requirements. A chip needing lower activation
power gets better read distance. • MEMORY: Chips have different-sized writable memory, so think about whether
you are writing and reading—what do I need to do? Will you be accumulating information on the chip as the product goes through its life or will you just use the chip as a ‘pointer’ to data stored in the database?
• FEATURES: Most chips have some features and commands in addition to the
standard. These may be of benefit to you.3
Chips come in wafers, and there are 25,00 to 50,000 chips or so in a wafer. Not all the chips in the wafer work. The chip companies can test each chip and provide a map of the good and bad chips on the wafer. In this way, known bad chips can be isolated and disposed of after all the value-added steps are completed with the wafer. The wafer must also be thinned, and cut into single chips, and have bumps added to allow chip antennas to be connected (see Figure 17, page 46: The Tag Supply Chain). Thus, if you’re asking about chip prices, always specify mapped wafers with “fully prepped” chips, so that you are comparing apples to apples.
3 For example, the most popular chip for RFID library self-checkout has a one-bit EAS bit that turns on an off. When activated during the RFID self-checkout process, the bit would sound an alarm if carried through the exit gates without being properly checked out. Upon return, the bit is turned off.
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RFID READERS An RFID reader is an electronic device that has the ability to read and write information to and from RFID tags. RFID readers can be housed in a variety of devices. See Figure 4, below, for some examples of RFID readers.
Figure 4: RFID Readers
Readers emit radio waves, which contain data and commands that are received by RFID tags. For Passive RFID, the radio waves energize the passive RFID tags in the vicinity and cause the tags to be powered on and perform the requested functions.4 Such functions may include reading serial numbers or other data, writing data, or performing security functions. The interaction with active tags is similar, but an active tag is also capable of initiating the call. In addition to more security being built into readers, more intelligence is also being built in, to enable readers to perform such basic applications as warehousing, patient care in hospitals, and reading passports.
4 Range depends on many factors, which are described later.
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Readers used for active tags are frequently designed to perform in custom applications: PDA and cell phone companies are embedding readers and customizable software; other companies are embedding readers in a myriad of other devices and objects, such as automobiles, chairs, and toys. Some readers can communicate directly with the web for example, and their flexibility in dealing with more remote problems is important.
Readers can be mobile or stationary. They can be mounted in vehicles, on belt buckles, in the floor or pavement, and just about anywhere. These devices can be quite expensive, so the business application should be considered carefully.
Since readers can be mobile and remote, authenticating them to get them onto your network requires security both on the reader as well as on your host systems and networks. Appli-cations such as RFID middleware, WMS systems, other specialized applications5 that use RFID, or solutions that manage your whole portfolio of wireless devices, exist to manage the various types of readers. A bit of care in setting up security can go a long way in ensuring the seamless control of authenticating, operating, managing, and, when needed, de-installing these devices. If the reader gets into the wrong hands you will want to get it off the network quickly (think about this—after all, this is about identity, security, and accuracy, right?). So the relationship of the reader to your software solution is critical. We will talk more about this issue in our RFID Software report.
When purchasing RFID technology, you will need to think globally. As a general rule, tags have to work across the entire value chain, which could comprise multiple sites or even multiple companies. Approval for purchasing readers is generally a corporate decision—not a site decision—because again, you want to manage their entry into your network. But today, many devices used for bar-coding are bought at the local level. So implementing RFID may require a change in authority for both the site manager as well as the vendors, who will need to get more people involved in the buying decisions! Though you might not like that change in buying authority, it is important from a security perspective. Security will be extremely important, because we will eventually use these devices everywhere.
5 Firms like Globe Ranger, BEA, Sybase, Blue Vector, Movero, Cisco, Oat, Apprion, etc. can help with this.
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Understanding the Technology—The Science of RFID Now let us begin at the beginning, and really understand the properties of this amazing phenomenon of nature! You may wonder why you need to learn about science in making business decisions. But your effort to understand a bit about the science of RFID will help you tremendously in making technology and applications decisions, as well as in being able to have informed conversations with the vendors. This will directly correlate to the success and ultimate value you derive from your RFID initiatives. This section will be deep with lots of definitions that you can refer back to.
BASIC SCIENCE Don’t get thrown off by the word science. You will not need a Physics or Electrical Engi-neering degree to understand this. In fact, you should learn this, and not rely on your resi-dent geek. Besides, this will explain many of the day-to-day applications you are already using. Most implementations happen away from the EE contingent, and once installed, the average professional (warehouse worker, nurse, doctor, or store sales staff) will be ex-pected to operate this, so learning is key. I learned it, so you can, too!
Figure 5: The Electromagnetic Spectrum
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THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM First, a basic understanding of electromagnetism. Electromagnetic waves have both an electrical and a magnetic field. There are many different electromagnetic wavelengths and frequencies that exist on earth (figure 5, previous page), and many that we can harness for communications (and identification purposes). X-rays are towards the right end (higher fre-quency) of the electromagnetic spectrum and are very intense and concentrated because the wave is so small. That’s how they’re able to penetrate materials. Infrared waves, in the middle of the spectrum, are the size of a dot, and very close to visible light. (That is why it is great for getting in and out of shows and clubs! Another kind of identification!) And RFID, actually a relatively long wave, is to the left end of the spectrum. Wavelengths in RFID may vary from about the size of a baseball, to more than a mile long!
Figure 6: RF Waves
Electromagnetic waves need no material medium for transmission. Thus, light and radio waves can travel through interplanetary and interstellar space from the sun and stars to the earth. Regardless of the frequency, wavelength, or method of propagation, electromagnetic waves travel at a speed of about 186,272 miles per second in a vacuum. That is the speed of light! All the components of the electromagnetic spectrum, regardless of frequency, also have in common the typical properties of wave motion, including diffraction and interference. The wavelengths range from less than a quadrillionth of a centimeter to many billions of kilo-meters. The wavelength and frequency of electromagnetic waves are important in deter-mining heating effect, visibility, penetration, and other characteristics of electromagnetic ra-diation.
At the beginning of the 20th century, physicists found that the wave theory did not account for all the properties of radiation. In 1900 the German physicist Max Planck demonstrated that the emission and absorption of radiation occur in finite units of energy, known as quanta. As it turns out, waves don’t behave so well around “these parts.” We will come back to this concept when we discuss the impact of physical properties on data propagation and waves.
Electromagnetic (EM) radiation is energy propagated as electromagnetic waves through free space or through a material medium.
AmplitudeAmplitude
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In learning about RFID, it’s important to understand the characteristics of waves, so let’s look at RFID waves.
To understand RFID, you have to know more about waves than just their length. Under-standing their properties is important to how you will eventually choose your hardware. X-rays, again, penetrate physical objects—we don’t want to get too near; infrared, like light, is easily interrupted by any solid object but can carry a fair amount of data, usually over a short distance. (Remember that wonderful feature on your laptop!) Since infrared does not penetrate solid objects, it’s usefulness is limited to applications where there is a direct line-of-sight between the tags and the readers. Barcode readers have the same limitation—the barcode applications must have a clear line-of-sight between the barcodes and the readers. But this is what is so cool about RFID, it does not need line-of-sight. RF waves can go around objects, and can even penetrate some objects that visible light cannot. That’s why you can hear a radio in another room. That’s the advantage of RF over infrared and bar-coding—it does not require line of sight.
Waves are wonderful things that can carry lots of data, including pictures, movies, sounds and so forth. How do they do that? By modulating (changing) the wave’s form over time, the wave can carry information. There are a number of modulation techniques, some of which you hear every day. Common modulation techniques include FM (Frequency Modu-lation), and AM (Amplitude Modulation).
Figure 7: AM and FM Waves
Amplitude modulation—as used in AM radio—works by modulating the amplitude (height) or strength of the wave. FM modulates the frequency of the wave. (I hope you are with us here because this is actually very useful information for whatever your technology field is—or even just for idle curiosity.)
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In figure 7, previous page, the “Audio frequency waves” on the upper left are the information that is being transmitted over the radio waves—for example Sting singing “I’ll Be Watching You.” The “Carrier waves” on the upper right are the radio waves, vibrating at a much higher frequency than the audio waves. In the FM signal on the lower left, the amplitude is constant, but the frequency (waves per second) changes to reflect the audio information you are sending. In the AM on the right, it is the amplitude that changes, and frequency re-mains constant.
Another common type of modulation is phase modulation, often called phase-shift, keying, or PSK. Information is encoded by modulating the phase of carrier wave, rather than its frequency or amplitude. So by modulating or altering the wave, we can transmit unique data.
UNDERSTANDING RF FREQUENCY OPTIONS What are the characteristics of RF vs. the whole spectrum of possible waves out there?
Figure 8: RFID Frequencies
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Frequency, Velocity and Wave size are all linked. In the EHF (Extremely High Frequencies) range, the wave size is incredibly small.6 In the LF (Low Frequency) and VLF (Very Low Frequency) ranges, the wave size is very large—sometimes kilometers long! Many years ago before cable TV, many people received TV broadcasts over UHF. Reading the chart in Figure 5, page 10, you have to understand the exponentials here—from a quadrillionth of a centimeter to many kilometers. Obviously, with such differences, the frequencies have very different characteristics and applications. We will discuss the used of differences later. But the fact is that you have many choices in frequencies.
In certain industries, these frequencies have become the norm, such as 860 MHz ̶─960 MHz UHF in Retail, and 433 MHz in Maritime.
Table 2: Using the Waves
Traditional users of waves (Table 2, above) that broadcast one to many, such as transmit-ting the program for Super Bowl Sunday, will now find the air space a lot more crowded. Millions of items carrying RFID tags, the cartons the items are packed in carrying additional RFID tags, and the containers the cartons are shipped in carrying even more RFID tags—multiple taggings per product across the globe—will be broadcasting many to many. And the tags will be able to answer back! But RFID architects have developed communications strategies and techniques to keep us all in harmony. More on that later!
6 Each of the pick marks on the Frequency Scale represents a factor of 10. So that’s a million, ten million, a hun-dred million, a billion, a trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, … gazillion, which is pretty fast, so it can carry a LOT of data.
Satellite Communications30 GHz – 300 GHz(Extremely High Frequencies)EHF
Satellite Communication and Broadcast3 GHz – 30 GHz(Super-High Frequencies)SHF
Satellite, GPS, Cell Phone, Television300 MHz – 3 GHz(Ultra-High Frequencies)UHF
FM Broadcast, Television, Police/Fire30 MHz – 300 MHz(Very-High Frequencies)VHF
Short Wave, Ham Radio, Int’l Broadcast3 MHz – 30 MHz(High Frequencies)HF
Navigation (NDBs), AM Broadcast300 kHz – 3 MHz(Medium Frequencies)MF
Navy Comm, Navigation (NDBs)30 kHz – 300 kHz(Low Frequencies)LF
Navy strategic communications3 kHz – 30 kHz(Very-Low Frequencies)VLF
300 -3000 Hz(Voice Frequencies)VF
Navy strategic communications30 – 300 Hz(Extremely Low Frequencies)ELF
3 – 30 Hz(Ultra-Low Frequencies)ULF
ApplicationsFreq RangeFull DesignatorAcronym
Satellite Communications30 GHz – 300 GHz(Extremely High Frequencies)EHF
Satellite Communication and Broadcast3 GHz – 30 GHz(Super-High Frequencies)SHF
Satellite, GPS, Cell Phone, Television300 MHz – 3 GHz(Ultra-High Frequencies)UHF
FM Broadcast, Television, Police/Fire30 MHz – 300 MHz(Very-High Frequencies)VHF
Short Wave, Ham Radio, Int’l Broadcast3 MHz – 30 MHz(High Frequencies)HF
Navigation (NDBs), AM Broadcast300 kHz – 3 MHz(Medium Frequencies)MF
Navy Comm, Navigation (NDBs)30 kHz – 300 kHz(Low Frequencies)LF
Navy strategic communications3 kHz – 30 kHz(Very-Low Frequencies)VLF
300 -3000 Hz(Voice Frequencies)VF
Navy strategic communications30 – 300 Hz(Extremely Low Frequencies)ELF
3 – 30 Hz(Ultra-Low Frequencies)ULF
ApplicationsFreq RangeFull DesignatorAcronym
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Table 3: The Language of Waves
Definition
Bits and bytes
Frequency Cycles per second Hertz or Hz
Relationship of Frequency in the EM Universe
Wave Length Examples
Kilo One thousand or when talking about data capacities and rates, kilo means 210 which is 1,024
Kilobits ~ 210 bits Kilobyte ~ 210 bytes
kHz 1,000 cycles per second
LF or Low frequency: 30 kHz- radio It’s all radio from here up to GHz– U2, anyone? 125 kHz- RFID Use in close proximity reading and writing
30 kHz ~ 10 kilometers 134.3 kHz ~ 1.25 miles 300 kHz ~ 1 kilometer
Mega One million or when talking about data capacities and rates, mega means 220 which is 1,048,576
Megabits ~ 1,000 bits Megabyte ~ 1,000 bytes
MHz 1,000,000 or 106 cycles per sec-ond
HF UHF (433 MHz Cisco) 800 MHz to 900-915MHz RFID Gen2
13.56 MHz ~ 74 ft 433 MHz ~ 2’ 3“ 915 MHz ~ 13 inches
Giga One billion or when talking about data capacities and rates, giga means 230 which is 1,073,741,824
Gigabit ~ one billion bits Gigabyte
GHz 1,000,000,000 or 109 cycles per second
EHF- Microwave 2.4 RFID used passively 2.4 GHz used for wireless communications actively
2.4 GHz ~ 5 inches!!! 5.4GHz ~ 2 inches
Tera A trillion, which is a million times a million A thousand giga or when talking about data capacities and rates, tera means 240 which is 1,099,511,627,776
Terabyte ~ 2 to the 40th
THz 1012 cycles per second
300 GHz – 400 THz is infrared light, not radio waves. This is not RFID.
Hertz One cycle per Second. Hz
3-300 Hz ELF or Extremely low frequency 300-3,000 Hz ILF or Infra Low Frequency
Voice Maritime communications
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Understanding Waves
Now, let’s get some terminology again. You know there are RF waves—some smaller than others. Let’s understand the language of waves, then.
Bits and Bytes—These are measures of quantities of digital data. 1 bit = 1 “binary digit,” which can only have a value of either 0 or 1. 1 byte = 8 bits.
Measurements of data—In the world of computers, measurements are generally organized in “powers of two” sizes. For that reason, you will see information described in powers of two. For example a kilobyte, means 210 bytes (which is 1,024 bytes) rather than meaning exactly 1,000 bytes. Similarly a megabyte is 220 bytes and gigabyte is 230 bytes.
Hertz—Is a measure of frequency in cycles per second. It is also used to measure band-width, which is the amount of frequency spectrum available for communications. 1 Hertz (Hz) is one cycle per second. A kilohertz (kHz) is one thousand cycles per second. A megahertz (MHz) is one million cycles per second. And so on.
Frequency7—Number of events during a time period, like frequency of trips to the coffee machine (“Joe’s average coffee machine frequency is 11.6/day”). For RF, it refers to the number of electromagnetic wave oscillations per second. 1 kHz would be 1,000 cycles per second.
Wave/Wave Length—Is the distance between peaks of the electromagnetic wave, the com-pletion of one cycle. Think of each wave coming to shore, say, one wave per 8 seconds (frequency) with a 100 foot spread (wave length). The height of the wave (the amplitude) is 20 feet—surf’s up, dude! In this scenario I can get a fair amount of surfers riding a fair amount of waves in a fairly small area.
Velocity—The velocity of electromagnetic radiation through a vacuum is constant at 299,792,458 meters per second,8 which is represented by the letter c, also known as Ein-stein's Constant ( remember E=mc2 ?). Radio waves travel very slightly slower through air – 99.97% as fast as through a vacuum. Fast enough? The velocity of the wave and its fre-quency and wavelength are interrelated.9
7 Harry Newton, Newton’s Telecom Dictionary, (San Francisco, CA: CMP Books, 2005) Number progressions from Kilo to Tera are not exactly straightforward and vary depending on the technology applications: telecommuni-cations, computer storage, etc. Slight variations exist in the meanings of Giga, Tera, etc. … but for our purposes we will stick with the basic “Round numbers.” 8 Approximately 186,282 miles per second, or 670,616,629.4 miles per hour. 9 In mathematical terms, this relationship is expressed by the equation V=λ f, where V is velocity, f is frequency, and λ is wavelength. Because V is essentially constant in the practical use of RFID, it means that a change in the frequency results in an inversely proportional change in wavelength.
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Range—Range cannot be calculated precisely, because wave performance is impacted by so many different factors. However, RF waves can sometimes travel long distances, as long as nothing gets in their way.
Power—Measured in Watts. In the case of the RF wave itself, power is the average rate of energy transported by electromagnetic radiation. The power level of the wave determines the signal strength. Power is regulated, and there are guidelines for determining how much power can be used, and under what circumstances. (See standards later on.) Power can be variable based on application distances.
Putting things together—Many of these variables tie together and determine what fre-quency and what range you will achieve.
Figure 9: Calculating Things
Interference—Nothing is perfect, so interference occurs when two or more waves overlap or intersect. When waves interfere with each other, the amplitude of the resulting wave de-pends on the frequencies, relative phases (relative positions of the crests and troughs), and amplitudes of the interfering waves. For example, constructive interference occurs at a point where two overlapping or intersecting waves of the same frequency are in phase—that is, where the crests and troughs of the two waves coincide, resulting in a more powerful wave. In this case, the two waves reinforce each other and combine to form a wave that has ampli-tude equal to the sum of the individual amplitudes of the original waves. Destructive interfer-
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ence occurs when two intersecting waves of the same frequency are completely out of phase—that is, when the crest of one wave coincides with the trough of the other. In this case, the two waves cancel each other out. Intersecting or overlapping waves that have different frequencies or that are not entirely in or out of phase with each other have more complex interference patterns. When two or more devices are trying to use the same fre-quency, in the same physical space, the resulting interference can cause higher error rates or complete loss of communications.
Strength of Field—Although RF is cool stuff, energy drops off pretty rapidly as you get away from the source of that energy. You lose power, and after a certain point, the signal is lost. This concept is fairly easy to understand. There are techniques in passive RFID to help a bit with this, but obviously, power helps to keep the signal strong at greater distances.
Data Transfer Rates—How fast the data moves. Data transfer rates are affected by sev-eral factors:
• Bandwidth available — this is determined by regulations.10 • Modulation Technique — some modulation techniques inherently make more
efficient use of the available bandwidth than others. For example, AM (amplitude modulation) is less expensive to implement, but is inherently less bandwidth-efficient – i.e. you can squeeze fewer bits per second of data through each MHz of available bandwidth.
Data transfer rates are defined as part of RFID standards, so this helps us to get a handle on the actual data rate of a specific reader and tag – i.e. it depends on the RFID standard/air interface protocol that they support.
Table 4: ISO Standard Frequencies
Standard Passive vs. Active
Frequency
ISO 18000-2 P LF – 125kHz
ISO 18000-3 P HF – 13.56 MHz
ISO 18000-4 P Microwave – 2.45 GHz
ISO 18000-5 P Microwave – 5.8 GHz
ISO 18000-6 P UHF – 860-930 MHz
ISO 18000-7 A UHF – 433.92 MHz
EPC Global Gen2 P UHF – 860-960 MHz
10 Geographical standards in the US, EU, and Japan, etc. regulate UHF and other frequencies.
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RFID in My World These are some basic concepts, and now we will weave these together to build your knowl-edge of RFID, so that you can select the right solutions for your application!
You now have a working definition of RFID. You have learned that RF waves are sent be-tween tags and readers. It seems that a spot-on direct beam would be a real advantage. Obviously, that is not always possible—rarely so. The reader and the tag may not be in close proximity, or the orientation (alignment) of the tags and reader may not be optimal. This is the real life situation that you will deal with. The dynamics of the environment, and the characteristics of the waves are all-important in designing a system, as well as selecting the right technology to work for you and your trading partners.
Now, let’s begin to build on these concepts so that you can understand what kind of solu-tions—tags and readers, active or passive—you will need for your application.
NEAR FIELD VS. FAR FIELD Near field and far field are concepts that are important to understand when you design and select an application for both the tag and the reader. So much about RFID is both art and science. The science is in understanding the physical properties, and the art is knowing that you can alter the factors and come up with a solution that works in your environment.
So, items that are tagged will at some point need to be read. The challenge becomes: what and where are we reading from? That is where far field and near field come into play.
Near field refers to the interaction between tag and reader when the tag is less than one wavelength away from your reader antenna. Far field is the kind of interaction that happens when the tag is greater than one wavelength from the reader antenna. They’re completely different phenomena.
The near field uses inductive coupling, sometimes called magnetic coupling. Whenever you apply power to an antenna, a magnetic field emerges around it. In one wave length, you can use the magnetic properties of the devices to create the induction between the reader and the tag. Latent magnetic energy is built up. Every magnetic field has lines of magnetic flux. The tag antenna interrupts those lines of flux from the reader, drawing power from the field. Through inductive coupling, you can now energize the tag, read it, and transfer data back to the reader. (See Figure 10, next page.)
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Figure 10: Near Field vs. Far Field
The far field, (again, this means operating beyond one wave length) uses backscatter. Tags using backscatter reflect the reader’s signal right back and modulate incoming signals to transmit data.
Now why do you care about this? Well, it impacts a number of factors influencing perform-ance in specific situations: what kind of antennas you should buy, and how you should set up your readers. Some applications are in close proximity. and you can control the orienta-tion of the tag. But in many applications, items and people are in motion. Therefore, you’re switching from far field to near field. (See Figure 10, above).
Let’s take the ever-popular examples of UHF tags (865- thru ~ 915MHz) and the HF (13.56MHz) tags. UHF has a wavelength of just over a foot, so operating in UHF, we are in the near field mode from 0 to about 13 feet.11
So, if a warehouse is, say, a few hundred yards long and you want to track items as they move, you will be working both outside and inside the near field—in other words, in far field and near field.
The use of UHF across the world creates challenges, since frequency, as well as tag an-tenna designs will vary, and therefore the tag range will vary. You will need to evaluate whether the tags on the goods that you receive at your facility will be near field or far field, so that you can set up your reader orientation properly. It is challenging to get it right when you receive goods from many sources carrying many different tag antenna styles.
Near Field vs. Far Field
Near Field / Inductive CouplingMagnetic Field “Emerges”
Far Field / BackscatterElectric Field/Radio Waves “Transmitted”
Less Than 1 Wavelength Greater Than 1 Wavelength
Near Field / Inductive CouplingMagnetic Field “Emerges”
Far Field / BackscatterElectric Field/Radio Waves “Transmitted”
Less Than 1 Wavelength Greater Than 1 Wavelength
11 Across the globe the precise UHF frequencies vary, and can put your tag into far field at slightly different ranges, though the difference is quite small. More on this later.
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The HF (13.56 MHz) tags, which have a global standard, do not have this problem. HF tags and LF (125 kHz) tags are being used in applications in supply chain and hospitals, etc. where there are no fixed readers, for example, because their wave length, as well as their ability to work with various physical properties gives them an advantage. UHF, though, may be your choice, regardless of the other concerns, since this is the Wal-Mart and DoD logistics choice. So learning how to work with this technology in both near field and far field is generally required.
Figure 11: Applicability of Frequencies - Far Field / Near Field
13.56 HF Passive
UHF-Passive800-960MHz
Reader/tagdistance
Entity
Out of range
Out of range
100 feet to 1 mile
Yard
Near FieldNear Field….to Far Field
Near Field
6 inches to 30 feet
Warehouse/Manufacturing
Less than 2 feet
Near Field
Store
13.56 HF Passive
UHF-Passive800-960MHz
Reader/tagdistance
Entity
Out of range
Out of range
100 feet to 1 mile
Yard
Near FieldNear Field….to Far Field
Near Field
6 inches to 30 feet
Warehouse/Manufacturing
Less than 2 feet
Near Field
Store
Applicability of Frequencies- Far Field/Near Field
EntityEntity
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OPERATING IN NEAR FIELD AND FAR FIELD – MAKING IT WORK So, now the issue becomes how to ensure successful reads.
Near Field
Applying inductive coupling, there are four major factors that you need to look at in the near field:
POWER: In near field you might not need much power, since you are operating within the lines of flux. However, in near field your field strength drops off at a faster rate than far field.12 ANTENNA: The larger the antenna, the more lines of flux you’re going to interrupt, and the more power you will receive. This is why you see tags with lots of antenna coils, compared with horizontal antenna patterns. ORIENTATION: Directionality of devices in relation to one another is important. In RFID devices, the antennas are either fixed or in motion. Orientation is particularly important in passive technology for successful communications. Orientation and the shape of the read field are important related concepts. In fixed environments (e.g. conveyors, or dock doors with fixed readers) you can experiment and align the tag and reader to ensure that they can send and receive signals successfully. Your reader can have several antennas to help capture the wave. Q FACTOR: This means: how efficient your tag antenna material is in converting the signal to electric power and back. Antenna material choices are aluminum, cop-per and silver, and their prices increase in that same order.13
Far Field (Backscatter)
POWER: Here, more is better, but wattage is regulated, and too much creates in-terference with other devices (like too many people shouting). Techniques have been created to ensure that the individual items are not cross-talking. Different geo-graphic regions have different regulations (for example, Europe requires listen be-fore talk—oh, if people only had that protocol!). Tags can be kept asleep until they are read; signposts can be used to wake up the tag before it is read, and leave it ‘asleep’ in between; shields can be used to control the direction of the power radiat-ing from your reader’s antenna; cross signals can be avoided.
12 The inverse cube of the distance (1/distance3 ) which is a much faster drop-off in power than far field, which falls at the inverse square of the distance (1/distance2). But who’s counting? 13 As we move into Chipless technologies, the aluminum has it beat on ease of printing and price of antennas, but copper is the hands down winner on conducting electrons!
Far Field (Back scatter)
• Operating beyond one wave length
• Backscatter: the deflection of waves through angles greater than 90 degrees by electromag-netic forces.
Near Field (Inductive Coupling)
• Operating within one wave length
• Inductive Cou-pling – the transfer of energy from one circuit to another (by antennas, of course)
• Receives power by breaking the bonds of flux of the magnetic field
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ANTENNA: Here bigger is better, but you have to pay attention to the ratio of an-tenna length to wave length. The wave causes the antenna to resonate at its fre-quency, so the antenna has to be tuned to that frequency. The length of the an-tenna impacts its tuning, so it should be an exact fraction of the wavelength. If the antenna is next to a material, the material itself “detunes” the antenna, so antenna length needs to be adjusted to account for the detuning effects of nearby materials. In practice, if the detuning effects of the objects you’re tagging are not so large (e.g. corrugated cartons), then tags with standard off-the-shelf antennas should work fine. But if the detuning is significant, you may need a specialized or custom-tuned/ custom-designed antenna. ORIENTATION: Orientation of antennas on both tag and reader is key. ENVIRONMENT: Environmental factors play a role, since different media conduct, reflect or absorb signals at greater distances. This is a bigger factor to consider.
Putting this together, if you’re going to use UHF, sometimes you will be operating in the near field and sometimes in far field. The tag has to operate in both modes. Usually tags will be tuned for the far field, but that means it may not work very well in the near field. Therefore, you should test it in both environments and find an approach that will work in both, knowing that you will not be in control of successful reads once your items leave your custody. Your customer expects successful reads. So this is not idle advice.
DETUNING Some material can detune the antenna. Many of the properties we talked about (wavelength, range and speed) are characteristics that work ideally only in free space. Once you put your tag on an object, the object can change the tuning. Remember Max Planck. We mentioned his discovery on page 11. So antenna design and a bit of experi-mentation on tag placement are necessary to avoid the effects of detuning. Since the RFID revolution took off two years ago, over a hundred new antenna designs have come out. And there is nothing to stop your firm from having a custom-designed antenna, if it is cost justified. Your packaging or product might need that.
ANTENNA AND FIELD CHARACTERISTICS So, hopefully you are getting the message that the antenna is a critical part of the selection discussion! So much discussion on the street talks about UHF vs. HF vs. LF, but very little discussion takes place on antennas, inlays, etc. But these are the aspects that will actually make the difference for your item having successful reads! As we have said several times, you may have no choice in your frequency, so getting (UHF) RFID to work for you requires thinking about antennas that can perform in your environment.
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Tag Antenna Length
Antenna length offers a big opportunity for customization of RFID applications. In order to grab the signal—not just in far field or near field, but in different media and with different packaging—you need to think about your tag antenna’s shape and length. For far field appli-cations, the length of the antenna should be a wavelength. So if you’re dealing with 915 megahertz, a thirteen-inch antenna (one full wave length) would be ideal. Obviously, such a huge antenna would not be practical for most applications, so antennas that are a fraction of the wave length (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6 of a wavelength) are used. For near-field applica-tions, the relationship of the length of the antenna to the wavelength is not critical (remember, you are still within one wavelength).
Figure 12: Shape and Frequency (not to scale)
Waves are not traveling in a vacuum, so we have to account for the impacts that the envi-ronment has on the waves. Waves also have their own characteristics in terms of wave shape and other quirks.
Frequencies and antenna designs play a role in the shape of the read field (the area where tags can be read). In general, lower frequencies have a rounder field, and as you get into the higher frequencies, it’s more of a cigar-shaped field.
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Nothing is perfect—and voids can exist within a read field. (See Figure 12, previous page:) Voids are areas of low energy within a field where tags can’t be read. The higher the fre-quency, the more voids there are. There are a number of tactics for dealing with voids, in-cluding:
• Use two or more reader antennas (objects in a void in one antenna can still be read by the other antenna)
• Make sure that the objects will be moving through the read field, such as on a
conveyor or hand truck—that way even if they are in a void for a moment, they will soon be back into the “good” part of the read field
• Map out the field and adjust the position and/or power of the antenna to make
sure that the position of voids is known and they are not in critical locations where the reading is typically done
Antennas for readers can also be custom-designed, and of course, portal environments for dock doors, etc. are all the rage. Again, the art here is to test your environment to ensure that you are getting your reads, but don’t overdo it! There are lots of great techniques, but we don’t have the space in this report for an in-depth discussion of implementation tech-niques.
Linear vs. Circular Antenna Designs
You have probably seen many different shapes of antennas in the market (Figure 13, be-low). By changing the shape of the antenna, you can tweak the shape of the field. Again, think about your application: how and where will you read and what shape is the best ap-proach for your purpose? Smart cards come in very close proximity to an antenna, vs. say, a carton on a conveyor.
Figure 13: Shapes of Antennas
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The shape of the field is also determined by the reader antenna design and its polarization. Linear polarization is a longer, narrower field. So you can get slightly more range, but line-arly polarized fields are also more sensitive to orientation of the antenna on the tags. Circu-lar polarization is a slightly shorter read range, but a wider span and less sensitive to tag orientation. The wider field may be important in fast-moving conveyor operations to ensure that the tag stays in the field long enough to get reliable reads. There is more to say about this topic, but it does get fairly dense. Figure 14, below gives you a way of thinking about it. Just remember, our world needs to be thought of in three-dimensional space.
Figure 14: Shape of Read Field in Application
The Shape of Read Field in the Application
In most applications the object is in motion. So you’re also going to want to consider the speed of the object going through the field. You might want a circular field so that the tag stays in the field for a longer period of time. Also, how much control do you have over the orientation of the tag antennas on objects as they pass through the reader’s field? On a factory conveyor belt, the orientation of the objects and their tag’s antennas may be very consistent, and so a linear reader antenna may work fine. But at dock doors or going through the front store (think—store associate balancing a pile of cartons), the orientation of tags may be pretty random, in which case you are better off with a circularly polarized reader antenna. These are some of the things you’re going to have to think about. Application, Application, Application!
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Thoughts on Antennas
Though the chip may be the same, the tag antennas are often quite different. Some—maybe yours—may need to be custom-designed to deal with the physical properties of the product and the environment. This could include the need for very small specially-shaped antennas that fit an object (e.g. an expensive pen); or antennas that must work on metal objects or on objects with large de-tuning effects, etc.
Table 5: Factors Impacting Passive Read Distance
In addition, antennas can be made of different metals—aluminum, copper, and silver—all varying in price and conductivity. Whether for chipless or chip-based tags, the antenna has as great a role to play in the success of your effort as the other issues we have discussed. Of course, a custom-designed antenna adds cost that must be amortized over all the tags used, so though it may be the best technical decision, you will need to see if it is cost-justified. Again, test before you buy to make sure that this will work for you in all the cir-cumstances we have discussed.
Reader Reader Power Emitted Watts of Power transmitted by Reader Reader Antenna Gain Proper Installation (cable lengths, connections, etc.)
Passive Tag Tag Antenna Design Design and Quality Matching impedance of Antenna and Reader Antenna Material: Silver, Copper, Aluminum (price/performance tradeoff)
Antenna Size (Near Field) Larger antenna increases near field read distance Not applicable to far field
Tag Antenna Tuning (Far Field)
Changes when applied to object All materials detune to a lower frequency, except metal that detunes up Always test read distances with label applied to an object (not in free space)
Chip Power Consumption Read requires less power than writing
Materials in Object and Packaging
Metal, Liquids
Spatial Relation-ship
Antenna Orientation Tag Antenna vs. Polarization of Field
Near/Far Field Near Field power levels fall off much faster than far field Far Field has more voids
Environment Noise Ambient EMI noise reduces read distance and accuracy
Objects/Materials in the Environment
Metal Structures, Vessels of Liquid, Glass
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As your material goes through the various processes in the supply chain, the RFID vendors will be applying their know-how to build the ultimate tag or reader for your application. But, you as the end-user/buyer have to know the properties that you are seeking. Considering the many factors along the way (Table 5, previous page: Factors Impacting Passive Read Distance) is critical to buying the right hardware that will actually work throughout the chain—and having a successful implementation.
And for open loop (read more on page 35—RFID-Enabled Processes) applications, such as manufacturers who are under a mandate, you need to consider the readers and environ-ment at your partners’ sites and at any other points in the chain that need to read the tag—as well as the environment between the read points— e.g. will tags be exposed to extremes in temperature, weather conditions, or radiation (such as used in sterilization), harsh chemi-cals, etc.? And do they need to work in multiple regions of the world, which use different frequencies for UHF? Where will the items be read? Within a yard, or many yards away; on a conveyor, at one foot or two; or at a cash register; will they be machine swiped? Tags and Readers—whether handhelds, portals, or forklifts—need to be purchased with these factors in mind.
The cry has gone out for universal or ‘global’ readers, that do multi-protocol and multi-frequency (active/passive, as well as HF/UHF), but you still need to capture the waves. So tag antenna design is king, and reader antenna design is queen in considering the system that you purchase. These issues can be addressed in your pilots and implementation. Con-sultants and labs who know their stuff can help you work through these issues.14
DEALING WITH ENVIRONMENTS AND THE IMPACT OF PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
All physical properties have some impact on RF waves and therefore the accuracy of the signal. Let’s cover a few more definitions before delving into this area.
Diffraction—property of wave motion in which waves spread and bend as they pass through small openings or around barriers. Diffraction is more pronounced when the open-ing, or aperture, or the barrier is similar in size or smaller than the wavelength of the incom-ing wave (like water falling through a sieve). Diffraction is a property of the motion of all waves. And it can be a good thing. For example, if a radio is turned on in one room, the sound from the radio can be heard in an adjacent room even from around a doorway. Waves, like water, sound, light, etc. will fill the space they are in. This is what gives RFID an advantage over barcodes.
14 See RFID Technology Series: http://www.chainlinkresearch.com/cart/prodinfo.cfm?guid=B037315B-C974-F1B5-885E-E8894C4F43E6
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Reflection—Here the wave “bounces off” the surface it comes in contact with. In particular, radio waves are reflected off metal. Reflected waves from passive tags that return to the source generally have a weaker signal or a signal that may be out of phase. (Active tags tend not to have this problem). So tuning and environmental tag orientation are critical to mitigate reflection and ensure accurate reads.
Diffraction and reflection have been huge hurdles to overcome in using UHF and other fre-quencies, because with people and things constantly in motion, the effects of diffraction and reflection can be unpredictable. They can not only cause a tag to fail to return a full string of data, but they also can create interference in the environment for other devices, as well.
Absorption—Certain materials, such as water, absorb radio waves, resulting in a loss of energy and signal strength. This occurs generally due to the contact of the wave with a physical property that creates an interaction between the material and the wave. All you need to know is that some materials, like a sponge and water, absorb the energy. Different materials have different effects on radio signals. Some materials will detune, like cardboard and metal, and human beings.15 Plastics and liquids tend to absorb, and metals tend to re-flect. Table 6, next page: Physical Properties and RFID highlights the basic thinking on this.
High Population Density
Lots of devices, readers, tags and other wireless devices can interfere with the signals. When trying to iso-late one item, high population areas can present quite a challenge. Tech-nologies have been developed that allow readers and tags to operate in dense reader mode as well as other algorithms to sort through bad reads, duplicate reads, etc. These can be part of the reader hardware or the soft-ware that manages the readers.
The actual physical properties of your tagged items can also have an impact on clarity of signal and therefore what frequency and what antennas you use. Challenges to reading include reflection, absorption, interference and ambience. There are techniques that can sometimes be used to mitigate the effects.
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Table 6: Physical Properties and RFID
There are a lot of charts like this out in the market. None of the comments here are abso-lutes. Many materials and surfaces detune, absorb or reflect waves. Poor performance and detuning can sometimes be mitigated by using isolation, insulation, or barriers between the tag and the item. But frequently this is not possible if you need a really flush packaging sur-face.
So let’s look a bit more at the effects of specific physical properties:
Metal: Reflects waves, and that can cause waves to cancel each other out. Some-times the solution is to put a barrier between the tag and the object that’s tagged. Metal is also a conductor of electricity, remember. So you might be able to leverage off the material in some way, using the metal properties as part of the antenna to use a UHF tag. Water: Absorbs radio waves. And it turns out that the lower the frequency the less it absorbs, and the higher the frequency the more it absorbs. And that’s why UHF doesn’t work as well with water as HF does. The US government has communi-cated via radio waves with submarines thousands of feet below the water by using Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF)15 in the 30–300 Hz (that’s Hz, not kHz!). So we’re able to get radio waves through thousands of feet of water. These are very low frequencies, with huge antenna—we don’t expect your application to fit into this category.16
Frequency 125-135 KHz 13.56MHz 900-915 MHz 2.4GHz
LF HF UHF EHF-Microwave
Range < 3ft < 1ft 30ft 30ft
Water Very Good good ok Poor
Metal Good poor Poor (requires unique antennae)
good
Paper Ok - but absorbs signal
good good good
Plastic Good good Good (but detunes in far field)
Good (but detunes in far field)
Animals/Humans
Good detunes detunes good
15 To transmit at these extremely low frequencies, the antennas used can be 15-30 miles long. 16 Outside your facility this is regulated by FCC, so don’t get too clever.
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Back to day-to-day applications. If you are using passive tags on products that are liquid, 125 kHz and 13.56 MHz are frequencies that tend to work better than the higher frequency passive tags. Active technology—the power thing, again, such as 433 MHz active tags—works well with liquids. It is used today in applications such as returnable tote and asset tracking. Active is viable to many liquid applications—hazardous chemicals, high value pharmaceuticals, high value cylinders and tanks, and other products with high water content (fish, etc.) Paper: Many people think there is smooth sailing with paper. But, paper does im-pact the radio waves by absorption. And it does detune the antenna a bit. Think about the density of cartons of paper, or huge rolls of paper! It does detune. Again, these issues can be mitigated with some research on your part for the best solution.
New materials have been developed to mitigate these effects—these can be applied to the tag by your tag converter, as a barrier between the tag and the item. Also, as we have said, antennas are being developed to deal with the issues associated with physical properties. Working through the issues in a pilot prototype will allow you to determine the right strategy for you.
Label Placement — Boon or Bane
A lot has been learned about the importance of label placement on packaging to minimize detuning. For example, people know the challenges of liquids and RFID. Yet, bottles with narrow necks, when placed in cartons for shipping, create plenty of air space at the top of the carton. Water impacts can be mitigated by placing the label at this end. Another exam-ple would be a box filled with soup cans. If the label goes on the box right over the spot where the round can touches the box, huge detuning occurs, and read distances decrease. But if the label placement is between where the cans touch the box, there is less detuning and better read distances.
CHALLENGES OF READERS Let’s focus on the reader for a moment. Readers have two basic elements—they can be read-only readers—fairly dumb—but subsequently fairly cheap. And then there are read/write readers. (Also called encoders). They can write EPC codes and other information on the tags as well as perform other types of business functions.
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Readers can be mobile or fixed—mounted in walls,17 floors, ceilings, on forklifts, etc. When considering the purchase of readers, think about not only multi-purpose readers, barcode and RFID, but also multi-application mobile devices (pocket PC, Blackberries, Palms and cells, Nokia phones, etc.). Consider also the readers’ suitability with unique programmable applications, wide ranges of read capabilities, and wireless and/or satellite communications.
Readers emit and receive waves. The front end converts the RF wave—analog signals—to digital. There are common hardware modules on the market that reader manufacturers em-bed in their devices. The back end of the reader communicates with other systems—wirelessly or wired (RS232 ports, Ethernet ports or wireless chips). The key is to procure modules that are software-upgradeable and can be upgraded from your network. Once you get a large population of readers spread across the globe (and with active tags, this can be true, too), the concept of physically finding and upgrading each unit becomes untenable.
There are several challenges that must be met in designing readers that will operate suc-cessfully in a myriad of environments. The key is signal clarity. This problem is complex and has to do with high-traffic environments which produce interference, collision of signals, ambient noise, as well as range issues, to which waves are heir.
Range and signal can frequently be addressed by adding power and by adding more appro-priately placed devices into the environment. As we mentioned earlier, there are limitations on how much power you can apply, so thinking through the combination of orientation, power, number and kinds of devices can make a huge difference. But there are clever ways of improving your chances of getting clean reads:
• Proper antenna placement (readers can have multiple antennas which can in-crease signal strength and stabilize your signal)
• Sensors can provide directionality • More readers can provide greater range and intelligence
Software is the key, here. Software plays a huge role in the RFID world—both at the reader and middleware level. If a signal is weak or interrupted, or there is a collision or other inter-ference, the software can fill the gaps and surmise what the data should be. At least it can tell you, ‘Sorry, I didn’t get that; please try again;’ or ‘I read 6; weren’t you expecting 8?’ Readers, however, are not mind readers, and cannot maintain process velocity and accu-racy unless great care is taken while the system is designed.
A lot has been learned about tag collision on item-level passive tags. Different systems have been invented to isolate individual tags; the system used may vary by vendor. The terms you hear are working in dense reader mode; listen before talk; and sharing the wave
17 Will have RS232 ports, and/or Ethernet ports, generally, to connect to other computers or to the internet.
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through gap pulsing (very common technique used in wireless and Telco,18 etc.). These are software solutions. Reducing power in areas where and when you don’t want to read, sleeping and waking up, through the use of sign posts (hardware solutions) are all methods that should be examined. Doing site assessment is key here, since you can also tamper with your physical environment by creating isolation portals, etc.
Security is key—readers get lost and stolen a lot! So readers should be bought with both local security and network security, or RFID or wireless device management software that can authenticate devices joining (or leaving) your network.19
Deploying readers into the work environment needs to be thought through. FCC regulations also apply to devices with power, and there are standards for these. In addition, any power or wireless devices that might operate in airports (FCC approval needed), hospitals (FDA approval needed), ports, and within your factory should be reviewed for the impact they have on the environment—and the environment has on them.
The more software you put on your reader, the slower it will perform, although your perform-ance criteria may not be heavy enough to perceive this performance degradation. All the vendors have performance data—from their labs. But you, need we say this again, need to test these products in your environment in heavy use before you buy a large quantity.
Readers also come with various antenna options. You will see their specs with circular or linear polarization. Antennas can be cabled to devices, so these antennas can be strategi-cally placed to optimize reads.
One other thought on readers, since they tend to be hefty on logic (and price)—looking for readers that are multi-purpose and will be useful with the next generation of standards20 on the horizon would be a smart purchasing move.
There is always much more to say, but let’s move on.
18 “When the reader recognizes that tag collision has taken place, it sends a special signal ( a “gap pulse”). Upon receiving this signal, each tag consults a random number counter to determine the interval to wait before sending its data. Since each tag gets a unique number interval, the tags send their data at different times.” Source: AIM 19 Security at the tag, reader, or network level, that is. 20 Gen 1, 2, and 3 as well as ISO 18000 6b, 6c, etc. for Passive UHF. Globally, as we discussed earlier, the other LF and HF operate in the less ambiguous environments. FCC regulations also apply for devices with power.
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Selecting the Right Solution—What do I Use?
Figure 15: Range and Intelligence
THE 3Pe IS THE SOLUTION
3Pe rules in RFID. That is, you need to define what are the Process, the Policy, and the Performance objectives that determine which enabler is selected. I know that all you techie types want to have a raging debate on UHF vs. LF. But if Wal-Mart says UHF, that debate is over.21 That is Policy! Your question then becomes how do we do this? How and where will the technology be used? What data can we gain from new data collection or identity points? Who can use the data? That is Process. And Performance—what kind of out-comes do we need? What are the real goals of the project? How far can we leverage our investment?22 How can it enrich, modify and create new processes for my business?
Since we have already discussed a bit about how we do this, with various antennas, read-ers, and materials, let’s delve into the process.
21 How to implement UHF 22 Look for the article “RFID—Yes, There is Real Value” in our November 2006 Parallax View online magazine.
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RFID-ENABLED PROCESSES RFID has many unique properties that can help enable a myriad of process improvements. Instrumentation from location to location needs to be in place if your expectation is that RFID will provide an end-to-end value. For many applications, this is a huge issue as well as a large marketing opportunity. RFID readers may not be in place across the entire sup-ply chain. In addition, we need to think about field application and remote implementation.
One concept that has taken hold in RFID is the concept of closed loop or open loop imple-mentations. (Figure 16, below.) The concept is quite simple. Open Loop is when the prod-uct (and therefore the tag) leaves you, never to be seen again (not really a loop). Cartons with consumables or salable items are such examples. Closed Loop is when the convey-ance, or package or item comes back to you. Totes, pallets, containers, vehicles, repairable units, assets that need to be tracked, fast lanes, etc. are all examples of Closed Loop appli-cations.
Figure 16: Closed Loop vs. Open Loop
Now we will make one more distinction in these standard definitions, and that is the issue of compliance. Compliance applications have a very small range of choice in the solution. This minimal approach (compliance) is where many firms are right now. So, your selection of technology can be very basic—standard industry tags (we hope) with enough technology to apply the tag and confirm that it is real and ready to ship. This is the so-called slap and ship approach. This is an Open Loop implementation that satisfies the needs of a buyer who seeks compliance only. Compliance does not address the upstream instrumentation of the supply chain.
Examples
Benefits
Solution
Yard, Milk Runs, Maintenance
ROI within the enterprise
Routing back to you
Closed Loop
Shared values-Global ThinkingKeeping Customers
Slap and Ship
Stand-alone solution within the four walls of a facility
Compliance
Across the Chain
Item-level tagging of goods through the supply chain
Open Solution
Examples
Benefits
Solution
Yard, Milk Runs, Maintenance
ROI within the enterprise
Routing back to you
Closed Loop
Shared values-Global ThinkingKeeping Customers
Slap and Ship
Stand-alone solution within the four walls of a facility
Compliance
Across the Chain
Item-level tagging of goods through the supply chain
Open Solution
Different RFID Solutions- Closed Loop/Open Loop
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Open Loop can have more profound goals, as we are seeing in the brand protection / ePedi-gree efforts within the Pharmaceutical industry. What and how will the shipments and prod-ucts be read across the chain? What cross-reference or validation systems will be put in place? How will it be read? How will the data be read? What are the environmental factors that might impact the tag’s condition (e.g. harsh environments, or interference)?
An advantage of a Closed Loop system is that usually you are not constrained by having to make it work in myriad trading partner environments. Although you are probably still send-ing out your item, it’s usually going to a known or planned destination, and then back to you.
Asset tracking can be loosely called Closed Loop, as well. In fact, one of the benefits of RFID is finding things that go astray. So the environment in which tags find themselves may not be what you expected (i.e., you may not have control of the destination environment). Here GPS can make a big difference.23
Table 7: Tag Usage
Closed Environment Open Environment
Multi-use Tags re-used within one organiza-tion. e.g. Tags on materials or totes within a manufacturing plant. Or tracking totes between a re-tailer’s own DC and stores. (Milk runs). Low cost per use and can be made highly reliable because of degree of control over all as-pects of the implementation. Tags on pallets or containers.
Tags re-used across multiple trad-ing partners. Low cost per use, but need to face challenges of making them work across many trading partners with less predictable environments and instrumentation.
1-time use 1-time use, within one organiza-tion. e.g. Tesco’s tags on game DVDs as they come into the back of the store. The infamous EAS tag.
1-time use, across multiple trading partners. i.e., follows the process and is then disposed of such as Wal-Mart, DoD — Tag cost must be very low or the payoff high, because of 1-time use.
23 Complimentary solutions like GPS, RTLS, wireless mesh networks and other approaches can work with RFID to provide physical security solutions.
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The nuances and variables in the process are endless, and over time the active vs. passive issues will blur a bit too, as passive techniques get better and active gets cheaper. These are factors to consider as you think about your approach.
With that, let’s look at some of the issues of active vs. passive in your decision-making.
ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE TAGS All the noise lately has been about the passive technologies. With the promise of ultra-low cost, they certainly do represent an attempt at an ubiquitous solution. Active technologies provide you with a range of visibility and data-rich devices that can be used over a lifetime. They also have a proven ROI in the Closed Loop application areas where they have been in use for many years. But like all good things, they come with some challenges.
BEWARE OF COMMON RFID MYTHS Myth: Passive Tags are Cheaper
Conversations and terms about pricing have entered the market that we think are a bit erroneous.
Firstly, we think that it is misleading to call active expensive and passive cheap. The sensible way to think about cost is cost-per-use, rather than cost-per-tag. Users need to think about—always—the application for which they intend to use RFID. Returnable totes, reusable or Closed Loop applications, tracking high value items and asset management, and locating items in environments that are out of range, all are active uses for active technology! My $5 transponder has been on my auto for over 7 years, and if measured in price for use, is quite cheap. (And if I was measuring my supply chain velocity, I would have had a significant Cost/Benefit re-turn in the first year!) So in this case, the cost-per-use is very low, not because it’s passive or active, but because it is reused hundreds or thousands of times.
Myth: Passive tags will be cheaper—soon
If you look at the drivers that roll-up into the cost of creating a tag, you’ll see that there are, as in many products, an extraordinary amount of value-added steps in-volved. They cross many enterprises: from design, to chip manufacturing, to as-sembly, and at each step the cost of handling, transportation etc. adds to the total manufacturing cost.
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In addition, much is made of the ultimate reduction in the price of passive tags as semiconductor manufacturers reach some kind of scale. However, for years we have discussed this issue with organizations such as SIA, who have repeatedly told us that RFID tags, even at mass deployment, do not even make 1% of the total market for the semiconductor business. In other words, the myth is that Moore’s law says tag cost will come down by 50% every year or two. The problem is that Moore’s law only applies to the semiconductor, not to all of the other elements, and steps in creating a tag (e.g. antenna, attachment, testing, label, adhesive, etc.) All those other components typically go down in cost at a much slower rate, unless there is a major technological breakthrough. Until we see those breakthroughs (e.g. printed tags), even as semi-conductor prices fall, the non-semiconductor compo-nents of the tag will become an increasingly larger portion of the tag cost.
Having said that, if people keep their designs on smarter and smarter passive tags controlled, the chip price will inevitability come down somewhat.24
But, if you look at the basic evolution from the beginning, Sensitech’s and Check-point’s one bit tags, to the current Gen 2 96 bit (byte) tags, the compounding of in-telligence on the tag (we think that is a good thing, by the way), tells a story for—NO 5-CENT TAG—not a Gen 2 or Gen 3 tag, at least.
Myth: Passive tags are not reusable
Again, a hilarious myth. It’s all in the packaging, which you know about now. Ruggedized tags can be housed in material such as plastic, for example. Certain material used for inlays and packaging can withstand very high temperatures and harsh chemicals.
Myth: Items only use passive tags, not active tags
Another frustrating myth is that all item tagging will be addressed passively. Again, this might be true for tooth paste, but think about other items. Computers, Gucci handbags, Louis Vuitton luggage, art work, auto parts. Think about expensive cheeses,25 wine, fresh items, or large economy packs of certain food items. Medi-cal equipment items—and we really want to find these when we need them! These items can range from $10 to millions of dollars. The value of the item, or more im-portantly, the process it enables, places a high value on rapid identification and lo-cation, so an active tag might be the solution.
24 Do the math. A single semi-conductor fab today costs about $2.5B to build. At the much ballyhooed 5 cent tag cost (finished/tested/delivered) assuming the chip accounts for 1/2 of that cost, one single fab needs to sell 100 billion tags just to cover the capital cost of the fab—that’s 100 billion, not 100 million! 25 Sensors plus active tag.
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Myth: RFID cannot be used in the home, no home market for RFID
Some people limit their thinking about the use of RFID in the home to “reading item-level retail tags”. In fact there are many innovative uses for RFID being explored. Here again, most homes are alive with expensive reusable assets. As for your reader—most homes have cell phones. Think of your cell phone, PDA, your free wifi device, or even set-top box as a potential RFID reader. The features come free: remember the camera, or the MP3 player, on your cell phone? We are already seeing RFID readers embedded in toys, stoves, and other home devices. And world-wide, with our aging population, the clinical environment is moving into the home, with home healthcare, medical devices, and monitoring equipment.26 Any-one who has found themselves with on-going patient care in the home can attest to the need for real-time information and monitoring.
And we do want to track our kids, don’t we! I think this drives home the point.
26 Read ChainLink Report: RFID in Clinical Settings: http://www.chainlinkresearch.com/research/detail.cfm?guid=B02F1909-A043-31A8-1887-8DF7BBBF2A88
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Standards vs. Mandates vs. Good Ideas The call to action on RFID—in particular passive—has been based on mandates to the sup-ply base by Wal-Mart and the DoD. However, RFID had been a growing, albeit slowly, mar-ket long before the “big bang” of mandates, because of its powerful properties and potential for ROI and usefulness in specific applications.
Many industries have been grappling with a few key issues that have caused various gov-ernment, trade, and industry groups to focus on evaluating and then standardizing, where appropriate, on data, frequency and other factors.
It is important to note that beyond your customer mandating the use of this technology, at this time there are no other mandates or legislation imposing an implementation of RFID.
Although discussions have taken place in the very many types of organization we men-tioned above (FDA, Homeland Security), and these organizations recently have come out in ‘support’ of RFID as an enabler to achieve their goals, it would be erroneous to justify your decision to purchase and implement RFID by claiming that its use is regulated or legislated.
Both the FDA and the Department of Home-land Security have looked at RFID, and con-tinue to have working groups and pilots fo-cused on the topic. They see RFID as a valid enabler for achieving a digital tracking record to support acts and laws passed over the last few years.27 Currently Homeland Security is supporting pilots in RFID, but again, there is no legislation dictating its use. (See list of organizations and their regulating authority and interests in Appendix A.)
Industry groups, though, have been very active in ensuring cross-enterprise consensus on the use of the technology and data standards. These efforts have been on-going since the birth of EDI and the barcode, so RFID is part of the evolutionary thinking here. Whether Aerospace-AITA, Auto-AIAG, AIM, or HDMA-Healthcare (to name a few), beyond EPC Global/GS1 and ISO, they all created working groups to address these issues. Your use of RFID, then, needs to look at a cross-section of guidelines and mandates—by industry, cus-tomer, and geography—to determine what solutions you will use. It is a huge concern for developers and users of the technology that frequency and power regulations, as well as data-naming guidelines, are becoming standardized.
27 Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (Title III, Subtitle a Protection of Food Supply)
Figure 17
Business Applications
Network
Interrogators, Readers, Wireless Routers
Middleware
Tags/Labels (Active & Passive)
Chips, Batteries, Antennas, …
Business Applications
Network
Interrogators, Readers, Wireless Routers
Middleware
Tags/Labels (Active & Passive)
Chips, Batteries, Antennas, …
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RFID TRANSMISSION REQUIREMENTS Frequency choices and other regulations are the domains of governments. Any device that emits a signal is regulated by the national or geographical governing body (for example, EU) in that part of the world. So, whatever solution you consider, you may have to span across several national borders and, therefore, you may need to consider slight alterations in your game plan.
Table 8: Radio Frequency Regulation
Radio Frequency Regulation
In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates emissions. The EU has its own, as do Japan and China. All have unique standards and organizations that pro-vide regulations. (See Appendix A for list of these organizations.) Why do we regulate radio waves? To ensure reliable communication.
There are three aspects to regulation:
1. Licensed bands: For most frequencies, you need a license to transmit. All the major transmitters—the AM and FM radio stations and the TV stations, police, fire, and military each get their own band within a specific geography (in the case of a radio or TV station that is defined by the location of their transmitting tower and the maximum power they are licensed to transmit).28 Amateur radio buffs also can get a license to operate at designated frequencies.
28 You may have heard some of them bragging “transmitting at 50,000 watts of power.”
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2. Unlicensed bands (also know as ISM or Industrial, Scientific and Medical bands): These are selected frequencies set aside for unlicensed use. These don’t require a broadcast license as long as you transmit below a certain level (e.g. 4 watts for the UHF band in US, 2 watts for UHF in EU). These are the bands used by RFID.
3. EMI Emission regulation: Anyone who makes equipment that emits electro-magnetic noise (computers, medical equipment, fluorescent lamps, TVs, micro-wave ovens) that might interfere with communications, must pass FCC, EU, FDA and other regional regulatory tests certifying that the device emis-sions are below the levels allowed across the radio spectrum. You will see on the back of your cell phone, for example, an FCC ID. Each ‘carrier’ is limited to a certain power level. This prevents interference, reduces noise and impact on living organisms.
Resolution of regulations
The trouble is that today regulations are on a national level. Although there are some agreements between countries, sometimes it’s regional, like the EU. But, you do get differ-ent bands and different standards for US and Europe and Japan. Gradually we’re moving towards some global accommodation, since people realize that it’s an issue. But it’s very difficult when a company or a nation has a large investment in an infrastructure that is all built up to support a certain set of frequencies. They can’t just throw all that away and move to a different set of frequencies.
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RFID BANDS ─ WORLDWIDE REGULATIONS If you look at how the bands around the world are regulated, there’s actually harmony at the 125 kHz, 13.56 MHz, 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz level. But for UHF tags, there is a difference in the US, EU, and Japanese bands. Therefore, if your company needs to use tags worldwide, it can help to use wide band tags instead of tags that were designed for use with a specific UHF frequency (like 915 MHz).
Figure 18: Wide Band
The term Wide Band 29 refers to UHF RFID devices designed to work across all of the UHF bands internationally (Figure 18, above). A shipper or firm that has product that is likely to cross major geographic boundaries needs to ensure that the technology they use can make the trip and still be usable. Many of today’s RFID providers have created solutions that work adequately from, say, EU to US, by creating an antenna that can work in the UHF range from about 860 MHz to 960 MHz for UHF.
TAKING A TOTAL SYSTEMS APPROACH If you are not under mandates, you have some flexibility in designing the right solution, both within your enterprise and also across the entire inter-enterprise supply chain.
We have heard many narrowing statements about how to think about RFID, but the reality is, there are a plethora of applications, uses, and technologies that work in tandem with it—and we are just getting started.
29 Not to be confused with Ultra-Wide Band. This is a totally different concept.
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The RFID tags and readers must be selected based not only on the factors we have dis-cussed above (and we are sure there are more), but also on the business objectives. For example, a logistics solution vs. a patient care solution will require unique designs, unique integrations with IT systems, and unique data collection.
Also, the tag that you think is right for your environment (yard, farm, warehouse) may be dissonant with the end-use or destina-tion environment and the distribution chan-nels along the way. So a total approach—not just tags and reader coordination, but business application, geopolitical locations, as well as end-to-end application—should be considered.30
There is so much more to learn and talk about—but for now, let’s move forward and look at the technology market!
30 For further reading on end-user vertical applications: http://www.chainlinkresearch.com/research/index.cfm?topic=48
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Considerations Before Buying Technology So, now you know that there are some key points you have to discuss with your technology provider about the specific system you will need: frequencies, antenna design, and field shape and range.
Just quickly, we would like to put in context the whole RFID solution. Tags, readers, wire-less devices and routers do not exist in a vacuum. The point is that they have to transmit data to business applications of all types. As the population of devices grows, so does the software market for reader management, middleware, and a variety of applications that use the data. In a subsequent report we will look at the rest of the stack and how this all fits to-gether to create a total solution.
Now let’s take a look at the RFID Hardware market.
Our purpose in this report is not to discuss market size and share. Our fellow market re-search firms can do this for you. However, the hardware revenue for RFID grows at a steady rate. But innovation has grown at a much greater rate. In the last two years, signifi-cant changes have occurred in the market. As more people have learned how to work with RFID, it has created lots of new elements, innovations, and players. If you are a provider, you have a few key partnership choices with firms who can supply chips, IC, printed circuit boards, programmable logic units, or complete devices waiting for your customization. You also have more retail partnerships and channels through which to sell your product. It is assumed that vendors will have labs to work in to test final solutions for their clients. Cau-tion to end-users, though: the lab does not look like your environment—so you need a real life test which has the scale, velocity and the people who will actually operate the system.
What is exciting in this market is the current level of learning. Adoption of RFID has been slowed in the past because a whole industry—both the vendors and the end-users—had to learn together how to make this work. This is actually typical in technology markets with the early adopter paving the way. Slower than expected growth last year should not be taken as a signal of poor potential, because learning, as well as the finalization of ‘the standards,’ came a bit slower than expected. That said, the standard is agreed upon,31 the chips are there, (with ever new antennas), the readers are there, and now it is time to learn and pick an adoption approach appropriate for your firm.
The sheer volume of suppliers, even with minimal end-user intentions, creates a nice envi-ronment for growth. And the competition for your business has created a plethora of ‘get started kits’ and methods for the novice user.
31 Gen 2, plus Chinese cooperation, as well as the learning on wide band to make things in Europe that will work in the US. But clearly more has to be done here. ISO 180000-6C, to compliment Gen 2, is expected soon.
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RFID devices, like most electronics, are made in a series of steps across a chain of value- adding steps. We have now educated you enough for you to be able to make some assess-ments, even if you are buying directly from a ‘converter,’ printer company, or consultant. You must understand that you need to know what is required at each stage to meet your own business requirements (Figure 19, below ). At the right end of the chain, you will gen-erally work with converter, reader, and printer companies for your solution. But this is not always the case. Many chip makers also have standard products that can be sold directly to your firm.
Figure 19: The Tag Supply Chain
We will align the technology firms along this continuum so you can select the right solution provider or partnership (if you are developing solutions). The charts that follow will address:
• RFID Technology Firms aligned by their position in the Value Chain • RFID Hardware Market—how they got there—many firms come to RFID
through other capabilities, of which RFID is a logical extension • RFID Overview • RFID Technology and Products by firm—Tags, Readers and Frequencies • RFID by Business Application/Solutions • RFID by Industry
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RFID Market—How They Got There
If you think about the ‘charter’ of RFID use—sensing, identifying, and communicating infor-mation, you can understand the rich market of players who are offering RFID solutions. We like to use the term Primary Positioning, since many players are in a variety of solutions areas. (Figure 20, below.)
Figure 20: RFID Providers—Primary Positioning
The reality is that firms like Intermec have been in the device and data collection business for a very long time. RFID just adds more goodies to sell. Cisco rapidly got the message that messaging would not just be data, but would also be voice, video, and RF, and ex-panded their product line, not just functionally, but expanded the size and range of their de-vices to deal with the ubiquitous use of RF, wireless access points, etc. Transcor has been in Transportation and has moved into consumables.
When all you have is a ham-mer,
your world is full of nails.
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Control and monitoring application have already been visible for a long time. And this gives them more elements to sell. Firms like Omron, Siemens and/or Rockwell, Honeywell and Tyco apply here.
Medical device providers, who are responsible for constant monitoring, accuracy of equipment, etc., make great candidates for RFID. So, the complete solution for end-to-end monitoring of processes, patients, or product for its lifetime, is available from multiple providers.
At the other spectrum, the paper and packaging industries are having a ‘springtime’ of explora-tion. They are figuring out how they can supple-ment and expand their product offerings. Induc-tive inks blended into gravure paper processes, for security applications, or simple ID applications.
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Conclusions: RFID is as much art as science, and there is a lot to learn. RFID can be finicky—though it can be mastered—so you need to take several key factors into account before singing up:
• Run a pilot—try before you buy. • Look at your environmental factors—not only in your facilities, but across the
Process. • Get your trading partners involved. If you are sharing a process, RFID has to
work for everyone. • Consider building your own little lab. This is not expensive, and if you are going
to use RFID for many activities, you will want to build up the knowledge of RFID in your organization.
• Knowledge—take some classes. Learn to work with RFID. You will increase
your confidence and unlock your creative side in hands-on experience with RFID.
There are sometimes stormy seas and unpredictable gales that nature whips up. The seasoned sailor learns to un-derstand the waves. The great surfer sees those particularly tough waves as an advantage, in fact! All analogies aside, nature has provided a fascinat-ing vehicle for us to be able to see, find, and communicate. There is tre-mendous value to be had from learn-ing to master these waves.
Happy sailing!
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Appendix A: Standards REGULATORY AGENCIES: These agencies regulate the use of RF waves and power:
FDA — (Food and Drug Administration) — Provides guidelines and regulates RFID emissions pertaining to food and drugs, as well as consumer electronics like cell phones.
FCC — (Federal Communication Commission) — Regulates the use of the full RF fre-quency spectrum. Grants licenses to use specific frequency bands within specific geo-graphic areas.
FTC — (Federal Trade Commission) — Ultra high band broadcasting
EPA — (Environmental Protection Agency) — Emission ‘standards’
FAA — (Federal Aviation Administration) — Wireless Broadcast of Aviation Signals
USDA — (US Dept. of Agriculture) — Live animals as well as ‘food stuff’
This sets policy for: avoidance (interference, poor trade); maintaining security; enhancing/improving economy, health etc.); protecting and defending, etc.
ENABLERS These review and advise and use RFID, or create guidelines and legislation that can indi-cate the use of technology to enable policies
FDA — (Food and Drug Admin.)
DHS — (Dept, of Homeland Security), Customs
CIA — (Central Intelligence Agency)
US Department of State
These organizations see technology as a way to achieve their policy charter.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 52
STANDARDS SPECIFIC TO RFID USE ISO — (International Standards Organization)
EPC — (Electronic Product Code)
AIM — (Global Assoc. for Automatic ID and Mobility)
INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS HDMA — (Healthcare Data Mgt Assoc.)
GMA — (Grocery Manufacturers Assoc.)
AIAG — (Automotive Industry Action Group)
ATA — (American Transportation Association)
These Industry Associations gain consensus on data and business practices
KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE IS CRITICAL TO YOUR ROI
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 53
Appendix B: Tables of Survey Results
1. RFID Technology Firms aligned by their position in the Value Chain—pages 54—56
2. RFID technology and products by firm - Tags, Readers and Frequencies—page 57
3. RFID customization capabilities, by firm—pages 58—60
4. RFID business application/Solutions, by firm—page 61
5. RFID firms by Industry—page 62
6. RFID Vendors Overview—pages 63—89
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 54
1. RFID Technology Firms aligned by their position in the Value Chain (1 of 3)
RFI
D H
ARD
WAR
E P
LAYE
RS
BY
SEC
TOR
Semiconductors
Inlays
Finished Tags
Sensors
Readers
Printers
Oth
erO
utco
me
Gua
rant
ees
ACC
Sys
tem
s In
c.
Gua
rant
ee d
eliv
ery
of o
rder
ed g
oods
and
per
mor
man
ce.
Adap
tive
RFI
D, I
nc.
RFI
D A
pplic
atio
n So
ftwar
e an
d R
FID
M
iddl
ewar
eTu
rnke
y so
lutio
n fo
r DoD
pro
cess
-com
plia
nce.
Aero
Scou
tW
i-Fi b
ased
Act
ive
RFI
D ta
gsYe
s, b
ased
on
syst
em p
erfo
rman
ce. (
Dep
ends
on
spec
ific
mix
of p
rodu
cts
sold
.)
Alie
n Te
chno
logy
Alie
n's
batte
ry-a
ssis
ted
pass
ive
(BAP
) R
FID
sys
tem
ext
ends
the
rang
e ov
er
whi
ch a
tag
can
be re
liabl
y re
ad a
nd
writ
ten
to-u
p to
as
muc
h as
30
met
ers.
Alie
n w
arra
nts
its re
ader
pro
duct
s to
be
free
from
def
ects
in m
ater
ials
and
wor
kman
ship
for a
pe
riod
of o
ne y
ear.
Inla
ys a
nd la
bels
are
sim
ilarly
war
rant
ed fo
r 180
day
s. S
ome
Alie
n la
bel
conv
erte
r par
tner
s gu
aran
tee
100%
goo
d la
bels
.
Alla
ura,
Inc.
Appl
icat
ion
deve
lopm
ent,
inst
alla
tion,
se
rvic
eG
uara
ntee
d to
ope
rate
per
des
ign
docu
men
t, an
d 12
mon
th w
arra
nty
on h
ardw
are.
Arnl
ea S
yste
ms
Lim
ited
C
ontra
ct d
epen
dent
.
ASK
Con
tact
less
and
dua
l int
erfa
ce s
mar
t ca
rds
Inve
ntor
y re
duct
ion
for R
FID
in te
xtile
.Al
l ove
r cos
t red
uctio
n on
mas
s tra
nsit
cont
actle
ss s
yste
ms.
Atm
el C
orp.
N
/A
AVAN
TE In
tern
atio
nal T
echn
olog
y, In
c.
Aver
y D
enni
son
Prin
ter S
yste
ms
24
hr s
hipp
ing
of s
tand
ard
parts
Blue
Vec
tor S
yste
ms
Our
por
tals
and
sm
art s
helv
es a
re
deliv
ered
fully
con
figur
ed w
ith R
FID
re
ader
s as
wel
l as
othe
r typ
es o
f se
nsor
s.
Non
e.
Blue
Bean
LLC
Turn
key
RFI
D k
its fo
r spe
cific
RFI
D
proj
ects
suc
h as
sla
p an
d sh
ip
com
plia
nce,
doc
k do
ors,
con
veyo
rs,
rece
ivin
g, s
hipp
ing,
labs
and
sal
es
pres
enta
tions
.
For c
ompl
ianc
e-re
late
d pr
ojec
ts, B
lueB
ean
guar
ante
es th
at th
e cl
ient
will
be c
ompl
iant
upo
n pr
ojec
t com
plet
ion.
For
all
proj
ects
, Blu
eBea
n al
so g
uara
ntee
s th
e m
etric
s ag
reed
upo
n in
the
cust
omer
-def
ined
Sta
tem
ent o
f Wor
k.
CAE
N R
FID
N
/A
Cat
alys
t Int
erna
tiona
lSy
stem
s in
tegr
ator
and
rese
ller o
f RFI
D
read
ers,
prin
ters
, por
tals
, lab
els,
and
ta
gs
Not
app
licab
le.
Che
ckpo
int S
yste
ms,
Inc
RFI
D d
esig
n, a
pplic
atio
n te
stin
g an
d so
urce
tagg
ing
serv
ices
EM M
icro
elec
troni
c
-
Ente
rpris
e In
form
atio
n Sy
stem
s, In
c.R
FID
Inte
grat
ion
Serv
ices
EIS
eval
uate
s an
d gu
aran
tees
cus
tom
er im
plem
enat
ions
bas
ed o
n pr
ojec
t spe
cific
crit
eria
.
iCon
trol,
Inc.
we
do n
ot p
rodu
ce o
r sel
l RFI
D
com
pone
nts,
but
we
prod
uce
and
sell
devi
ces
for c
aptu
ring
and
com
mun
icat
ing
data
from
RFI
D a
nd
othe
r sen
sors
Our
pro
duct
s ar
e gu
aran
teed
to b
e de
fect
free
in m
ater
ials
and
wor
kman
ship
und
er n
orm
al u
se.
IDEN
TEC
SO
LUTI
ON
S, In
c.
Qua
lifyi
ng c
usto
mer
s w
ill be
gra
nted
tech
nica
l per
form
ance
gua
rant
ees.
Met
rics
and
cons
eque
nces
of f
ailu
re a
re d
evel
oped
on
a ca
se-b
y-ca
se b
asis
.In
foC
hip
Syst
ems
Inc.
N
/A
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 55
1. RFID Technology Firms aligned by their position in the Value Chain (2 of 3)
RFI
D H
AR
DW
AR
E P
LAY
ER
S B
Y S
EC
TOR
Semiconductors
Inlays
Finished Tags
Sensors
Readers
Printers
Oth
erO
utco
me
Gua
rant
ees
INK
OD
E In
tern
atio
nal
Chi
ples
s R
FID
OE
M o
nly
pro
duct
sC
ontra
ct s
peci
fies
perfo
rman
ce b
efor
e an
y pa
ymen
t
Inte
rmec
Tec
hnol
ogie
s, In
c.
All
prod
ucts
are
war
rant
eed
for a
t lea
st o
ne y
ear.
Inte
rnat
iona
l Bus
ines
s M
achi
nes
Cor
pora
tion
Sof
twar
e an
d se
rvic
esna
iPic
o Id
entif
icat
ion
(Pty
) Ltd
Mid
dlew
are
1 ye
ar g
uara
ntee
, see
dat
ashe
ets
avai
labl
e on
web
for p
erfo
rman
ce
KS
W M
icro
tec
AG
no
ne
Low
ry C
ompu
ter P
rodu
cts
RFI
D p
orta
l sys
tem
sLo
wry
Sm
art T
rac
labe
ls a
re 1
00%
test
ed.
LXE
Inc.
N
A
Lyng
soe
Sys
tem
s
The
se a
re c
ontra
ctua
lly a
gree
d on
a c
ase
by c
ase
leve
l.
Mag
ella
n Te
chno
logy
Pty
Ltd
A
bilit
y to
read
and
writ
e to
mul
tiple
sta
cked
tags
sig
nific
antly
redu
ces
prod
uct h
andl
ing
time
MA
RK
EM
Cor
pora
tion
Sof
twar
e an
d se
rvic
esB
y cu
stom
er a
gree
men
t.
OM
NIK
EY
Gm
bH
-
Om
ron
RFI
DT
rain
ing
and
test
ing
serv
ices
1. G
uara
ntee
d co
mpl
ianc
e in
just
one
day
2. G
uara
ntee
d 10
0% la
bel p
erfo
rman
ce a
fter a
pplic
atio
n. F
ailu
res
repl
aced
, eva
luat
ed a
nd te
ch
assi
stan
ce p
rovi
ded
if de
term
inat
ion
mad
e th
at fa
ilure
is d
ue to
app
licat
or/e
ncod
er e
rror
.P
arco
Wire
less
D
epen
ding
upo
n th
e fa
cilit
ies
mis
sion
and
trac
king
cov
erag
e, R
OI o
n sy
stem
s ca
n be
exp
ecte
d an
ywhe
re fr
om a
s lit
tle a
s 3
mon
ths
to a
yea
r. P
arco
's s
yste
ms
have
exp
erie
nced
upt
imes
gr
eate
r tha
n 99
% in
the
field
. As
wel
l, th
e co
mpa
ny w
arra
nts
that
the
data
pro
vide
d by
its
syst
ems
is th
e m
ost r
elia
ble,
the
mos
t acc
urat
e of
any
real
tim
e tra
ckin
g sy
stem
on
the
mar
ket
toda
y in
term
s of
repo
rting
the
tags
loca
tion
to a
ctua
l, an
d in
term
s of
repe
atab
ility
of t
he d
ata.
G
ranu
larit
y of
repo
rting
for s
ub o
ne fo
ot is
gre
ater
than
80%
. Gra
nula
ritie
s of
sub
one
met
er is
gr
eate
r tha
n 95
%. R
oom
leve
l rep
ortin
g is
gre
ater
than
99%
.
Pax
ar C
orp.
O
ur u
niqu
e S
mar
t Lab
el P
erfo
rman
ce G
uara
ntee
(offe
ring
100%
of y
our m
oney
bac
k fo
r any
fa
iled
labe
ls- 1
10%
whe
n us
ed w
ith o
ur M
onar
ch p
rinte
r/ en
code
r) o
ffers
une
qual
led
prot
ectio
n th
roug
h gu
aran
teed
labe
l per
form
ance
. Any
faile
d la
bels
that
are
retu
rned
to u
s ar
e cr
edite
d. W
e of
fer a
one
yea
r war
rant
y on
our
prin
ter/
enco
der f
amily
.P
LITE
K
PLI
TEK
RFI
D la
bels
and
tags
are
100
% q
ualit
y in
spec
ted
and
certi
fied.
Pow
er P
aper
, Pow
erID
Div
isio
n
We
spel
l out
with
par
tner
s an
d cu
stom
ers
the
leve
ls o
f ser
vice
requ
ired
(e.g
. with
rega
rd to
read
ra
tes,
tag
failu
re ra
tes,
etc
.) in
dep
loym
ents
Pre
cisi
on D
ynam
ics
Cor
pora
tion
Q
ualit
y pr
oduc
ts p
rovi
de p
ositi
ve p
atro
n an
d pa
tient
iden
tific
atio
n.
Prin
troni
x, In
c.
Prin
troni
x ha
s co
nsis
tent
ly d
emon
stra
ted
its fi
rst-t
o-m
arke
t lea
ders
hip
with
UH
F R
FID
te
chno
logy
. Prin
troni
x M
P2
prin
ters
del
iver
a d
epen
dabl
e, fl
exib
le a
nd s
tabl
e en
codi
ng p
latfo
rm
with
its
indu
stry
-pro
ven
Sm
art E
ncod
ing
tech
nolo
gy. S
mar
t Enc
odin
g te
chno
logy
use
s th
ree
key
com
pone
nts:
an
EP
Cgl
obal
Gen
2 C
ertif
ied
best
-in-c
lass
read
er/e
ncod
er m
odul
e, th
e pa
tent
ed
mul
ti-po
sitio
n co
uple
r (an
tenn
a) lo
cate
d in
the
prin
ter,
and
inte
llige
nt p
rinte
r firm
war
e. W
ith
Sm
art E
ncod
ing
tech
nolo
gy, u
ser-
base
d re
ports
con
sist
ently
yie
ld a
99.
8% re
ad a
nd e
ncod
e pe
rform
ance
rate
. A
sset
pro
tect
ion:
The
Prin
troni
x T5
000r
ther
mal
bar
cod
e pr
inte
rs p
rovi
de a
n up
grad
e pa
th to
R
FID
thro
ugh
a co
mpr
ehen
sive
upg
rade
kit
solu
tion.
Ava
ilabl
e up
grad
es in
clud
e gl
obal
fr
eque
ncy
kits
and
RFI
D u
pgra
de k
its fo
r mul
ti-pr
otoc
ol E
PC
glob
al C
lass
0, 0
+, 1
, Phi
lips
1.19
an
d E
PC
glob
al G
en 2
.Q
uest
Sol
utio
ns, I
nc.
Act
ive
tags
and
mid
dlew
are
solu
tions
100%
Sys
tem
Sat
isfa
ctio
n G
uara
ntee
Rep
acor
p La
bel P
rodu
cts
R
epac
orp
ensu
res
100%
read
abili
ty-n
o "d
ead"
labe
ls.
Rev
a S
yste
ms
RFI
D N
etw
orki
ng E
quip
men
tE
quip
men
t rel
iabi
lity
and
up ti
me
on a
par
with
oth
er e
nter
pris
e sc
ale
redu
ndan
tly c
onfig
ured
ne
twor
king
equ
ipm
ent
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 56
1. RFID Technology Firms aligned by their position in the Value Chain (3 of 3)
RFI
D H
AR
DW
AR
E P
LAY
ERS
BY
SEC
TOR
Semiconductors
Inlays
Finished Tags
Sensors
Readers
Printers
Oth
erO
utco
me
Gua
rant
ees
RF
Cod
e, In
c.
RF
Cod
e w
orks
with
cus
tom
ers
and
partn
ers
on a
n in
divi
dual
site
suc
cess
bas
is.
RFI
D, I
nc.
G
uara
ntee
100
% re
ad ra
tes
RFI
DS
uppl
yCha
in.c
omTu
rnke
y R
FID
kits
for s
peci
fic R
FID
pr
ojec
ts s
uch
as s
lap
and
ship
co
mpl
ianc
e, d
ock
door
s, c
onve
yors
, re
ceiv
ing,
shi
ppin
g, la
bs a
nd s
ales
pr
esen
tatio
ns th
roug
h ou
r par
tner
s.
For R
FID
har
dwar
e, w
e ho
nor a
ll or
igin
al m
anuf
actu
rer w
arra
ntie
s. W
e al
so o
ffer u
pgra
ded
serv
ice
plan
s. F
or c
ompl
ianc
e-re
late
d pr
ojec
ts, o
ur p
artn
er, B
lueB
ean,
gua
rant
ees
that
the
clie
nt
will
be
com
plia
nt u
pon
proj
ect c
ompl
etio
n. F
or a
ll pr
ojec
ts, B
lueB
ean
also
gua
rant
ees
the
met
rics
agre
ed u
pon
in th
e cu
stom
er-d
efin
ed S
tate
men
t of W
ork.
RS
I ID
Tec
hnol
ogie
s
RS
I tes
ts a
nd v
alid
ates
all
tags
at m
ultip
le q
ualit
y as
sura
nce/
valid
atio
n po
ints
with
in th
e m
anuf
actu
ring
proc
ess
with
the
final
test
ing
and
valid
atio
n do
ne a
fter c
onve
rting
into
a fi
nish
ed
labe
l. Th
is e
nabl
es u
s to
ens
ure
that
eve
ry la
bel o
n ev
ery
roll
is 1
00%
goo
d, G
uara
ntee
d.
SA
MS
ys T
echn
olog
ies
Inc.
Tr
ublu
e as
sura
nce
of in
tero
pera
bilit
y w
ith in
dust
ry s
tand
ard
tags
(e.g
. Gen
2)
SA
TO A
mer
ica
S
ATO
Glo
bal W
arra
nty
Pro
gram
SA
TO w
arra
nts
that
whe
n pu
rcha
sed
from
SA
TO o
r thr
ough
an
auth
oriz
ed S
ATO
dis
tribu
tor o
r re
selle
r; th
is p
rinte
r, its
com
pone
nts,
and
acc
esso
ries
are
in g
ood
wor
king
ord
er a
nd fr
ee fr
om
defe
cts
in w
orkm
ansh
ip a
nd m
ater
ials
.S
avi T
echn
olog
yC
ompl
ete
hard
war
e an
d so
ftwar
e so
lutio
ns a
nd s
ervi
ces
We
offe
r a w
arra
nty
on o
ur h
ardw
are
prod
ucts
and
sup
port
agre
emen
ts to
reso
lve
issu
es w
ith
our s
oftw
are
prod
ucts
.S
ecur
iCod
e Li
mite
dA
pplic
atio
nsN
o gu
aran
tees
are
pro
vide
d bu
t man
y R
OI f
igur
es a
re a
vaila
ble
incl
udin
g th
ose
on o
ur w
ebsi
te.
Our
Act
ive
solu
tions
are
99%
iden
tity
accu
rate
(and
usu
ally
100
%).
Sky
eTek
, Inc
.
We
cate
r to
OE
Ms.
Sm
artC
ode
Cor
p.
Res
ults
dep
end
on s
peci
fic p
roje
cts/
offe
rings
.
SO
KY
MA
T
Targ
eted
clie
nts
RFI
D s
yste
m in
tegr
ator
s. W
e gu
aran
tee
best
pric
e / p
erfo
rman
ce ra
tio o
f RFI
D
trans
pond
ers
STM
icro
elec
troni
cs
N/A
Sym
bol T
echn
olog
ies
S
ymbo
l has
an
exce
llent
trai
ning
and
ser
vice
s pr
ogra
m.
How
ever
, eac
h cu
stom
er is
on
a ca
se-
by-c
ase
basi
s.Ta
gSen
se, I
nc.
In
crea
sed
fucn
tiona
lity,
sec
ure
RFI
D.
TAG
SY
SA
nten
nas,
Mul
ti-re
ad T
unne
ls, S
mar
t S
helv
es, S
mar
t Cab
inet
s, S
mar
t R
efrig
erat
ors
To b
e su
pplie
d...
Thin
gMag
iC, I
nc.
D
epen
dent
on
cust
omiz
ed d
eplo
ymen
ts, s
ites
and
user
requ
irem
ents
.
Tran
sCor
e
No
UP
M R
afla
tac
n/
a
Wav
etre
nd (U
K) L
tdO
pen
plat
form
mid
dlew
are
We
have
a s
tand
ard
set o
f ter
ms
and
cond
ition
s co
verin
g pe
rform
ance
gua
rant
ees
etc
whi
ch a
re
avai
labl
e up
on re
ques
tW
eber
Mar
king
Sys
tem
s, In
c.R
FID
labe
l enc
oder
-app
licat
or a
nd
prin
ter-
enco
der a
pplic
ator
, plu
s R
FID
en
codi
ng s
oftw
are
Spe
cific
gua
rant
ees
are
syst
em-d
epen
dent
.
Whe
reN
etC
ompl
ete
Rea
l-Tim
e R
FID
Sys
tem
s &
A
pplic
atio
nsW
here
Net
cus
tom
ers
typi
cally
exp
erie
nce
a ra
pid
time
to b
enef
it of
abo
ut 9
0 da
ys a
nd a
co
mpl
ete
retu
rn o
n in
vest
men
t in
9 to
12
mon
ths.
Xte
rpris
e In
corp
orat
edR
FID
App
licat
ion
Sof
twar
eTh
e va
st m
ajor
ity o
f our
eng
agem
ents
are
on
a fix
ed-b
ased
pric
ing
form
at, w
hich
we
find
resu
lts
in "o
n-tim
e, o
n-bu
dget
and
as-
prom
ised
" per
form
ance
.Ze
bra
Tech
nolo
gies
Mai
nten
ance
and
Sup
port
Ser
vice
sN
A
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 57
2. RFID technology and products by firm - Tags, Readers and Frequencies
Company Tags
Rea
ders
Prin
ters
125-
135
kHz
13.5
6 M
Hz
433
MH
z
860-
930
MH
z
2.4
GH
z
5.8
GH
z
Other FrequenciesACC Systems Inc. T R———LF HF 433 UHF 2.4 ———303 MHz, 952-954 MHz
Adaptive RFID, Inc. T R————————————UHF——————AeroScout T R——————————————— 2.4 ———
Alien Technology T R————————————UHF 2.4 ———950 MHz tags for JapanAllaura, Inc. T R———LF HF 433 UHF 2.4 5.8
Arnlea Systems Limited T R———LF HF 433 UHF——————ASK T R—————— HF ———UHF——————
Atmel Corp. T R———LF HF ————————————AVANTE International Technology, Inc. T R—————— HF 433 UHF 2.4 ———
Avery Dennison Printer Systems T———P —————————UHF——————PartnershipBlue Vector Systems———————————————————————————
BlueBean LLC T R————————————UHF——————CAEN RFID T R————————————UHF——————
Catalyst International——————P ——————————————————Checkpoint Systems, Inc T R—————— HF ———UHF——————
EM Microelectronic T R—————————————————————-Enterprise Information Systems, Inc. T R—————— HF ———UHF 2.4 5.8
iControl, Inc. T R————————— 433 ——— 2.4 ———ZigBeeIDENTEC SOLUTIONS, Inc. T R————————————Active——————
InfoChip Systems Inc. T R———LF HF ————————————INKODE International T R—————————————————————24.125 - 66 GHz
Intermec Technologies, Inc. T R————————————UHF——————International Business Machines Corporation——————P ——————————————————
iPico Identification (Pty) Ltd——————————————————UHF——————Dual Frequency, http://www.ipico.co.za/newsKSW Microtec AG T R—————— HF ———UHF——————
Lowry Computer Products T R—————— HF ———UHF——————LXE Inc.———————————————————————————
Lyngsoe Systems T R———LF HF 433 UHF——————Unique combination of 125 KHz and 433MHzMagellan Technology Pty Ltd———————————— HF ————————————
MARKEM Corporation——————P ——————————————————OMNIKEY GmbH T————————————————————————Chips and Materials
Omron RFID T R———LF HF ———UHF 2.4 ———Parco Wireless T R—————— HF ———UHF 2.4 5.8
Paxar Corp. T R—————— HF ———UHF——————PLITEK T R—————— HF ———UHF——————
Power Paper, PowerID Division T R—————————————————————865-956 MHzPrecision Dynamics Corporation T R—————— HF ————————————
Printronix, Inc.——————P ——————————————————Quest Solutions, Inc. T R———LF HF 433 UHF——————
Repacorp Label Products T R—————— HF ———UHF——————RF Code, Inc. T R————————— 433 —————————
RFID, Inc. T R———LF HF 433 —————————148 KHzRFIDSupplyChain.com T R————————————UHF——————
RSI ID Technologies T R———LF HF ———UHF 2.4 ———SAMSys Technologies Inc.———————————————————————————
SATO America——————P ——— HF ———UHF——————Savi Technology T R———LF ——— 433 —————————
SecuriCode Limited T R——————————————— 2.4 ———SkyeTek, Inc.———————————————————————————
SmartCode Corp. T R—————— HF 433 UHF 2.4 ———SOKYMAT T R———LF HF ———UHF——————
STMicroelectronics T R—————— HF ———UHF——————Symbol Technologies——————————————————UHF——————
TagSense, Inc. T R————————————UHF 2.4 ———chipless tags (HF and microwave)TAGSYS T R—————— HF ———UHF——————
ThingMagiC, Inc.———————————————————————————TransCore T R————————————UHF 2.4 ———
UPM Raflatac T R—————— HF ———UHF——————Wavetrend (UK) Ltd T R————————— 433 UHF——————
Weber Marking Systems, Inc. T R————————————UHF——————WhereNet T R——————————————— 2.4 ———
Xterprise Incorporated T R————————————UHF 2.4 ———Zebra Technologies——————P ——— HF ———UHF——————
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 58
3. RFID customization capabilities, by firm (1 of 3)
Company Custom Designed Tags Custom Designed ReadersACC Systems Inc. YES NO
Adaptive RFID, Inc. We work with converter partners to provide custom labels and tags.
N/A
AeroScout — —Alien Technology Alien works with a variety of converter partners
to deliver many different form factors of RFID tags to the marketplace, including on-pitch labels, thermally-printable labels, baggage tags, smart labels, plastic-encased tags, apparel labels, smartcards, etc. Custom designs are available through many of these
Yes.
Allaura, Inc. Potted off-set for metal and heavy duty use.
Arnlea Systems No NoASK Yes we do. They can adapt to various sizes
and form factors depending on the required Yes, also depending on application (materials and standards)
Atmel Corp. Transponder (antenna plus chip). Transponder (antenna plus chip)
AVANTE International
YES. Any shapes and sizes from 0.5-inch square or larger.
YES. Any shapes and sizes from 0.5-inch square or larger.
Avery Dennison Printer Systems
— —
Blue Vector Systems N/A N/ABlueBean LLC We provide custom design through our
CAEN RFID We provide custom UHF tags upon specifications for any "reasonable" dielectric
Yes
Catalyst International — —Checkpoint Systems,
IncIn addition to finished tags for certain markets, Checkpoint also provides inlays and engineering and source tagging services to support our converter and packaging clients.
Checkpoint understands there is no generic business case for RFID and that one tag does not fit all applications. For this reason, Checkpoint has developed an RFID application test laboratory and source tagging test laboratory. Here, the company works with its clients to understand how RFID can be used to address their business problems and how it will integrate into their business and manufacturing process. This includes new antenna designs, packaging
EM Microelectronic — —Enterprise
Information Systems, Inc.
Yes - depending on customer requirements. Custom designs typically originate from applications where protecting the tag from harsh, industrial environments.
Yes, depending where regular antenna do not provide adequate coverage or only offer intermittent performance.
iControl, Inc. — —IDENTEC Yes. Yes.
InfoChip Systems No. No.INKODE International — —
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 59
3. RFID customization capabilities, by firm (2 of 3)
Company Custom Designed Tags Custom Designed ReadersIntermec
Technologies, Inc.Yes. Intermec provides tag designs developed in-house, as well as through strategic partnerships with leading tag developers and manufacturers from around the world. Intermec’s Media division has the capability to convert flexible RFID inlays into smart media with virtually unlimited form factor, label stock and adhesive options. These capabilities allow Intermec to offer a portfolio of RFID tags and media for a variety of surfaces and materials and for use in both benign and harsh environments. Current product offerings support the EPC Global Generation 2 specification as well as the ISO 18000-6B international standard.
Intermec provides tag designs developed in house, as well as through strategic partnerships with leading tag developers and manufacturers from around the world. Intermec’s Media division has the capability to convert flexible RFID inlays into smart media with virtually unlimited form factor, label stock and adhesive options. These capabilities allow Intermec to offer a portfolio of RFID tags and media for a variety of surfaces and materials and for use in both benign and harsh environments. Current product offerings support the EPC Global Generation 2 specification as well as the ISO 18000-6B international standard.
International Business Machines
Corporation
— —
iPico Identification (Pty) Ltd
Yes, various
We offer We offer:- Flip-Chip Assembly - Design and printing of HF/UHF antennas
on foil, fabric, paper- Wafer Services - Design and printing of samples and small
volume production- Antenna printing - Printing of crimp and dielectric thicknesses
for condensers for HF/UHF-antennas
- Large volume productionLowry Computer
ProductsIf needed by customers, Lowry can provide this service. Label products are packaged in static-resistant bags to ensure the safety of the tags in transit.
No
LXE Inc. — —Lyngsoe Systems We have several designs based on the
application.We design tags for specific applications.
Magellan Technology Pty Ltd
NO YES. Application requirements analyzed and then appropriate inlay designed.
MARKEM Corporation
— —
OMNIKEY GmbH — —Omron RFID — Omron can custom design antennas that
match antenna size and performance for a specific application. (Quantity requirements apply.)
Parco Wireless Tag designs vary to include small one inch by one inch asset tags, and wristband type wearable patient tags, as well as ID badge type tags. Custom designs are available when quantities provide suitable metrics.
Custom designs for antennas are available when quantities provide suitable metrics.
Paxar Corp. Yes. We have several types of finished labels and tags and are continually developing new ones at customer request. We provide woven and fabric smart labels and tags, as well as thermal paper, adhesive backed labels, and hang tags for garments.
Yes, through partners.
PLITEK Customizable features include: Custom label face materials; Custom adhesive systems; Custom constructions; Fan-fold, roll, piece delivery format.
Through our partners with minimum orders.
KSW Microtec AG
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 60
3. RFID customization capabilities, by firm (3 of 3)
Company Custom Designed Tags Custom Designed ReadersPower Paper,
PowerID DivisionCustom design is available for specific materials or applications, pending volumes and pricing.
Custom antenna design is available for specific materials or applications, pending volumes and pricing.
Precision Dynamics Corporation
N/A N/A
Printronix, Inc. — —Quest Solutions, Inc. Capability to prototype short run custom designed
tags for customer applications.Capability to prototype short run custom designed tags for customer applications.
Repacorp Label Products
No No
Reva Systems — —RF Code, Inc. We offer our tag in a variety of application
specific packages either directly or through partners. We also do customization.
RF Code can develop application specific versions of the tag antenna.
RFID, Inc. Custom deviations of current Tag packages or new designs from ground up, private labeling with client name/logo in plastic.
Yes. What is there to describe?
RFIDSupplyChain.com
We provide custom design through our partners.
RSI ID Technologies RSI is able to customize the finished label with pre-printed information or specialty materials.
RSI does offer custom designs for antennas.
SAMSys Technologies Inc.
— —
SATO America SATO will create custom tags/labels for customers needs.
No.
Savi Technology Generally not applicable with active tags, but we can customize packaging for specific customer needs.
Generally not applicable with active tags, but we can customize packaging for specific customer needs.
SecuriCode Limited The casings can be customized as necessary, depending on quantity.
The tag antenna is available as standard embedded (up to 10metres range) or whip (up to 100metres range, special order).
SkyeTek, Inc. — —SmartCode Corp. Depending on Customer needs. Depending on Customer needs.
SOKYMAT yes. Application or custom specific regarding shape, robustness, print, read range, ISO standards, antenna design.
Yes. With scientific simulation models and methods.
STMicroelectronics — —Symbol Technologies Yes. Symbol has a team in place to provide
custom design on a case-by-case basis.All tag antennas are specially designed to suit specific purposes, i.e. to track cardboard boxes versus plastic containers.
TagSense, Inc. Custom design is available. Antennas are custom designed to meet read range requirements, form factor, and application.
TAGSYS Supply inlays, converted and encapsulated tags. N/A
ThingMagiC, Inc. TransCore Finished design only, but we do custom printing. No
UPM Raflatac In-mould tags. Yes, depending on the volume.Wavetrend (UK) Ltd We support Customer requests for non-standard
tags and enclosures.We support Customer requests for non-standard Antenna.
Weber Marking Systems, Inc.
Weber provides a wide range of tag designs to match end-user requirements.
No
WhereNet — —Xterprise Incorporated We provide industry specific tags. We provide industry specific tags.
Zebra Technologies Zebra provides a wide variety of smart label sizes and materials for RFID media and can create custom smart label offering for clients based on their label format requirements.
Zebra continues to look into broadening our custom portfolio to include such areas as custom design for tag antennas.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 61
RFID SOLUTONS Tags
Rea
ders
Prin
ters
Engi
neer
ing
Sour
cing
Man
fact
urin
g
Qua
lity
Logi
stic
s
Sale
s
Serv
ice
Lega
l/Fin
ance
Mer
chan
dizi
ng
Stor
eO
pera
tions
OtherACC Systems Inc. T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————
Adaptive RFID, Inc. T R ————————— Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc —————— StoAeroScout T R ————————— Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc ——— Mer ———
Alien Technology T R ———Eng ——— Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc ——— Mer StoAllaura, Inc. T R ———Eng Src Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc —————————
Arnlea Systems Limited T R ————————— Mfg —————————————————————ASK T R ———Eng Src Mfg ——— Log ——— Svc ——— Mer Sto
Atmel Corp. T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————AVANTE International Technology, Inc. T R —————— Src —————— Log ——— Svc ——— Mer Sto
Avery Dennison Printer Systems—————— P ——— Src Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc ——— Mer StoBlue Vector Systems———————————— Src —————— Log ——— Svc —————————Asset/Security
BlueBean LLC T R ———Eng ——— Mfg ——— Log ———————————— StoCAEN RFID T R —————— Src Mfg ——— Log Sal Svc ——— Mer Sto
Catalyst International—————— P Eng ——— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————Checkpoint Systems, Inc T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————
EM Microelectronic T R ———Eng ————————— Log ———————————————Enterprise Information Systems, Inc. T R ———Eng Src Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc —————————
iControl, Inc. T R ————————— Mfg Qua —————— Svc —————————IDENTEC SOLUTIONS, Inc. T R ———Eng —————————————————— L/F Mer ———
InfoChip Systems Inc. T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ——— Svc —————— StoINKODE International T R —————— Src Mfg ——— Log ——— Svc ——— Mer Sto
Intermec Technologies, Inc. T R ———Eng ——— Mfg —————————————————————Asset TrackingInternational Business Machines Corporation—————— P ———————————— Log ———————————— Sto
iPico Identification (Pty) Ltd——————————————— Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc —————————KSW Microtec AG T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————
Lowry Computer Products T R ———Eng ———————————————————————————LXE Inc.—————————Eng ——— Mfg —————— Sal ————————————
Lyngsoe Systems T R ————————— Mfg Qua Log ———————————————Magellan Technology Pty Ltd———————————————————————————————————————
MARKEM Corporation—————— P ———————————— Log ———————————————IT SecurityOMNIKEY GmbH—————————Eng Src Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc —————————
Omron RFID T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————— StoParco Wireless T R —————— Src Mfg ——— Log ————————— Mer ———
Paxar Corp. T R ———Eng ———————————— Sal Svc —————————PLITEK T R ———————————— Qua —————— Svc —————————
Power Paper, PowerID Division T R ——————————————— Log ———————————————Precision Dynamics Corporation T R ———Eng Src Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc —————— Sto
Printronix, Inc.—————— P —————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————Quest Solutions, Inc. T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————— Sto
Repacorp Label Products T R ———Eng Src Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc L/F ——————Reva Systems——————————————— Mfg —————————————————————RF Code, Inc. T R —————— Src —————— Log ——— Svc —————————
RFID, Inc. T R ———Eng Src Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc —————————RFIDSupplyChain.com T R —————— Src —————— Log ———————————— Sto
RSI ID Technologies T R ———Eng Src Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc ——— Mer StoSAMSys Technologies Inc.—————————Eng Src ——— Qua Log ——— Svc —————————
SATO America—————— P —————— Mfg ——— Log ————————— Mer StoSavi Technology T R ———Eng ——— Mfg Qua ——————————————————
SecuriCode Limited T R —————— Src Mfg Qua Log Sal Svc —————— StoSkyeTek, Inc.—————————Eng ——— Mfg Qua ——— Sal Svc —————————
SmartCode Corp. T R ———Eng Src Mfg ——— Log —————— L/F ——— StoSOKYMAT T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ——— Svc ——— Mer Sto
STMicroelectronics T R ———Eng ———————————————————————————Symbol Technologies—————————Eng ——— Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc —————————
TagSense, Inc. T R ———Eng Src Mfg ——— Log Sal Svc L/F Mer Sto InventoryTAGSYS T R ——————————————— Log ———————————————
ThingMagiC, Inc.—————————Eng ——— Mfg Qua Log ——— Svc —————————TransCore T R —————— Src —————— Log ————————— Mer Sto
UPM Raflatac T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————Asset MgtWavetrend (UK) Ltd T R ————————— Mfg ——— Log ———————————————
Weber Marking Systems, Inc. T R —————— Src Mfg ——— Log ——— Svc ——— Mer ———WhereNet T R —————— Src Mfg ——— Log ——— Svc —————— Sto
Xterprise Incorporated T R —————————————————————————————————Zebra Technologies—————— P ——————————————————————————————
4. RFID business application/Solutions, by firm
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 62
5. RFID firms by Industry
RFID INDUSTRIES Aero
spac
eAu
tom
otiv
eBu
ildin
g Pr
oduc
tsC
hem
ical
sC
onst
ruct
ion
CPG
(Con
sum
er P
rodu
cts)
Def
ense
Educ
atio
nFi
nanc
ial/I
nsur
ance
Food
and
Agr
icul
ture
Fore
st P
rodu
cts
and
Pape
rG
over
nmen
tH
ealth
care
Pro
vide
rsH
igh
Tech
Har
dwar
eH
ospi
talit
yIn
dust
rial E
quip
men
tLo
gist
ics
Med
ia &
Pub
lishi
ngM
edic
al D
evic
esM
inin
g &
Met
als
Offi
ce P
rodu
cts
Oil
& G
asP
harm
aceu
tical
sR
etai
lSo
ftwar
eTe
leco
mm
unic
atio
nsTe
xtile
s an
d A
ppar
elTr
ansp
orta
tion
& Tr
avel
Util
ities
OtherACC Systems Inc. RFID
Adaptive RFID, Inc. AeroScout
Alien Technology Allaura, Inc. Loyalty and n Profit
Arnlea Systems Limited ASK
Atmel Corp. Access Control, Animal IdAVANTE International Technology, Inc.
Avery Dennison Printer Systems Blue Vector Systems
BlueBean, LLC CAEN RFID Nuclear Physics
Checkpoint Systems, Inc LibraryEM Microelectronic
Enterprise Information Systems, Inc. iControl, Inc. environmental (water) mon
IDENTEC SOLUTIONS, Inc. InfoChip Systems Inc. INKODE International
Intermec Technologies, Inc. International Business Machines Corporation
iPico Identification (Pty) Ltd People & Asset Tracking, KSW Microtec AG
Lowry Computer Products LXE Inc.
Lyngsoe Systems Postal IndustryMagellan Technology Pty Ltd Gaming
MARKEM Corporation OMNIKEY GmbH
Omron RFID Parco Wireless
Paxar Corp. PLITEK
Power Paper, PowerID Division Precision Dynamics Corporation Patron Management
Printronix, Inc. Quest Solutions, Inc.
Repacorp Label Products Reva Systems RF Code, Inc.
RFID, Inc. RFIDSupplyChain.com
RSI ID Technologies SAMSys Technologies Inc.
SATO America Savi Technology
SecuriCode Limited SkyeTek Inc. Meshed Networks/ Sensor
SmartCode Corp. SOKYMAT
STMicroelectronics Symbol Technologies
TagSense, Inc. TAGSYS Library
ThingMagic, Inc. TransCore
UPM Raflatac Wavetrend (UK) Ltd
Weber Marking Systems, Inc. WhereNet
Xterprise Incorporated Zebra Technologies
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 63
6. RFID Vendors Overview--1 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—3M
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.3M
.com
/rfid
; St
. Pau
l, M
N, U
SA
HW
——
——
ACC
Sys
tem
s In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.acc
syst
emsi
nc.c
om ;
Gle
n H
ead,
NY,
US
A
HW
——
——
Accu
code
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
ccuc
ode.
com
; D
enve
r, C
O, U
SA
HW
——
——
Accu
sort
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
ccus
ort.c
om ;
Telfo
rd, P
A, U
SA
HW
SWSv
cAd
aptiv
e R
FID
, Inc
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
dapt
iver
fid.c
om ;
Whe
aton
, IL,
USA
SWSv
cAd
vanc
ed P
ositi
onin
g Sy
stem
s——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.aps
-uk.
net ;
Lon
don,
, U
K
HW
SW—
—Ae
roSc
out—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.aer
osco
ut.c
om ;
San
Mat
eo, C
A, U
SA
Adap
tive
RFI
D p
rovi
des
turn
key
RFI
D s
olut
ions
that
inte
grat
e m
iddl
ewar
e,
appl
icat
ions
, and
har
dwar
e in
to a
man
aged
RFI
D n
etw
ork.
Ada
ptiv
e R
FID
m
iddl
ewar
e em
ploy
s op
en s
tand
ards
and
a s
ervi
ce o
rient
ed a
rchi
tect
ure
to
min
imiz
e co
st a
nd a
dapt
eas
ily to
cha
ngin
g te
chno
logi
es, m
anda
tes,
and
op
erat
iona
l nee
ds. A
dapt
ive
RFI
D F
ast-T
rack
(SM
) and
RFI
D S
ucce
ss
Stra
tegy
(SM
) ser
vice
s he
lp y
ou p
rofit
ably
exp
loit
the
bene
fits
of R
FID
bey
ond
com
plia
nce.
Our
RFI
D e
ngin
eerin
g an
d sy
stem
s in
tegr
atio
n se
rvic
es d
eliv
er
turn
key
solu
tions
in e
ither
inte
rnal
ly m
anag
ed o
r out
sour
ced
conf
igur
atio
ns.
Adva
nced
Pos
ition
ing
Sys
tem
s Lt
d (A
PS) a
re s
oftw
are
deve
lopm
ent
spec
ialis
ts. O
ur te
am h
as b
een
deve
lopi
ng q
ualit
y so
ftwar
e pr
oduc
ts fo
r ove
r 10
yea
rs. O
ur s
oftw
are
is q
ualit
y co
ntro
l che
cked
to e
nsur
e its
sta
bilit
y,
cons
iste
ncy
and
relia
bilit
y. T
hrou
gh th
e in
tegr
atio
n of
adv
ance
d ra
dio
syst
ems,
qu
ality
con
trolle
d so
ftwar
e en
gine
erin
g an
d a
thor
ough
und
erst
andi
ng o
f rea
l-lif
e bu
sine
ss n
eeds
, we
are
prou
d to
pre
sent
Sm
artT
ag, a
pra
ctic
al, r
elia
ble
and
incr
edib
ly fl
exib
le s
yste
m.
Aero
Scou
t is
the
lead
ing
prov
ider
of e
nter
pris
e vi
sibi
lity
solu
tions
that
use
st
anda
rd W
i-Fi w
irele
ss n
etw
orks
to a
ccur
atel
y lo
cate
and
man
age
asse
ts a
nd
peop
le in
mul
tiple
env
ironm
ents
. The
Aer
oSco
ut s
yste
m in
clud
es in
door
and
ou
tdoo
r rea
l-tim
e as
set l
ocat
ion
(RTL
S), l
ong
rang
e Ac
tive
RFI
D, c
hoke
-poi
nt
visi
bilit
y an
d te
lem
etry
, ena
blin
g cu
stom
ers
in n
umer
ous
indu
strie
s to
driv
e re
venu
es a
nd c
ut c
osts
.
3M R
FID
Tra
ckin
g So
lutio
ns p
rovi
des
a "s
impl
e to
use
" Rad
io F
requ
ency
Id
entif
icat
ion
track
ing
syst
em th
at o
ptim
izes
loca
ting
and
proc
essi
ng p
hysi
cal
files
in a
nd o
ut o
f the
cen
tral f
ile ro
om —
and
thro
ugho
ut th
e of
fice.
Har
dwar
e D
istri
butio
n
Accu
Cod
e’s
mis
sion
is to
bec
ome
the
glob
al le
ader
in b
usin
ess
proc
ess
auto
mat
ion
thro
ugh
the
appl
icat
ion
of s
oftw
are,
mob
ile c
ompu
ting
and
auto
mat
ed d
ata
colle
ctio
n te
chno
logi
es. O
ur h
oste
d so
lutio
ns a
nd IT
in
frast
ruct
ure
will
prov
ide
visi
bilit
y of
pro
duct
, ite
ms,
ass
ets,
ord
ers,
shi
pmen
ts,
inve
ntor
y, p
eopl
e an
d pr
oces
ses
to g
loba
l org
aniz
atio
ns.
Our
vis
ion
is to
be
the
glob
al le
ader
in p
rodu
ct tr
acki
ng s
olut
ions
that
cre
ate
prod
uctiv
ity, r
educ
e ou
t-of-s
tock
s, a
nd e
nabl
e be
tter i
nven
tory
man
agem
ent i
n m
aufa
ctur
ing
and
dist
ribut
ion
appl
icat
ions
.R
FID
Ship
IT!®
Smar
tTag
Aero
Scou
t Tag
s
3M™
RFI
D T
rack
ing
Syst
em
Nor
dic
ID P
L300
0
Falc
on 5
500
Fast
Tag
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 64
6. RFID Vendors Overview--2 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
WSW
——
Agi
lity
Hea
lthca
re S
olut
ions
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
gilit
yhea
lthca
re.c
om ;
Gle
n Al
len,
VA,
USA
HW
——
——
Alie
n Te
chno
logy
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.alie
ntec
hnol
ogy.
com
; M
orga
n H
ill, C
A,
US
A
HW
SW—
—Al
laur
a, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
llaur
a.co
m ;
Taco
ma,
WA,
USA
——
——
Allu
mis
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.allu
mis
.com
; Th
ornh
ill, O
ntar
io, C
anad
a
——
Svc
Alvi
n Sy
stem
s——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
lvin
syst
ems.
com
; D
a: B
osta
nci,
Ista
nbul
, Tu
rkey
HW
SW—
—Am
tel S
ecur
ity S
yste
ms—
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.am
tel-s
ecur
ity.c
om ;
Mia
mi ,
FL,
USA
Activ
e/pa
ssiv
e R
FID
D
evic
es, I
nteg
rate
RFI
D
Con
trolle
r
We
offe
r the
mos
t com
plet
e pr
oduc
t lin
e, a
n ex
tens
ive
dist
ribut
ion
netw
ork
to
supp
ort t
he m
ost r
espo
nsiv
e cu
stom
er s
ervi
ce p
rogr
am, t
he b
est p
rice-
to-
perfo
rman
ce ra
tio a
nd th
e m
ost r
igor
ous
qual
ity c
ontro
l sys
tem
.
epcT
rack
Aler
t ™Pr
oduc
ts fo
cus:
(1) A
sset
Tag
ging
and
(2) P
eopl
e Ta
ggin
g us
ing
pass
ive,
sem
i pa
ssiv
e an
d ac
tive
tags
. Pro
duct
Sal
es: P
ay P
orta
l (TM
), Tr
uck
Trip
Tra
cker
, To
ol T
rack
er, O
rbite
r Lap
Cou
nter
(TM
), U
natte
nded
/ At
tend
ed T
ruck
Sca
le,
Con
stru
ctio
n Eq
uipm
ent A
nti T
heft,
Gat
e Ti
me,
Tic
ketin
g an
d Ti
me
and
Atte
ndan
ce.
Spec
ializ
ing
in th
e de
velo
pmen
t, in
tegr
atio
n, a
nd s
uppo
rt of
ap
plic
atio
ns to
sol
ve b
usin
ess
prob
lem
s us
ing
EPC
dat
a ge
nera
ted
from
RFI
D
tags
.U
HF/
HF
Sof
twar
e So
lutio
ns P
latfo
rm,
Sens
or-b
ased
Sm
art
Activ
e La
bel
Alvi
n Sy
stem
s pr
ovid
es in
nova
tive
and
lead
ing
softw
are
solu
tions
that
em
pow
er b
usin
esse
s an
d se
rvic
e pr
ovid
ers
to a
chie
ve c
ompe
titiv
e ad
vant
age
from
new
-gen
erat
ion
Rad
io F
requ
ency
Iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
) and
wire
less
te
chno
logi
es. W
ith it
s co
mpr
ehen
sive
mul
ti-in
dust
ry fo
cus
and
solu
tions
po
rtfol
io b
uilt
on it
s hi
ghly
eng
inee
red
RFI
D m
iddl
ewar
e pl
atfo
rms,
Alv
in
Syst
ems
deliv
ers
best
-of-b
reed
, inn
ovat
ive
and
cost
-effe
ctiv
e so
ftwar
e so
lutio
ns a
nd s
ervi
ces
cust
om ta
ilore
d to
uni
que
busi
ness
nee
ds -
and
help
bu
sine
sses
unl
eash
thei
r ful
l pot
entia
l and
real
ize
new
opp
ortu
nitie
s.
Alie
n Te
chno
logy
RFI
D
Rea
ders
Alie
n Te
chno
logy
Cor
pora
tion
is a
lead
ing
prov
ider
of R
adio
Fre
quen
cy
Iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
) pro
duct
s fo
r glo
bal c
usto
mer
s in
gov
ernm
ent,
reta
il,
man
ufac
turin
g, p
harm
aceu
tical
s, tr
ansp
orta
tion,
and
oth
er in
dust
ries.
Usi
ng it
s pa
tent
ed m
anuf
actu
ring
proc
ess,
Flu
idic
Sel
f Ass
embl
y (F
SA®
), Al
ien
man
ufac
ture
s EP
C ta
gs in
ver
y hi
gh-v
olum
es a
nd a
t low
cos
t. Th
e co
mpa
ny
prov
ides
a fa
mily
of R
FID
read
ers
for a
var
iety
of a
pplic
atio
ns in
clud
ing
supp
ly
chai
n m
anag
emen
t, lo
gist
ics,
and
ant
i-cou
nter
feiti
ng, t
o im
prov
e in
vent
ory
man
agem
ent a
nd re
duce
ope
ratin
g co
sts.
PayP
orta
l (TM
)C
usto
m S
yste
m In
tegr
atio
n an
d R
FID
app
licat
ion
laye
r sof
twar
e de
sign
, rea
der
desi
gn, a
nd A
llaur
a ra
pid
deve
lom
ent m
iddl
ewar
e so
ftwar
e.
Whi
le o
btai
ning
and
ana
lyzi
ng d
ata
on m
obile
ass
ets
and
othe
r res
ourc
es is
th
e cr
itica
l firs
t ste
p to
war
ds im
prov
ing
effic
ienc
y, th
e in
form
atio
n pr
oduc
ed b
y au
tom
atic
iden
tific
atio
n te
chno
logi
es li
ke R
FID
mus
t be
used
in c
onju
nctio
n w
ith im
prov
ed m
anag
emen
t pro
cess
es. O
ur m
anag
emen
t ser
vice
s an
d te
chno
logi
es w
ork
in c
once
rt to
ens
ure
that
the
right
reso
urce
s ar
rive
at th
e rig
ht p
lace
at t
he ri
ght t
ime
in th
e rig
ht c
ondi
tion.
Agile
Trac
™
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 65
6. RFID Vendors Overview--3 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
—Sv
cAM
T Sy
stem
s In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.am
tsys
tem
s.co
m ;
Che
sire
, CT,
USA
HW
SWSv
cAn
alyt
ica
Indi
a——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
naly
tica-
indi
a.co
m ;
Bang
alor
e, K
anat
ica,
In
dia
HW
——
——
Appl
ied
Wire
less
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.app
lied-
wire
less
.com
; C
amar
illo, C
A, U
SA
HW
——
Svc
Arge
nt T
ape
& La
bel I
nc.—
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
rgen
t-lab
el.c
om ;
Troy
, MI,
USA
HW
——
——
Arnl
ea S
yste
ms
Lim
ited—
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.arn
lea.
com
; In
veru
rie, A
berd
eens
hire
, Sc
otla
ndH
W—
——
—As
ia S
mar
t Tag
Co.
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
stag
.com
; , T
aich
ung,
Tai
wan
HW
——
——
ASK—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.ask
-rfid
.com
; SO
PHIA
-AN
TIPO
LIS,
FR
AN
CE
Smar
t Tag
and
Rea
der
Seria
l Ser
ies
Focu
s on
pas
sive
UH
F an
d H
F. A
lso
avai
labl
e ar
e cu
stom
des
igne
d an
tenn
a an
d IS
O 1
8000
-6 p
rodu
cts.
C.la
bel/t
ags
RFI
DFo
unde
d in
199
7, A
SK is
now
the
supp
lier o
f a c
ompr
ehen
sive
rang
e of
co
ntac
tless
car
ds, t
icke
ts, R
FID
tags
and
read
ers
on th
e m
arke
t. Al
l pro
duct
s co
mpl
y w
ith IS
O a
nd E
PC s
tand
ards
. ASK
add
ress
es th
e m
ass
trans
it, a
cces
s co
ntro
l, e-
gove
rnm
ent I
D, s
uppl
y ch
ain
and
logi
stic
s m
arke
ts. 5
0 m
illion
co
ntac
tless
car
ds, t
icke
ts a
nd R
FID
labe
ls a
re a
lread
y in
use
wor
ldw
ide.
ASK
’s
man
ufac
turin
g pl
ant i
s lo
cate
d at
its
Soph
ia-A
ntip
olis
hea
dqua
rters
in F
ranc
e,
with
regi
onal
offi
ces
in P
aris
, Sin
gapo
re a
nd W
estp
ort,
USA
. Mor
e th
an 5
0 m
illion
pro
duct
s ar
e al
read
y in
the
field
to d
ate.
Fini
shed
RFI
D L
abel
sAr
gent
is a
spe
cial
ized
pro
duce
r of L
abel
s an
d In
stru
ctio
nal I
nser
ts fo
r a
sele
ctiv
e gr
oup
of c
usto
mer
s w
ho a
re lo
okin
g fo
r som
ethi
ng e
xtra
in te
rms
of
Inno
vatio
n, b
acke
d by
sup
erio
r Qua
lity,
Ser
vice
, and
On-
Tim
e D
eliv
ery
at
com
petit
ive
pric
es. O
ur c
omm
itmen
t to
keep
ing
abre
ast o
f the
late
st in
labe
l te
chno
logi
es is
sho
wn
by th
e ra
nge
of R
FID
and
oth
er s
peci
alty
lam
inat
ed la
bel
appl
icat
ions
that
we
are
able
to o
ffer.
Mot
orol
a/In
dala
in
dust
rial R
FID
read
ers
& ta
gs
Brid
ging
the
gap
betw
een
the
item
s yo
u ha
ve a
nd th
e m
anag
emen
t sys
tem
s yo
u us
e to
man
age
them
. 200
RFI
D-e
nabl
ed p
roje
cts
deliv
ered
for i
nven
tory
co
ntro
l, m
anuf
actu
ring.
ARIE
SAn
alyt
ica
prov
ides
uni
que
mid
dlew
are
with
the
abilit
y to
inte
grat
e w
ith a
wid
e va
riety
of R
FID
har
dwar
e an
d te
chno
logi
es fr
om d
iffer
ent v
endo
rs. I
t is
the
first
sy
stem
that
sup
ports
hyb
rid (b
oth
Activ
e as
wel
l as
Pass
ive)
RFI
D e
quip
men
t, al
low
ing
you
to p
ut to
geth
er in
nova
tive
solu
tions
that
can
stre
amlin
e yo
ur
oper
atio
ns.
T916
ID &
R91
6ID
Lon
g R
ange
Tag
and
R
ecei
ver
Long
Ran
ge u
nlic
ense
d W
irele
ss a
udio
, vid
eo, R
FID
and
Rem
ote
cont
rol
prod
ucts
. Fro
m a
n R
FID
per
spec
tive:
Lon
g R
ange
RFI
D ta
gs a
nd re
ceiv
ers.
Eas
y eP
C, S
UR
GIC
HIP
, pr
inte
rs/e
ncod
ers,
co
nsul
ting
(in
deve
lopm
ent)
Foun
ded
in 1
988,
AM
TSys
tem
s pr
ovid
es in
nova
tive
RFI
D a
nd b
arco
de-b
ased
so
lutio
ns to
a v
arie
ty o
f ind
ustri
es w
ith a
cor
e fo
cus
on im
prov
ing
busi
ness
pr
oces
ses
thro
ugh
the
use
of a
utom
ated
iden
tific
atio
n te
chno
logi
es. W
ith 4
de
dica
ted
sale
s di
visi
ons
focu
sed
on s
ervi
cing
the
need
s of
div
erse
mar
kets
su
ch a
s H
ealth
care
& L
ife S
cien
ces,
Ret
ail &
Man
ufac
turin
g Su
pply
Cha
in,
Educ
atio
nal I
nstit
utio
ns, a
nd th
e H
ortic
ultu
ral I
ndus
try, A
MTS
yste
ms
has
the
expe
rienc
e an
d so
lutio
ns y
our c
ompa
ny o
r org
aniz
atio
n is
see
king
, all
back
ed
by a
kno
wle
dgea
ble,
ded
icat
ed te
chni
cal s
ales
, dev
elop
men
t and
sup
port
staf
f.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 66
6. RFID Vendors Overview--4 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—At
mel
Cor
p.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
tmel
.com
; Sa
n Jo
se, C
A, U
SA
HW
——
Svc
Avaa
na—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
vaan
a.co
m ;
New
Deh
li, ,
Indi
a
HW
——
——
AVAN
TE In
tern
atio
nal T
echn
olog
y,In
c.—
——
——
ww
w.a
vant
etec
h.co
m ;
Prin
ceto
n Ju
nctio
n, N
J,
US
A
HW
——
——
Aver
y D
enni
son
Prin
ter S
yste
ms—
——
——
——
—w
ww
.ris.
aver
yden
niso
n.co
m ;
Phila
delp
hia,
Pe
nnsy
slva
nia,
usa
SW—
—Av
icon
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.Avi
con.
com
; W
estb
orou
gh, M
A, U
SA
SWSv
cAv
onis
, Inc
.——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.avo
nis.
com
; H
eath
row
, FL,
USA
HW
——
——
Balo
ugh—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.b
alog
h-gr
oup.
com
; Br
ight
on, M
I, U
SA
SW—
—BE
A Sy
stem
s——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.b
ea.c
om ;
San
Jose
, CA,
USA
Hyp
er X
, iG
ate.
RF,
Infra
ID
, 125
KHz
RFI
D-
2.45
GH
z R
FID
The
Balo
gh R
FID
pro
duct
line
con
sist
s of
a w
ide
rang
e of
RFI
D ta
gs,
Tran
scei
vers
(Ant
enna
s), a
nd c
ontro
l int
erfa
ces
adap
ted
to a
larg
e nu
mbe
r of
appl
icat
ions
.R
FID
Pro
duct
Fam
ilyBE
A Sy
stem
s, In
c. is
a le
adin
g ap
plic
atio
n in
frast
ruct
ure
softw
are
com
pany
, pr
ovid
ing
the
ente
rpris
e so
ftwar
e fo
unda
tion
that
allo
ws
thou
sand
s of
co
mpa
nies
to b
enef
it fro
m s
ervi
ce-o
rient
ed a
rchi
tect
ures
. BEA
pro
vide
s th
e en
terp
rise
softw
are
foun
datio
n fo
r mor
e th
an 1
5,00
0 cu
stom
ers
arou
nd th
e w
orld
, inc
ludi
ng th
e m
ajor
ity o
f the
For
tune
Glo
bal 5
00.
epcT
rans
lato
r
Prov
ides
RFI
D s
oftw
are
and
serv
ices
(OLT
P an
d O
LAP)
for O
racl
e sy
stem
s;
syst
ems
inte
grat
ion
serv
ices
with
its
RFI
dire
ctor
mid
dlew
are
for c
omm
erci
al
and
milit
ary
DoD
app
licat
ions
.
ZON
ER
Act
ive
RFI
D
Tags
with
opt
iona
l se
nsor
s
AVAN
TE fo
cuse
s on
the
follo
win
g R
FID
tech
nolo
gis
and
solu
tions
: Act
ive
RFI
D
ZON
ER ta
g an
d R
ELAY
ER re
ader
s fo
r rea
l-tim
e pe
rson
nel a
nd a
sset
s lo
catin
g an
d vi
sibi
lity
syst
em; c
ombi
ned
activ
e an
d pa
ssiv
e R
FID
bad
ge fo
r per
sonn
el
track
ing;
pat
ente
d re
liabl
e an
d/or
hig
h te
mpe
ratu
re p
assi
ve R
FID
tags
usi
ng
sold
ered
inte
rcon
nect
ions
; RFI
D k
eyfo
b an
d sm
art c
ards
; pat
ente
d om
ni-
dire
ctio
nal a
nten
na a
rray
s an
d po
rtals
for p
assi
ve ta
gs; h
andh
eld
and
stat
iona
ry re
ader
s an
d re
late
d ha
rdw
are.
Com
fort
Tag
Bond
ers
Aver
y D
enns
ion
prin
ter s
yste
ms
prim
ary
goal
is to
pro
vide
sol
utio
ns to
cu
stom
ers
that
opt
imiz
e va
lue.
We
prov
ide
ther
mal
prin
ting,
hea
t bon
ding
, th
erm
al tr
ansf
er, a
pplic
atio
n an
d so
ftwar
e so
lutio
ns.
Avic
on's
epc
Tran
slat
or™
con
verts
lega
cy c
odes
, suc
h as
UC
C12
8 or
USD
OD
to
and
from
any
of t
he m
ultip
le re
pres
enta
tions
of e
lect
roni
c pr
oduc
t cod
es,
such
as
Cla
ss 0
/Cla
ss1
64 o
r 96
bit b
inar
y ta
g re
pres
enta
tions
.
LF re
ad-o
nly
(e55
30/T
K553
0)At
mel
® C
orpo
ratio
n (A
TML)
is a
wor
ldw
ide
lead
er in
the
desi
gn a
nd
man
ufac
ture
of m
icro
cont
rolle
rs, a
dvan
ced
logi
c, m
ixed
-sig
nal,
nonv
olat
ile
mem
ory
and
radi
o fre
quen
cy (R
F) c
ompo
nent
s. L
ever
agin
g on
e of
the
indu
stry
's b
road
est i
ntel
lect
ual p
rope
rty (I
P) te
chno
logy
por
tfolio
s, A
tmel
is a
ble
to p
rovi
de th
e el
ectro
nics
indu
stry
with
com
plet
e sy
stem
sol
utio
ns. F
ocus
ed o
n co
nsum
er, i
ndus
trial
, sec
urity
, com
mun
icat
ions
, com
putin
g an
d au
tom
otiv
e m
arke
ts, A
tmel
ICs
can
be fo
und
Ever
ywhe
re Y
ou A
re(R
). F
or R
FID
ap
plic
atio
ns, A
tmel
offe
rs a
com
plet
e lin
e of
con
tact
less
RFI
D s
emic
ondu
ctor
s (IC
s, w
afer
s, m
icro
mod
ules
and
com
plet
e tra
nspo
nder
s), o
pera
ting
at 1
25/1
34
kHz,
13.
56 M
Hz,
and
UH
F. A
pplic
atio
ns in
clud
e se
curit
y an
d ac
cess
con
trol,
man
ufac
turin
g an
d lo
gist
ics
(e.g
. sup
ply
chai
n an
d as
set m
anag
emen
t, in
vent
ory
cont
rol),
tran
spor
tatio
n an
d an
imal
inde
ntifi
catio
n.
RFI
D S
yste
ms,
Chi
ples
s R
FID
, Cap
aciti
ve
Sens
ors/
tags
AVAA
NA™
is a
tech
nolo
gy, i
nnov
atio
n an
d in
tegr
atio
n se
rvic
es c
ompa
ny
focu
sed
on th
e hi
gh g
row
th R
FID
tech
nolo
gy m
arke
t. Ba
sed
in In
dia
and
Asia
, an
d th
e U
nite
d St
ates
, we
prov
ide
com
plet
e st
anda
rds-
base
d an
d cu
stom
R
FID
sol
utio
ns to
faci
litat
e co
mpa
nies
in c
reat
ing
and
mai
ntai
ning
a
com
petit
ive
edge
.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 67
6. RFID Vendors Overview--5 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
us—
—Sv
cBe
arin
gPoi
nt In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.b
earin
gpoi
nt.c
om ;
McL
ean,
VA,
USA
HW
——
——
Bibl
ioth
eca
RFI
D L
ibra
ry S
yste
ms
AG—
——
——
—w
ww
.bib
lioth
eca-
rfid.
com
; Zu
g, ,
Switz
erla
nd
HW
SW—
—Bl
ue V
ecto
r Sys
tem
s——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.blu
evec
tor.c
om ;
Palo
Alto
, CA,
USA
HW
SWSv
cBl
ueBe
an, L
LC—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.blu
ebea
nrfid
.com
; C
arm
el, I
N, U
SA
SWSv
cBr
ooks
Sof
twar
e——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.bro
okss
oftw
are.
com
; C
helm
sfor
d, M
A,
USA
——
Svc
BT A
uto-
ID S
ervi
ces—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.a
uto-
id.b
t.com
; Lo
ndon
, Lon
don,
Uni
ted
King
dom
Broo
ks' S
ense
Dec
ide
Res
pond
real
-tim
e R
FID
ap
plic
atio
ns, A
utom
atio
n R
FID
Broo
ks S
oftw
are'
s fo
cus
is re
al-ti
me
man
ufac
turin
g so
ftwar
e. M
anuf
actu
rers
ar
e re
cogn
izin
g th
e ne
ed to
be
mor
e ef
fect
ive
in re
spon
ding
to v
olat
ility,
co
mpl
exity
and
dem
ands
from
bot
h cu
stom
ers
and
regu
lato
rs. M
anuf
actu
ring
base
d on
a fo
reca
st is
no
long
er a
dequ
ate
to m
eet b
usin
ess
obje
ctiv
es in
an
incr
easi
ngly
com
petit
ive
glob
al m
arke
t. C
ompa
nies
mus
t ope
rate
in re
al-ti
me,
dr
ivin
g ev
ents
from
the
supp
ly c
hain
dire
ctly
dow
n to
the
man
ufac
turin
g flo
or.
Stra
tegy
Con
sulti
ngBT
Aut
o-ID
Ser
vice
s is
a m
arke
t lea
der i
n co
mpl
ete,
sca
labl
e an
d af
ford
able
R
FID
Ser
vice
s. D
eliv
erin
g su
pply
cha
in im
prov
emen
ts to
the
reta
il, a
eros
pace
, au
tom
otiv
e, c
onst
ruct
ion
and
phar
mac
eutic
al in
dust
ries.
We
com
bine
the
reso
urce
s of
a la
rge
corp
orat
ion
with
the
agilit
y an
d fle
xibi
lity
of a
new
te
chno
logy
sta
rt-up
.
Con
figur
atio
n M
anag
emen
t Sys
tem
A co
mpl
ete,
eas
ily c
onfig
urab
le, p
lug
and
play
line
of p
rodu
cts
that
ena
bles
la
rge
scal
e, h
ighl
y m
anag
eabl
e R
FID
dep
loym
ents
. As
a co
mpl
ete
solu
tion,
Bl
ue V
ecto
r com
pete
s in
bot
h th
e re
ader
and
mid
dlew
are/
softw
are
cate
gorie
s --
we
don'
t bel
ieve
that
a d
isjo
inte
d ap
proa
ch is
man
agea
ble
in a
nyth
ing
larg
er
than
a tr
ial.
Blue
Bean
1·2
·3™
Sla
p an
d Sh
ip R
FID
C
ompl
ianc
e Sy
stem
Blue
Bean
is a
RFI
D c
onsu
lting
and
sys
tem
s in
tegr
atio
n co
mpa
ny th
at fo
cuse
s ex
clus
ivel
y on
RFI
D s
olut
ions
, RFI
D c
ompl
ianc
e m
anda
tes,
and
sim
plify
ing
the
impl
emen
tatio
n of
RFI
D te
chno
logy
. We
guar
ante
e ou
r clie
nts
a so
lutio
n th
at
succ
essf
ully
mee
ts th
eir b
usin
ess
need
s ba
sed
on o
ur re
al w
orld
kno
wle
dge,
ex
tens
ive
expe
rtise
, and
cer
tific
atio
ns fr
om th
e to
p R
FID
man
ufac
ture
rs.
Blue
Bean
als
o of
fers
pac
kage
d so
lutio
ns to
com
mon
RFI
D te
chno
logy
si
tuat
ions
. Our
sol
utio
ns in
clud
e Bl
ueBe
an 1
-2-3
™ (R
FID
sla
p &
ship
co
mpl
ianc
e), E
asyI
nbou
nd™
(RFI
D re
ceiv
ing)
, and
Eas
yOut
boun
d™ (R
FID
sh
ippi
ng).
Hum
an C
apita
l R
esou
rce
Serv
ices
Bear
ingp
oint
, Inc
. ope
rate
s as
a m
anag
emen
t con
sulti
ng, s
yste
ms
inte
grat
ion,
an
d m
anag
ed s
ervi
ces
com
pany
prim
arily
in N
orth
Am
eric
a. T
he c
ompa
ny
oper
ates
in fo
ur s
egm
ents
: Pub
lic S
ervi
ces;
Fin
anci
al S
ervi
ces;
C
omm
unic
atio
ns, C
onte
nt, a
nd U
tiliti
es; a
nd C
onsu
mer
, Ind
ustri
al, a
nd
Tech
nolo
gy. P
rovi
des
tradi
tiona
l man
agem
ent c
onsu
lting
, and
man
aged
and
sy
stem
s in
tegr
atio
n se
rvic
es. B
earin
gPoi
nt, f
orm
erly
kno
wn
as K
PMG
C
onsu
lting
, Inc
., w
as in
corp
orat
ed in
199
9 an
d ch
ange
d its
nam
e to
Be
arin
gPoi
nt, I
nc. i
n 20
02. T
he c
ompa
ny is
hea
dqua
rtere
d in
McL
ean,
Virg
inia
.
Bibl
ioC
hip®
Bibl
ioth
eca
is s
peci
aliz
ed in
des
igni
ng, p
rodu
cing
and
mar
ketin
g of
RFI
D
syst
ems
that
is h
ard-
and
sof
twar
e fo
r lib
rary
aut
omat
ion
and
med
ia s
ecur
ity. I
n Eu
rope
the
Bibl
ioC
hip®
Sys
tem
is th
e N
umbe
r One
RFI
D L
ibra
ry S
yste
m.
Bibl
ioth
eca
was
form
ed to
exc
lusi
vely
focu
s on
the
need
s of
libr
aria
ns.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 68
6. RFID Vendors Overview--6 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—C
AEN
RFI
D—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
aen.
it/rfi
d/ ;
Viar
eggi
o, L
U, I
taly
SW—
—C
alid
us, L
LC—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
allid
usllc
.com
; D
elm
ar, M
D, U
SA
SWSv
cC
apTe
ch V
entu
res—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.cap
tech
vent
ures
.com
; R
ichm
ond
Virg
inia
, ,
US
A
HW
SW—
—C
atal
yst I
nter
natio
nal—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
atal
ystin
tern
atio
nal.c
om ;
Milw
auke
e,
Wis
cons
in, U
.S.A
.SW
——
Cat
hexi
s In
nova
tions
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.cat
hexi
s.ca
; St
. Joh
n, N
ewfo
undl
and,
C
anad
a
HW
SW—
—C
DO
Tec
hnol
ogie
s In
c——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
dote
ch.c
om ;
Day
ton,
OH
, USA
——
Svc
Cha
inLI
nk R
esea
rch—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
lrese
arch
.com
; Bo
ston
, MA,
USA
Res
earc
h an
d Ed
ucat
iona
l Ser
vice
s
RFI
D E
ngin
e™,
IDBl
ue™
, C
athe
xisW
EB™
Cat
hexi
s In
nova
tions
Inc.
is a
glo
bal p
rovi
der o
f RFI
D te
chno
logy
, bas
ed in
At
lant
ic C
anad
a. C
athe
xis
is a
pro
vide
r of w
irele
ss, m
obile
RFI
D re
ader
s,
adva
nced
inte
grat
ion
softw
are
and
RFI
D a
pplic
atio
n m
odel
s bu
ilt o
n its
pr
oprie
tary
RFI
D E
ngin
e™ a
rchi
tect
ure.
Thi
s al
low
s sy
stem
inte
grat
ors,
VAR
s an
d IS
Vs in
the
AID
C a
nd m
obilit
y sp
ace
to ra
pidl
y so
lve
real
bus
ines
s pr
oble
ms
with
RFI
D. T
o th
is e
nd, C
athe
xis
has
leve
rage
d th
e R
FID
Eng
ine™
ar
chite
ctur
e to
dev
elop
IDBl
ue™
- a
mar
ket l
eadi
ng B
luet
ooth
® R
FID
read
er
that
com
es b
undl
ed w
ith c
uttin
g-ed
ge d
evel
opm
ent a
nd c
onne
ctiv
ity to
ols
that
m
ake
RFI
D a
dopt
ion
stra
ight
forw
ard
and
cost
-effe
ctiv
e. C
athe
xis
is a
lso
usin
g th
e R
FID
Eng
ine™
to a
ddre
ss th
e gr
owin
g ne
ed to
man
age
RFI
D d
ata
thro
ugh
the
deve
lopm
ent o
f Cat
hexi
sWEB
™ –
a h
oste
d se
rvic
e th
at a
llow
s cl
ient
s to
ra
pidl
y im
plem
ent c
ost-e
ffect
ive
syst
ems
for c
olle
ctin
g, m
anag
ing
and
acce
ssin
g th
eir R
FID
dat
a.AI
DC
CD
O is
one
of t
he la
rges
t RFI
D in
tegr
ator
s in
the
Uni
ted
Stat
es.
Tags
War
e™C
apTe
ch is
a c
onsu
lting
firm
that
man
ages
, des
igns
and
bui
lds
info
rmat
ion
syst
ems.
The
mis
sion
crit
ical
sol
utio
ns w
e de
velo
p ar
e bu
ilt o
n th
e pa
rtner
ship
s th
at w
e ha
ve e
stab
lishe
d w
ith in
dust
ry le
ader
s su
ch a
s IB
M®
, BEA
™ S
yste
ms,
O
racl
e®, M
icro
soft®
, Sun
Mic
rosy
stem
s, a
nd O
pen
Sour
ce p
rodu
cts.
The
dr
ivin
g fo
rce
behi
nd o
ur s
ucce
ss is
the
clos
e re
latio
nshi
p th
at w
e de
velo
p w
ith
our c
lient
s, g
ettin
g to
kno
w th
eir b
usin
esse
s an
d th
e vi
sion
that
gui
des
them
. Fr
om F
ortu
ne 5
00 c
ompa
nies
to re
gion
al m
arke
t lea
ders
, Cap
Tech
can
hel
p yo
ur c
ompa
ny m
anag
e te
chno
logy
and
ach
ieve
resu
lts fo
r gro
wth
.
Cat
alys
t Com
man
dSu
pply
Cha
in E
xecu
tion
prov
ider
for B
est o
f Bre
ed a
nd S
AP L
ES m
arke
ts.
A948
- U
HF
long
rang
e re
ader
(ETS
I EN
302
20
8)
CAE
N's
Mis
sion
is to
pro
vide
our
cus
tom
ers
with
read
ers
and
tags
that
mee
t EP
C/IS
O re
quire
men
ts a
nd E
TSI/F
CC
sta
ndar
ds. C
AEN
is p
leas
ed to
offe
r U
HF
RFI
D s
yste
ms
to th
e fo
llow
ing
mar
kets
: Tra
nspo
rtatio
n &
Logi
stic
s;
Secu
rity
Acce
ss a
nd C
ontro
l; Su
pply
Cha
in M
anag
emen
t.C
allid
usR
FID
The
mai
n fo
cus
of th
is c
ompa
ny is
hos
pita
l fun
ctio
nalit
y. C
allid
us s
oftw
are
is
not o
nly
intu
itive
and
cus
tom
izab
le b
ut w
ill le
ad to
num
erou
s be
nefit
s an
d a
quic
k R
OI.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 69
6. RFID Vendors Overview--7 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—C
heck
poin
t Sys
tem
s; In
c——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.che
ckpo
ints
yste
ms.
com
; Th
orof
are,
NJ,
U
SA
HW
——
——
CC
L La
bel—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.ccl
labe
l.com
; U
plan
d, C
A, U
SA
SW—
—C
OD
E Pl
us In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
ode-
plus
.com
; Fa
irfax
, Virg
inia
, US
A
HW
——
——
Cro
ss P
oint
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.cro
sspo
int.n
l ; E
mm
en, ,
Net
herla
ns
——
Svc
Cel
ergy
Net
wor
ks In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.c
eler
gy.c
om ;
San
Cle
men
te, C
alifo
rnia
, U
SA
XM
3 M
ICR
OPR
OX
S™,
prox
imity
read
ers,
m
odul
es, a
nd ta
gs
Cro
ss P
oint
is a
lead
ing
man
ufac
ture
r of w
irele
ss id
entif
icat
ion
and
dete
ctio
n eq
uipm
ent,
desi
gned
to p
rovi
de s
afet
y an
d pr
otec
tion
for b
oth
peop
le a
nd
asse
ts. C
ross
Poi
nt h
as e
xper
ienc
ed ra
pid
grow
th s
ince
its
foun
datio
n in
199
3,
than
ks to
a m
arke
t driv
en a
ppro
ach
com
bine
d w
ith th
e co
urag
e to
exp
lore
new
pa
ths
in c
uttin
g ed
ge te
chno
logy
. Thi
s ha
s re
sulte
d in
an
impr
essi
ve tr
ack
reco
rd o
f inn
ovat
ive
prod
ucts
, whi
ch e
nabl
e ou
r (in
tern
atio
nal)
cust
omer
s to
pr
otec
t and
max
imis
e th
eir b
usin
ess
oper
atio
ns in
a s
ecur
e an
d ef
ficie
nt
man
ner.
Cel
ergy
Adv
anta
geO
ur c
ore
busi
ness
offe
rings
incl
ude
desi
gn a
nd in
stal
latio
n of
stru
ctur
ed
cabl
ing,
equ
ipm
ent i
nsta
llatio
n an
d m
aint
enan
ce, v
oice
& d
ata
netw
orki
ng, w
ifi
inst
alla
tion
as w
ell a
s st
agin
g an
d de
ploy
men
t. O
ver t
he y
ears
we
have
de
velo
ped
a di
stin
ct c
ompe
tenc
y in
han
dlin
g la
rge
scal
e ro
llout
s. O
ur n
atio
nal
foot
prin
t has
allo
wed
us
to s
ervi
ce b
usin
esse
s w
ith lo
catio
ns in
the
mos
t re
mot
e co
rner
s of
the
US
or C
anad
a. O
ur p
rofe
ssio
nal s
ervi
ces
have
rang
ed
from
sm
all t
urnk
ey s
olut
ions
to la
rge
mul
tiple
site
rollo
uts
to b
uild
out
s of
larg
e ca
mpu
s ty
pe fa
cilit
ies.
RFI
D L
abel
sC
CL
Labe
l has
ser
ved
the
pack
agin
g, p
rom
otio
nal a
nd p
harm
aceu
tical
indu
stry
fo
r ove
r 50
year
s an
d is
the
lead
er in
the
Nor
th A
mer
ican
mar
ket f
or p
ress
ure-
sens
itive
sel
f-adh
esiv
e la
bels
and
pro
mot
iona
l pro
duct
s. C
CL
Labe
l des
igns
an
d pr
ints
a w
ide
rang
e of
hig
h-qu
ality
pap
er a
nd fi
lm, p
ress
ure
sens
itive
, RFI
D
and
secu
rity
labe
ls a
s w
ell a
s in
sets
, out
serts
, in-
mol
d, s
hrin
k sl
eeve
, ex
pand
ed c
onte
nt, S
pinf
orm
atio
n® ro
tatin
g la
bels
and
prin
ted
prom
otio
ns to
he
lp le
adin
g co
nsum
er p
rodu
ct m
arke
ters
in s
uppo
rt of
thei
r bra
nd s
trate
gies
.
eMan
ageI
T R
FID
Ta
g&Sh
ipC
OD
E Pl
us, I
nc.,
a le
adin
g pr
ovid
er o
f log
istic
s au
tom
atio
n so
lutio
ns, i
s ba
sed
in th
e W
ashi
ngto
n, D
.C. m
etro
polit
an a
rea.
CO
DE
Plus
spe
cial
izes
in
deve
lopi
ng s
oftw
are
and
syst
em s
olut
ions
for l
ogis
tics,
war
ehou
sing
, and
di
strib
utio
n en
terp
rises
. O
ur d
iver
se c
apab
ilitie
s in
clud
e so
ftwar
e ap
plic
atio
n de
velo
pmen
t, sy
stem
s de
sign
and
inte
grat
ion,
tech
nica
l ser
vice
s, a
nd IT
sta
ff au
gmen
tatio
n.
Perfo
rma®
RFI
D T
ags
Foun
ded
in 1
969,
Che
ckpo
int S
yste
ms,
Inc.
is th
e la
rges
t man
ufac
ture
r and
m
arke
ter o
f RF
and
RFI
D b
ased
sol
utio
ns fo
r sec
urity
, ide
ntifi
catio
n, tr
acki
ng
and
mer
chan
disi
ng a
pplic
atio
ns in
the
wor
ld. W
ith a
pre
senc
e in
mor
e th
an 8
0 co
untri
es a
nd a
net
wor
k of
mor
e th
an 2
5 se
rvic
e bu
reau
s w
orld
wid
e, th
e co
mpa
ny is
the
glob
al le
ader
for s
cala
ble,
sur
e-pe
rform
ing
UH
F an
d H
F, E
PC
and
ISO
bas
ed R
FID
con
sum
able
pro
duct
s an
d se
rvic
es. C
heck
poin
t’s n
ewes
t of
ferin
g, th
e Pe
rform
a® li
ne o
f RFI
D ti
cket
s, ta
gs, l
abel
s, in
lays
and
reus
able
s ar
e cu
stom
des
igne
d to
mee
t the
spe
cific
app
licat
ion,
per
form
ance
, pric
ing
and
fulfi
llmen
t req
uire
men
ts o
f cus
tom
ers
in a
wid
e va
riety
of i
ndus
tries
incl
udin
g co
nsum
er p
acka
ge g
oods
, ret
ail,
phar
mac
eutic
al, p
ublic
tran
sit a
nd li
brar
y.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 70
6. RFID Vendors Overview--8 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
us—
—Sv
cD
AG
Sys
tem
s——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.d
ag-s
yste
m.c
om ;
Ville
urba
nne,
Rho
ne,
Fran
ce
HW
SW—
—D
atam
ax C
orpo
ratio
n——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.dat
amax
corp
.com
; O
rland
o , F
L, U
SA
——
Svc
Del
oitte
Con
sulti
ng L
LP—
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.del
oitte
.com
; N
ew Y
ork,
NY,
USA
HW
——
——
Del
trix—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.d
eltri
x.co
.za
; Pie
term
aritz
burg
, , S
outh
Af
rica
HW
——
——
Den
so W
ave—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.den
so-w
ave.
com
; To
kyo,
, Ja
pan
HW
——
——
Det
ecta
g In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.det
ecta
g.co
m ;
Scho
mbe
rg, O
ntar
io,
Can
ada
HW
——
——
Dia
loc
ID—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.dia
loci
d.co
m ;
Har
derw
ijk, ,
Net
herla
nds
——
Svc
Dire
ct R
ecru
iters
, Inc
.——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.dire
ctre
crui
ters
.com
; C
leve
land
, Ohi
o,
US
ASW
——
DS
I Onl
ine—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.d
sion
line.
com
; O
verla
nd P
ark,
KS,
USA
dcLI
NK®
DSI
's a
utom
ated
dat
a ca
ptur
e so
ftwar
e so
lutio
n, e
xten
ds th
e re
ach
and
valu
e of
ent
erpr
ise
softw
are
appl
icat
ions
by
capt
urin
g ac
cura
te, r
eal-t
ime
data
in
prod
uctio
n, a
t the
war
ehou
se, a
nd in
the
field
.
125
Khz
Rea
d-O
nly
card
s, 1
3.56
Mhz
Rea
d-W
rite
card
s
Dia
loc
ID a
re s
peci
alis
ts in
offe
ring
tradi
tiona
l ret
ail s
olut
ions
aga
inst
thef
t, se
curit
y an
d lo
gist
ics
man
agem
ent s
yste
ms
for l
ibra
ries
and
RFI
D s
yste
ms
for
vario
us in
dust
rial a
nd re
tail
mar
kets
.D
irect
Rec
ruite
rs, I
nc. p
rovi
des
hum
an c
apita
l res
ourc
es fo
r the
RFI
D in
dust
ry.
Top
com
pani
es re
ly o
n us
to h
elp
build
sol
id te
ams
in M
anag
emen
t, Sa
les,
M
arke
ting
and
Tech
Sup
port.
IC C
ard
Mai
n bu
sine
ss in
dev
elop
men
t, m
anuf
actu
ring
and
sale
s of
aut
omat
ic d
ata
capt
ure
equi
pmen
ts, i
ndus
trial
robo
ts, p
rogr
amm
able
con
trolle
rs a
nd o
ther
ap
para
tus
and
syst
ems.
Del
ta 1
5 R
FID
, AR
F 15
0 Ac
tive
RFI
DD
etec
tag
Inc.
is a
com
pany
that
spe
cial
izes
in th
e de
sign
and
sal
es o
f eas
y to
in
stal
l ant
i sho
plift
ing
syst
ems.
A
busi
ness
cha
lleng
e ca
n sp
read
acr
oss
a do
zen
time
zone
s be
fore
you
fini
sh
your
mor
ning
cof
fee.
Or s
neak
up
quie
tly, b
lurr
ing
fam
iliar b
ound
arie
s an
d un
rave
ling
rule
s of
eng
agem
ent.
You
know
wha
t it t
akes
to re
spon
d.
Und
erst
andi
ng th
e w
hole
pic
ture
. Pro
duct
ivity
. Mar
gins
. Tec
hnol
ogy.
R
elat
ions
hips
. Eve
n ta
xes.
The
n co
mes
the
hard
par
t: fig
urin
g ou
t how
to b
lur
your
ow
n bo
unda
ries
to d
rive
valu
e.
At D
eloi
tte C
onsu
lting
LLP
, we
help
ex
ecut
ives
wor
k to
geth
er b
y of
ferin
g so
lutio
ns th
at b
ridge
the
inte
rest
s of
the
entir
e or
gani
zatio
n. O
ur in
dust
ry e
xper
ienc
e, b
road
cap
abilit
ies
and
deep
al
lianc
es m
ean
we
can
help
you
mak
e th
e m
ost o
f opp
ortu
nitie
s an
d av
oid
unne
cess
ary
risk.
Our
pro
mis
e is
sim
ple.
We
help
clie
nts
crea
te m
ore
valu
e.
Man
ufac
ture
s pa
tent
ed, l
ow c
ost,
long
-ran
ge (1
3m) r
eade
rs a
nd p
assi
ve ta
gs
for U
HF
RFI
D s
yste
ms,
for u
se w
ith tr
acki
ng a
nd lo
gist
ics.
DA
G T
riath
lon,
DA
G R
e-us
able
Dag
Sys
tem
is th
e on
ly R
FID
tech
nolo
gy w
hich
is a
ble
to d
eal w
ith ra
ce
elec
troni
c tim
ing,
acc
ess
cont
rol,
indu
stria
l ide
ntifi
catio
n, e
tc. o
n ve
ry lo
ng
dist
ance
s, u
p to
10
met
res.
It h
as d
evel
oped
unc
onst
rain
ed d
etec
tion
in th
e ba
nd 1
3.56
Mhz
allo
win
g a
long
dis
tanc
e de
tect
ion
thro
ugh
2D o
r 3D
vol
ume
with
ant
enna
s ab
le to
det
ect t
ags
betw
een
10 m
eter
s la
rge
and
with
in a
60m
3 vo
lum
e. T
his
tech
nolo
gy w
as fi
rst d
evel
oped
and
sol
d fo
r spo
rts e
vent
s, b
ut th
e co
mpa
ny h
as re
cent
ly b
ranc
hed
into
the
indu
stry
mar
ket.
I-Cla
ss ,
EX2
Dat
amax
, a s
ubsi
diar
y of
Dov
er C
orpo
ratio
n (N
YSE:
DO
V), s
peci
aliz
es in
the
desi
gn, m
anuf
actu
re, a
nd m
arke
ting
of p
rodu
cts
for b
ar c
ode
and
RFI
D
labe
ling,
incl
udin
g th
erm
al d
eman
d pr
inte
rs, l
abel
, tic
ket a
nd ta
g m
ater
ials
, and
th
erm
al tr
ansf
er ri
bbon
s.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 71
6. RFID Vendors Overview--9 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
WSW
——
Ekah
au—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.e
kaha
u.co
m ;
Sar
atog
a, C
A, U
SA
HW
——
——
EM M
icro
elec
troni
c——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.e
mm
icro
elec
troni
c.co
m ;
Col
orad
o Sp
rings
, C
O, U
SA
——
Svc
Enig
mat
ics—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.e
nigm
atic
-con
sulti
ng.c
om ;
Sunn
yval
e, C
A,
US
AH
W—
——
—En
terp
rise
Info
rmat
ion
Syst
ems,
Inc.
——
——
——
ww
w.rf
idin
actio
n.co
m ;
Pros
per,
TX, U
SA
SW—
—ep
cSol
utio
ns, I
nc.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.epc
solu
tions
.com
; G
reat
Fal
ls, V
A, U
SA
HW
SW—
—Ep
ic D
ata
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.e
picd
ata.
com
; R
ichm
ond,
Brit
ish
Col
umbi
a, C
anad
a
RFI
D S
yste
ms
Epic
Dat
a de
velo
ps a
bro
ad ra
nge
of le
an m
anuf
actu
ring
and
data
col
lect
ion
syst
ems.
We
utiliz
e a
wid
e ra
nge
of p
rodu
cts
to d
eliv
er d
iscr
ete
man
ufac
turin
g so
lutio
ns w
hich
pro
vide
our
cus
tom
ers
with
real
-tim
e vi
sibi
lity
into
thei
r m
anuf
actu
ring
oper
atio
ns w
hile
sim
plify
ing
inte
ract
ion
with
thei
r exi
stin
g en
terp
rise
appl
icat
ions
.
Com
plia
nce
1st f
or D
oD
Supp
liers
Ente
rpris
e In
form
atio
n Sy
stem
s, In
c. is
an
RFI
D a
nd A
IDC
sys
tem
s in
tegr
ator
us
ing
prov
en te
chno
logi
es to
impr
ove
supp
ly c
hain
effi
cien
cies
thro
ugho
ut
vario
us in
dust
ries
incl
udin
g m
anuf
actu
ring,
dis
tribu
tion
and
A&D
(Aer
ospa
ce
and
Def
ense
). W
ith o
ver 2
0 ye
ars
of A
IDC
exp
erie
nce,
Ent
erpr
ise
Info
rmat
ion
Syst
ems
deve
lops
and
inte
grat
es p
rove
n so
lutio
ns th
at c
ombi
ne a
pplic
atio
n ap
prop
riate
sof
twar
e an
d AI
DC
& R
FID
equ
ipm
ent t
o in
crea
se p
rodu
ctiv
ity a
nd
enha
nce
stra
tegi
c ad
vant
age.
RFI
DTa
gMan
ager
epcS
olut
ions
’ RFI
DTa
gMan
ager
pro
vide
s an
RFI
D N
etw
ork
plat
form
with
m
iddl
ewar
e fo
r dev
ice
and
appl
icat
ion
man
agem
ent –
epc
Solu
tions
’ Sen
sorO
S –
and
a w
izar
d-ba
sed
RFI
D a
pplic
atio
n fo
r im
plem
entin
g re
taile
r & D
oD
com
plia
nce
requ
irem
ents
. A s
tep
by s
tep
proc
ess
allo
ws
you
to c
onne
ct to
any
R
FID
prin
ter a
nd a
ny R
FID
read
er in
min
utes
, hel
ping
ent
erpr
ises
redu
ce th
e tim
e, c
ost,
& ef
fort
of im
plem
entin
g R
FID
pro
ject
s.
EM40
94EM
Mic
roel
ectro
nic
is a
sem
icon
duct
or m
anuf
actu
rer d
esig
ning
and
pro
duci
ng
ultra
low
pow
er, l
ow v
olta
ge, d
igita
l, an
alog
and
mix
ed-s
igna
l int
egra
ted
circ
uits
(IC
s) fo
r bat
tery
-ope
rate
d an
d fie
ld-p
ower
ed d
evic
es in
con
sum
er, a
utom
otiv
e an
d in
dust
rial a
pplic
atio
ns. R
FID
chi
ps fe
atur
e re
ad/w
rite,
ant
i-col
lisio
n,
125k
Hz,
13.
56M
Hz,
UH
F an
d 2.
45G
Hz
. Oth
er p
rodu
cts
incl
ude
mic
ropr
oces
sor s
uper
viso
rs a
nd re
set I
Cs,
mic
roco
ntro
llers
, sm
art c
ard
ICs,
m
ixed
ana
log
and
digi
tal g
ate
arra
ys, A
SIC
s, L
CD
driv
ers
and
disp
lays
and
op
toel
ectro
nic
ICs.
EM
als
o pr
oduc
es (L
CD
) mod
ules
and
offe
rs b
umpi
ng
serv
ices
. EM
Mic
roel
ectro
nic
is o
ne o
f the
ele
ctro
nic
syst
ems
com
pani
es w
ithin
th
e Sw
atch
Gro
up, d
evel
opin
g an
d pr
oduc
ing
ultra
-low
pow
er, m
inia
turiz
ed a
nd
accu
rate
mic
roel
ectro
nic
com
pone
nts
and
syst
ems.
Staf
fing
Solu
tions
with
Im
pact
Tal
ent
Con
sulti
ng o
n R
FID
phy
sica
l lay
er im
plem
enta
tion:
ant
enna
s, ta
gs, r
egul
atio
ns,
inte
rfere
rs, r
eade
rs.
Ekah
au P
ositi
onin
g En
gine
, T20
1 Ek
ahau
W
i-Fi L
ocat
ion
Tag
Ekah
au is
the
reco
gniz
ed le
ader
in lo
catio
n-en
ablin
g en
terp
rise
Wi-F
i ne
twor
ks. E
kaha
u's
mis
sion
is to
pro
vide
the
easi
est,
mos
t cos
t effe
ctiv
e an
d ac
cura
te p
ositi
onin
g so
lutio
ns fo
r loc
atin
g pe
ople
, ass
ets,
inve
ntor
y an
d ot
her
obje
cts
usin
g w
irele
ss e
nter
pris
e ne
twor
ks. T
he E
kaha
u so
lutio
n tra
cks
wire
less
lapt
ops,
PD
As, V
OIP
pho
nes,
Wi-F
i tag
s an
d ot
her 8
02.1
1 en
able
d de
vice
s.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 72
6. RFID Vendors Overview--10 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—Es
cort
Mem
ory
Syst
ems
(A D
atal
ogic
Gro
up C
o.)
ww
w.e
ms-
rfid.
com
; Sc
otts
Val
ley
, CA,
USA
HW
SW—
—G
loba
l Tra
ckin
g So
lutio
ns (G
TS)—
——
——
——
—w
ww
.glo
baltr
acki
ng.c
om ;
Dan
vers
, M
A, U
SA
SW—
—G
lobe
Ran
ger C
orpo
ratio
n——
——
——
——
——
—w
ww
.glo
bera
nger
.com
; R
icha
rdso
n, T
exas
, U
SA
HW
——
——
HE
I Inc
.——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.hei
i.com
; Vi
ctor
ia ,
MN
, USA
HW
SW—
—H
ighJ
ump
Softw
are-
a 3
M C
ompa
ny—
——
——
—
w
ww
.hig
hjum
p.co
m ;
Ede
n Pr
airie
, MN
, USA
HW
——
——
Hita
chi M
axel
l——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.m
axel
l-usa
.com
; O
saka
, , J
apan
Coi
l-On-
Chi
p™ a
nd
Min
imol
d R
FID
tags
, d
/it
dl
Hita
chi M
axel
l was
foun
ded
in 1
961
and
toda
y is
one
of t
he w
orld
’s le
adin
g pr
oduc
ers
of o
ptic
al a
nd m
agne
tic m
emor
y m
edia
.
XO
A2, M
ini M
odul
e,
card
s, la
bels
prin
ters
HEI
is a
full
serv
ice
deve
lope
r and
man
ufac
ture
r of h
igh
perfo
rman
ce
com
pone
nts,
med
ical
and
indu
stria
l pro
duct
s an
d so
ftwar
e. IS
O c
ertif
ied
and
FDA
regi
ster
ed, w
e pr
oduc
e m
icro
circ
uits
and
sub
syst
ems
for h
earin
g,
com
mun
icat
ions
, hig
h-sp
eed
data
pro
cess
ing,
and
med
ical
app
licat
ions
. Pr
oduc
ts in
clud
e C
lass
I, II
and
III m
edic
al d
evic
es, b
iote
chno
logy
, dru
g di
scov
ery,
and
in v
itro
diag
nost
ic s
yste
ms,
med
ical
sof
twar
e an
d he
alth
care
in
form
atio
n te
chno
logy
, and
iden
tific
atio
n te
chno
logi
es.
War
ehou
se A
dvan
tage
Hig
hJum
p So
ftwar
e, a
3M
com
pany
, is
a gl
obal
lead
er in
pro
vidi
ng h
ighl
y ad
apta
ble,
bes
t-of-b
reed
sup
ply
chai
n ex
ecut
ion
solu
tions
that
stre
amlin
e m
anuf
actu
ring
and
dist
ribut
ion
from
the
poin
t of s
ourc
e th
roug
h co
nsum
ptio
n.
Hig
hJum
p's
inte
grat
ed s
olut
ions
em
pow
er o
pera
tiona
l exc
elle
nce
in th
e w
areh
ouse
and
opt
imiz
e th
e flo
w o
f inv
ento
ry th
roug
hout
the
supp
ly c
hain
.
Prec
isio
n Tr
acke
r, SC
ADA
Tra
cker
, Saf
ety
Trac
ker
Glo
bal T
rack
ing
Solu
tions
, Ltd
. Is
a hi
gh te
chno
logy
com
pany
ded
icat
ed to
pr
ovid
ing
lead
ing-
edge
pro
duct
s an
d se
rvic
es to
the
loca
tion-
base
d se
rvic
es
mar
ketp
lace
. GTS
' pro
duct
s ar
e un
ique
in p
rovi
ding
inte
grat
ion
of G
PS
devi
ces,
rem
ote
Vid
eo d
evic
es, R
FID
tags
and
Bio
met
ric d
evic
es in
to a
sin
gle
cohe
sive
app
licat
ion.
Fur
ther
mor
e, G
TS' p
rodu
cts
prov
ide
the
abilit
y to
dis
play
lo
catio
n in
form
atio
n fro
m a
var
iety
of d
iver
se G
PS d
evic
es u
sing
any
ava
ilabl
e te
leco
mm
unic
atio
ns s
ervi
ce.
iMot
ion
Glo
beR
ange
r is
a le
adin
g pr
ovid
er o
f RFI
D, m
obilit
y an
d se
nsor
-bas
ed
softw
are
solu
tions
. Its
inno
vativ
e Ed
gew
are™
pla
tform
, iM
otio
n™, p
rovi
des
the
criti
cal i
nfra
stru
ctur
e la
yer f
or m
anag
ing
devi
ces,
net
wor
ks, d
ata
and
proc
esse
s at
the
edge
of t
he e
nter
pris
e, e
nabl
ing
real
-tim
e re
spon
se. i
Mot
ion
serv
es a
s th
e fo
unda
tion
for G
lobe
Ran
ger a
nd it
s pa
rtner
s to
rapi
dly
deve
lop,
de
ploy
and
man
age
edge
sol
utio
ns.
Silv
erJe
tEs
cort
Mem
ory
Syst
ems
(a D
atal
ogic
Gro
up C
ompa
ny) p
rovi
des
RFI
D
solu
tions
for e
very
link
of t
he S
uppl
y C
hain
. Sin
ce 1
985
EMS
has
been
de
velo
ping
, man
ufac
turin
g an
d su
ppor
ting
RFI
D in
stal
latio
ns in
com
pani
es
arou
nd th
e gl
obe.
Sup
ply
Cha
in c
usto
mer
s w
ith a
pplic
atio
ns s
uch
as W
IP,
Qua
lity
Con
trol,
War
ehou
sing
, and
Log
istic
s ha
ve a
ll tu
rned
to E
MS
RFI
D fo
r in
vent
ory
man
agem
ent,
track
ing,
and
dat
a co
llect
ion
syst
ems.
EM
S us
es
tech
nolo
gy th
at h
as th
e ad
ded
adva
ntag
e of
bei
ng a
ble
to re
ad th
roug
h w
ater
, oi
l, co
ncre
te, a
nd a
var
iety
of o
ther
ele
men
ts w
ithou
t lin
e of
site
requ
irem
ents
, or
wai
ting
for e
ach
indi
vidu
al ta
g to
be
read
. Tha
nks
to a
con
stan
t stre
am o
f re
al-li
fe a
pplic
atio
n su
cces
s st
orie
s, E
MS
has
emer
ged
as a
glo
bal l
eade
r in
prov
idin
g R
FID
sol
utio
ns in
this
rapi
dly
expa
ndin
g in
dust
ry.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 73
6. RFID Vendors Overview--11 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usSW
Svc
IBM
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.ib
m.c
om ;
Dal
las
, Tex
as, U
SAH
W—
——
—iC
ontro
l; In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.icon
trol-i
nc.c
om ;
San
Jose
, CA,
USA
HW
——
——
IDEN
TEC
SO
LUTI
ON
S, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.iden
tecs
olut
ions
.com
; Lu
sten
au,
, Aus
t
HW
——
——
ID T
eck
Co,
Ltd
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.idte
ck.c
om ;
Seou
l, , K
orea
HW
SW—
—Im
pinj
, Inc
.——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.impi
nj.c
om ;
Seat
tle ,
WA,
USA
HW
——
——
Info
Chi
p Sy
stem
s In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.in
foch
ip.c
om ;
Wet
aski
win
, Alb
erta
, Can
——
Svc
Info
sys
Tech
nolo
gies
Ltd
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.info
sys.
com
; Pl
ano,
TX
, USA
HW
——
——
INKO
DE
Inte
rnat
iona
l——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.inko
de.c
om ;
Vien
na, V
A, U
SA
SW—
—in
Logi
c, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.in
logi
c.co
m ;
Kenn
esaw
, GA,
USA
——
Svc
Inno
visi
on R
esea
rch
& Te
chno
logy
PLC
——
——
—
w
ww
.inno
visi
on-g
roup
.com
; W
okin
gham
, Ber
In
novi
sion
Res
earc
h &
Tech
nolo
gy p
lc is
one
of E
urop
e’s
lead
ing
Rad
io
Freq
uenc
y Id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D) I
C D
esig
n an
d so
lutio
ns p
rovi
der.
Foc
usin
g on
R
FID
and
ultr
a lo
w-c
ost I
nteg
rate
d C
ircui
t (IC
) and
ele
ctro
nic
desi
gn, t
he
com
pany
dev
elop
s in
nova
tive
tech
nolo
gies
and
tech
nolo
gy a
pplic
atio
ns fo
r co
mm
erci
alis
atio
n an
d th
en li
cens
es th
e te
chno
logy
on
to it
s cu
stom
ers
who
in
corp
orat
e it
into
thei
r ow
n pr
oduc
ts.
Inno
visi
on R
&T is
als
o at
the
hear
t of t
he
emer
ging
Nea
r Fie
ld C
omm
unic
atio
n (N
FC) m
arke
t, de
sign
ing
and
deve
lopi
ng
solu
tions
for t
he m
obile
han
dset
and
con
sum
er d
evic
e se
ctor
s.
The
com
pany
’s w
ork
with
cus
tom
ers
incl
udes
pre
-eng
inee
ring
stud
ies,
bui
ldin
g of
pr
otot
ypes
and
com
plet
e pr
oduc
t dev
elop
men
t thr
ough
to p
rodu
ctio
n, in
clud
ing
full
cust
om s
ilicon
chi
p de
sign
. In
novi
sion
R&T
pro
duct
s in
clud
e Je
wel
, the
w
orld
’s s
mal
lest
and
low
est c
ost I
TSO
app
rove
d sm
art t
icke
ting
chip
; and
“io”
th
e w
orld
’s s
mal
lest
sta
ndar
ds c
ompa
tible
nea
r fie
ld R
FID
read
er.
CR
IS (C
hipl
ess
Rem
ote
Iden
tific
atio
n Sy
stem
)O
EM S
uppl
ier o
f Chi
ples
s R
FID
sys
tem
s, A
nten
nas
(100
ft re
ad).
Tag
mat
eria
ls a
nd li
cens
ing
VAR
s. O
pera
ting
at 2
2-66
gH
z. S
yste
m u
sing
nea
r fie
ld
rada
r tec
hnol
ogy.
Pow
er is
from
250
mic
row
atts
to 4
milli
wat
ts.
RFC
onne
ct.N
ETin
Logi
c de
sign
s, b
uild
s, a
nd in
tegr
ates
RFI
D s
oftw
are
appl
icat
ions
bas
ed o
n th
e M
icro
soft.
NET
pla
tform
.
Hos
e Tr
akke
r Onl
ine
Info
Chi
p Sy
stem
s In
c. is
a p
rovi
der o
f Dat
a M
obiliz
atio
n Se
rvic
es, a
s w
ell a
s M
obile
RFI
D A
sset
Cer
tific
atio
n&co
mm
a; M
aint
enan
ce a
nd T
rack
ing
Solu
tions
.
Supp
ly C
hain
Con
sulti
ngIn
fosy
s Te
chno
logi
es L
td. p
rovi
des
cons
ultin
g an
d IT
ser
vice
s to
clie
nts
glob
ally
- as
par
tner
s to
con
cept
ualiz
e an
d re
aliz
e te
chno
logy
driv
en b
usin
ess
trans
form
atio
n in
itiat
ives
. With
ove
r 49,
000
empl
oyee
s w
orld
wid
e, w
e us
e a
low
-ris
k G
loba
l Del
iver
y M
odel
(GD
M) t
o ac
cele
rate
sch
edul
es w
ith a
hig
h de
gree
of
tim
e an
d co
st p
redi
ctab
ility.
ASK
Form
at iP
ASS
Serie
s, S
MAR
TID
TEC
K is
a d
iver
sifie
d te
chno
logy
and
man
ufac
turin
g le
ader
of s
ecur
ity
prod
ucts
.Im
pinj
Gra
ndpr
ix a
nd
vario
us R
FID
sys
tem
sLe
adin
g pr
ovid
er o
f UH
F G
en2
chip
s. A
lso
sells
UH
F re
ader
s an
d co
mpo
nent
s.
iDAC
"Rem
ote
cont
rol a
nd d
ata
acqu
isiti
on v
ia th
e In
tern
et"&
LF;iC
ontro
l pro
duce
s th
e ha
rdw
are
and
softw
are
that
pro
vide
s co
mpl
ete
mon
itorin
g an
d bi
dire
ctio
nal
com
mun
icat
ion
for c
ontro
l of r
emot
e as
sets
.i-Q
8 Ta
gID
ENTE
C S
OLU
TIO
NS,
hea
dqua
rtere
d in
Lus
tena
u, A
ustri
a w
ith a
n of
fice
in
Kelo
wna
, Can
ada,
spe
cial
izes
in In
tellig
ent A
sset
Man
agem
ent s
olut
ions
, w
hich
hel
p si
mpl
ify m
anuf
actu
ring
and
logi
stic
s pr
oces
ses
and
brin
g m
ore
trans
pare
ncy
to th
e su
pply
cha
in. I
DEN
TEC
SO
LUTI
ON
S' In
tellig
ent L
ong
Ran
ge®
(ILR
®) a
ctiv
e R
FID
sys
tem
can
iden
tify
asse
ts a
t dis
tanc
es o
f up
to
100
met
ers
(300
feet
).
Web
Sphe
re®
An IB
M R
FID
sol
utio
n is
mad
e up
of t
hree
diff
eren
t ele
men
ts: D
evic
es,
Web
Sphe
re®
RFI
D P
rem
ises
Ser
ver V
1.1,
and
a W
ebSp
here
inte
grat
ion
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 74
6. RFID Vendors Overview--12 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
WSW
Svc
Inte
gral
RFI
D—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.inte
gral
rfid.
com
; R
ichl
and
, WA,
US
A
——
Svc
Inte
llare
turn
Cor
p.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.inte
llare
turn
.com
; N
ew Y
ork,
NY,
USA
HW
——
——
Inte
rmec
Tec
hnol
ogie
s, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.inte
rmec
.com
; Ev
eret
t, W
A, U
SA
HW
——
——
Inte
rnat
iona
l Bus
ines
s M
achi
nes
Cor
pora
tion—
—
w
ww
.ibm
.com
; A
rmon
k, N
Y, U
SA
HW
——
——
iPic
o Id
entif
icat
ion
(Pt y
) Ltd
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.ip
ico.
co.z
a ; B
rum
mer
ia, P
reto
ria,
Gau
teng
, Sou
th A
frica
HW
——
——
IRC
(TT
Elec
troni
cs)—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.ir
ctt.c
om ;
Cor
pus
Chr
isti,
Tex
as, U
SAH
WSW
Svc
The
Kenn
edy
Gro
up—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.k
enne
dygr
p.co
m ;
Willo
ughy
, Ohi
o , U
SA
HW
——
——
KSW
Mic
rote
c AG
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.k
sw-m
icro
tec.
de ;
Dre
sden
, -, G
erm
any
HW
——
——
Leuz
e G
roup
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.bie
lom
atik
.de
; Neu
ffen,
, G
erm
any
HW
——
——
Low
ry C
ompu
ter P
rodu
cts—
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.lo
wry
com
pute
r.com
; Br
ight
on, M
I, U
SASm
art T
rac
Labe
lsLo
wry
is a
man
ufac
ture
r and
inte
grat
or, s
peci
aliz
ing
in w
irele
ss, R
FID
, bar
co
de a
nd d
ata
colle
ctio
n so
lutio
ns.
Pass
ive
HF
Inla
ys- P
assi
ve R
FID
HF
and
UH
F In
lays
; - S
mar
t Act
ive
Labe
ls fo
r tem
pera
ture
m
onito
ring;
- W
afer
Ser
vice
s; -
Mic
ropa
ckag
ing;
- R
FID
ant
enna
prin
ting;
- F
lip C
hip
Pack
agin
gTr
ansp
onde
r Pro
cess
ing
and
Fini
shin
gIn
lay
Con
ditio
ning
equ
ipm
ent,
mul
ti-w
eb la
min
atio
n, fi
nish
ing
syst
ems
for s
mar
t pr
oduc
ts, h
igh
spee
d re
ad/w
rite
units
for R
FID
.
Tant
alum
Nitr
ide
resi
stor
pr
oduc
ts fr
om IR
C-A
FDSp
ecia
lizes
in th
e ap
plic
atio
n of
var
ious
resi
stor
film
sys
tem
s to
sub
stra
te
mat
eria
l to
form
resi
stor
s, s
enso
rs, a
nd o
ther
resi
stiv
e ty
pe d
evic
es.
Smar
t The
rm™
, Sm
artO
ne™
1000
RFI
D
Appl
icat
ors
The
Kenn
edy
Gro
up's
Rad
io F
requ
ency
Iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
) gro
up is
a fu
ll se
rvic
e pr
ovid
er o
f tur
nkey
sol
utio
ns fo
r com
pani
es lo
okin
g to
impr
ove
supp
ly
chai
n pe
rform
ance
and
mee
t stri
ct E
lect
roni
c Pr
oduc
t Cod
e (E
PC) c
ompl
ianc
e m
anda
tes
mad
e by
larg
e re
taile
rs a
nd th
e go
vern
men
t. As
an
RFI
D in
dust
ry
lead
er, T
he K
enne
dy G
roup
offe
rs th
e m
ost c
ompr
ehen
sive
sol
utio
ns a
vaila
ble
for i
mpl
emen
tatio
n of
bot
h 90
0 M
Hz
and
13.5
6 M
Hz
frequ
ency
RFI
D s
yste
ms.
Web
Sphe
re R
FID
Pr
emis
es S
erve
rAt
IBM
, we
striv
e to
lead
in th
e in
vent
ion,
dev
elop
men
t and
man
ufac
ture
of
adva
nced
info
rmat
ion
tech
nolo
gies
, inc
ludi
ng c
ompu
ter s
yste
ms,
sof
twar
e,
stor
age
syst
ems
and
mic
roel
ectro
nics
.W
e tra
nsla
te th
ese
adva
nced
tech
nolo
gies
into
val
ue fo
r our
cus
tom
ers
thro
ugh
our p
rofe
ssio
nal s
olut
ions
, ser
vice
s an
d co
nsul
ting
busi
ness
es
wor
ldw
ide.
UH
F R
eade
rs (R
ead
Onl
y &
Rea
d W
rite)
Ultr
a H
igh
Freq
uenc
y R
eade
rs a
nd T
ags
Dua
l Fre
quen
cy R
eade
rs a
nd T
ags
Mid
dlew
are
In
tella
retu
rn e
nabl
es c
ourie
r ser
vice
s to
che
ck w
arra
nty
stat
us b
y re
adin
g R
FID
st
icke
rs a
ttach
ed to
any
item
. Thi
s pr
ovid
es in
divi
dual
s an
d or
gani
zatio
ns a
t ev
ery
poin
t of t
he p
roce
ss w
ith e
nhan
ced
bene
fits
for c
ostly
and
tim
e-co
nsum
ing
retu
rns,
war
rant
y an
d re
vers
e lo
gist
ics
func
tions
.In
term
ec R
FID
Fix
ed
Rea
ders
, In
term
ec In
c. (N
YSE:
IN) d
evel
ops,
man
ufac
ture
s an
d in
tegr
ates
tech
nolo
gies
th
at id
entif
y, tr
ack
and
man
age
supp
ly c
hain
ass
ets.
Cor
e te
chno
logi
es in
clud
e R
FID
, mob
ile c
ompu
ting
and
data
col
lect
ion
syst
ems,
bar
cod
e pr
inte
rs a
nd
labe
l med
ia. T
he c
ompa
ny’s
pro
duct
s an
d se
rvic
es a
re u
sed
by c
usto
mer
s in
m
any
indu
strie
s w
orld
wid
e to
impr
ove
the
prod
uctiv
ity, q
ualit
y an
d re
spon
sive
ness
of b
usin
ess
oper
atio
ns.
Inst
ant E
PC H
otsp
ot,
Gen
2 M
ouse
pad,
R
eson
ant C
avity
An
tenn
a
Inte
gral
RFI
D w
as fo
unde
d as
a c
onsu
ltanc
y co
mpa
ny, b
ut h
as s
ince
rele
ased
va
rious
RFI
D re
late
d pr
oduc
ts in
to th
e m
arke
t. W
ith a
larg
e co
ncen
tratio
n on
th
e sc
ienc
e be
hind
RFI
D, t
he c
ompa
ny p
rovi
des
a un
ique
com
bina
tion
of
acad
emic
kno
wle
dge,
abi
lity,
and
pra
ctic
al e
xper
ienc
e.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 75
6. RFID Vendors Overview--13 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—LX
E In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.lxe.
com
; N
orcr
oss,
Geo
rgia
, USA
HW
——
——
Lyng
soe
Syst
ems—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.lyng
soes
yste
ms.
com
; Aa
rs, N
/A, D
enm
aH
W—
——
—M
agel
lan
Tech
nolo
gy P
ty L
td—
——
——
——
——
ww
w.m
agte
ch.c
om.a
u ; A
NN
AND
ALE,
NSW
,
SWSv
cM
anha
ttan
Asso
ciat
es—
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.man
h.co
m ;
Atla
nta,
GA,
US
HW
——
——
MAR
KEM
Cor
pora
tion—
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.MAR
KEM
.com
; Ke
ene,
NH
, USA
——
Svc
MET
Labo
rato
ries,
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.m
etla
bs.c
om ;
Balti
mor
e, M
aryl
and,
USA
HW
——
——
Mic
roch
ip T
echn
olog
y In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.m
icro
chip
.com
; C
hand
ler,
AZ, U
SA
Te
stin
g an
d C
ertif
icat
ion
MC
Us
with
tran
smitt
ers,
en
code
rs w
ith
trans
mitt
ers,
Mic
ro ID
Ic
s
Mic
roch
ip T
echn
olog
y In
c. is
a le
adin
g pr
ovid
er o
f mic
roco
ntro
ller a
nd a
nalo
g se
mic
ondu
ctor
s, p
rovi
ding
low
-ris
k pr
oduc
t dev
elop
men
t, lo
wer
tota
l sys
tem
co
st a
nd fa
ster
tim
e to
mar
ket f
or th
ousa
nds
of d
iver
se c
usto
mer
app
licat
ions
w
orld
wid
e.
As a
lead
ing
prov
ider
of s
uppl
y ch
ain
plan
ning
and
exe
cutio
n so
lutio
ns,
Man
hatta
n As
soci
ates
offe
rs e
asy-
to-u
se s
olut
ions
to m
ake
your
sup
ply
chai
n w
ork
bette
r fro
m d
eman
d to
con
sum
ptio
n. W
e kn
ow th
at d
iffer
ent i
ndus
tries
ne
ed s
peci
aliz
ed s
olut
ions
and
that
eve
ry b
usin
ess
face
s un
ique
cha
lleng
es.
Man
hatta
n As
soci
ates
is d
edic
ated
to m
eetin
g th
e ne
eds
of c
ompa
nies
of a
ll si
zes
and
in k
ey in
dust
ries
arou
nd th
e gl
obe.
In
the
past
15
year
s, w
e ha
ve
help
ed m
ore
than
120
0 cl
ient
s ar
ound
the
glob
e.80
0 Se
ries
Hig
h Sp
eed
RFI
D
Enco
der/A
pplic
ator
MAR
KEM
App
lied
Inte
lligen
ce(tm
) Sol
utio
ns p
rovi
des
fully
inte
grat
ed s
olut
ions
to
hel
p co
mpa
nies
com
ply
with
RFI
D a
nd E
PC re
quire
men
ts a
nd le
vera
ge
them
in th
eir s
uppl
y ch
ain.
Sem
i-act
ive
RFI
DLy
ngso
e Sy
stem
s pr
ovid
es lo
gist
ics
solu
tions
des
igne
d to
sig
nific
antly
impr
ove
our c
usto
mer
s' q
ualit
y of
ser
vice
and
com
petit
iven
ess
in th
e gl
obal
mar
ket.
MST
RP
5050
tunn
el
read
erM
agel
lan
is a
tech
nolo
gy d
evel
oper
of a
dvan
ced
read
and
writ
e R
FID
sys
tem
s op
erat
ing
at 1
3.56
MH
z. M
agel
lan
deve
lops
the
chip
, inl
ay, t
ag, r
eade
r and
op
erat
ing
softw
are.
All
prod
ucts
com
ply
with
ISO
180
00 P
art 3
Mod
e 2.
M
agel
lan'
s te
chno
logy
is o
ptim
ised
for r
eadi
ng a
nd w
ritin
g to
hun
dred
s of
tags
th
at a
re s
tack
ed to
uchi
ng o
r ove
rlapp
ing
as fo
und
in g
amin
g, d
ocum
ent
man
agem
ent,
jew
elle
ry ta
ckin
g, b
lood
and
blo
od p
rodu
cts,
pha
rma
and
med
ical
impl
ants
app
licat
ions
and
for h
igh
spee
d co
nvey
or fe
d ap
plic
atio
ns a
s fo
und
in th
e ai
rline
, pos
tal,
and
cour
ier m
arke
ts.
MX
3-R
FID
LXE
desi
gns
and
man
ufac
ture
s in
dust
rial w
irele
ss d
ata
colle
ctio
n so
lutio
ns
incl
udin
g ru
gged
com
pute
rs, m
obile
RFI
D te
chno
logi
es, a
nd w
irele
ss
netw
orki
ng p
rodu
cts
that
impr
ove
perfo
rman
ce o
f sup
ply
chai
n ex
ecut
ion
appl
icat
ions
. LX
E al
so o
ffers
a fu
ll ra
nge
of tu
rnke
y se
rvic
es in
clud
ing
proj
ect
coor
dina
tion
and
netw
ork
desi
gn a
nd in
stal
latio
n. L
XE
is a
who
lly o
wne
d su
bsid
iary
of E
MS
Tech
nolo
gies
, Inc
.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 76
6. RFID Vendors Overview--14 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
WSW
——
Mic
roso
ft C
orpo
ratio
n——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.mic
roso
ft.co
m ;
Red
mon
d, W
ashi
ngto
n,
HW
——
Svc
Mile
s Te
chno
logi
es—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.RFI
DLa
belin
g.co
m ;
Lake
Zur
ich,
IL, U
SA
SW—
—M
ovar
o——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.mov
aro.
com
; M
cLea
n, V
A, U
SAH
W—
——
—N
atio
nal M
odul
e Sy
stem
s——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.nm
s.ch
; M
oudo
n, ,
Switz
erla
nd
HW
——
——
Nat
iona
l Sci
entif
ic C
orpo
ratio
n——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.ncs
loca
tors
.com
; Sc
otts
dale
, AZ,
USA
Got
cha!
Nat
iona
l Sci
entif
ic C
orpo
ratio
n is
a p
ublic
ly o
wne
d U
.S. f
irm in
the
busi
ness
of
mak
ing
elec
troni
c an
d el
ectro
mec
hani
cal d
evic
es s
mal
ler,
fast
er, a
nd s
afer
. O
ur fo
cus
is w
irele
ss te
chno
logi
es th
at lo
catio
n-en
able
impo
rtant
com
mer
cial
an
d no
n-co
mm
erci
al a
ctiv
ities
, suc
h as
the
safe
and
sec
ure
mov
emen
t of
peop
le a
nd g
oods
ove
r sho
rt an
d lo
ng d
ista
nces
. Nat
iona
l Sci
entif
ic h
as a
sp
ecia
l int
eres
t in
the
safe
ty o
f chi
ldre
n an
d de
velo
ps a
nd s
ells
var
ious
type
s of
de
vice
s in
tend
ed to
impr
ove
child
pro
tect
ion.
Smar
tSou
rcin
gD
evis
e Au
then
ticat
ion
Sof
twar
e fo
r the
ent
erpr
ise
Min
iatu
rized
RFI
D ta
gsR
ecog
nise
d as
a le
ader
in it
s sp
ecia
lity,
NM
S SA
man
ufac
ture
s lo
w p
rofil
e, fi
ne
pitc
h m
icro
circ
uits
in re
spon
se to
the
requ
irem
ents
of l
eadi
ng c
ompa
nies
in
indu
strie
s su
ch a
s ac
cess
con
trol,
auto
mot
ive,
inst
rum
enta
tion,
med
ical
, te
leco
mm
unic
atio
ns a
nd w
atch
mak
ing.
RFI
D In
frast
ruct
ure
; M
icro
soft
Dyn
amic
s AX
Mic
roso
ft C
orpo
ratio
n de
velo
ps, m
anuf
actu
res,
lice
nses
and
sup
ports
a ra
nge
of s
oftw
are
prod
ucts
for v
ario
us c
ompu
ting
devi
ces.
The
Com
pany
’s s
oftw
are
prod
ucts
incl
ude
scal
able
ope
ratin
g sy
stem
s fo
r ser
vers
, per
sona
l com
pute
rs
(PC
s) a
nd in
tellig
ent d
evic
es; s
erve
r app
licat
ions
for c
lient
/ser
ver
envi
ronm
ents
; inf
orm
atio
n w
orke
r pro
duct
ivity
app
licat
ions
; bus
ines
s so
lutio
ns
appl
icat
ions
; sof
twar
e de
velo
pmen
t too
ls, a
nd m
obile
and
em
bedd
ed d
evic
es.
Mic
roso
ft pr
ovid
es c
onsu
lting
ser
vice
s an
d pr
oduc
t sup
port
serv
ices
and
trai
ns
and
certi
fies
syst
em in
tegr
ator
s an
d de
velo
pers
. The
Com
pany
’s s
even
pr
oduc
t seg
men
ts a
re: C
lient
, Ser
ver a
nd T
ools
, Inf
orm
atio
n W
orke
r, M
icro
soft
Busi
ness
Sol
utio
ns, M
SN, M
obile
and
Em
bedd
ed D
evic
es a
nd H
ome
and
Ente
rtain
men
t. It
s M
obile
and
Em
bedd
ed D
evic
es s
egm
ent o
ffers
mob
ile
softw
are
plat
form
; em
bedd
ed d
evic
e so
ftwar
e pl
atfo
rms
used
in c
onsu
mer
el
ectro
nics
dev
ices
and
ent
erpr
ise
devi
ces;
a h
oste
d pr
ogra
mm
able
XM
L W
eb
serv
ice;
and
sof
twar
e pl
atfo
rm to
cre
ate
tele
mat
ics
solu
tions
for v
ehic
les.
Con
sulti
ng, R
FID
M
arke
tpla
ce -
- to
RFI
D
Vend
ors
Mile
s ha
s be
en a
utom
atin
g th
e w
areh
ouse
for o
ver 2
0 ye
ars!
Inv
ento
ry c
ontro
l us
ing
stat
e of
the
art t
echn
olog
y is
our
focu
s. M
iles
com
mitt
men
t to
RFI
D
incl
udes
the
RFI
D B
ench
mar
k LA
B ne
ar O
'Har
e fo
r dem
onst
ratio
ns o
f our
co
mpl
ianc
e la
belin
g an
d cl
osed
loop
sys
tem
s, s
emin
ars
and
train
ing.
Vis
it w
ww
.RFI
DLa
belin
g.co
m fo
r mor
e in
form
atio
n on
our
sof
twar
e, s
emin
ars
and
train
ing.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 77
6. RFID Vendors Overview--15 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usSW
——
OAT
Syst
ems,
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.o
atsy
stem
s.co
m ;
Wal
tham
, MA,
USA
——
Svc
OD
IN te
chno
logi
es—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.OD
INte
chno
logi
es.c
om ;
Dul
les,
VA,
US
HW
——
——
OM
NIK
EY G
mbH
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.o
mni
key.
com
; W
allu
f, H
esse
n, G
erm
an
R
FID
is a
ll w
e do
. O
DIN
tech
nolo
gies
is th
e le
ader
in th
e ph
ysic
s of
RFI
D
solu
tion
desi
gn, d
eplo
ymen
t and
test
ing.
OD
IN te
chno
logi
es le
vera
ges
its
team
of R
F en
gine
ers,
phy
sici
sts
and
softw
are
deve
lope
rs c
ombi
ned
with
its
labo
rato
ry fa
cilit
ies
to p
rovi
de R
FID
con
sulti
ng s
ervi
ces
to m
ajor
reta
ilers
, co
nsum
er g
oods
and
pha
rmac
eutic
al m
anuf
actu
rers
, gov
ernm
ent a
genc
ies
and
othe
r RFI
D e
arly
ado
pter
s. O
DIN
tech
nolo
gies
has
als
o de
velo
ped
a su
ite
of p
rodu
cts
to m
ake
RFI
D d
eplo
ymen
ts e
asie
r for
end
-use
rs, s
uch
as T
rifec
ta
(UH
F ta
g te
stin
g so
ftwar
e) a
nd R
FID
Dep
loym
ent M
anag
er (r
eade
r dep
loym
ent
optim
izat
ion
tool
bas
ed o
n R
F ph
ysic
s).
Car
dMan
® 5
321
Dua
l In
terfa
ceO
MN
IKEY
, one
of t
he w
orld
´s le
adin
g m
anuf
actu
rers
of i
nnov
ativ
e sm
art c
ard
read
ers,
offe
rs a
div
ersi
fied
prod
uct p
ortfo
lio a
vaila
ble
on th
e m
arke
t tod
ay.
OM
NIK
EY’
s sm
art c
ard
read
ers
for P
Cs
can
be u
tiliz
ed b
y an
y ap
plic
atio
n in
clud
ing
logi
cal a
cces
s co
ntro
l, di
gita
l sig
natu
re, W
LAN
aut
hent
icat
ion,
sec
ure
bank
ing
and
onlin
e tra
nsac
tions
, loy
alty
pro
gram
s, a
nd h
ealth
care
sol
utio
ns.
OM
NIK
EY, h
eadq
uarte
red
in W
allu
f, G
erm
any,
is p
art o
f the
ASS
A AB
LOY
Iden
tific
atio
n Te
chno
logy
Gro
up (I
TG).
OM
NIK
EY´s
US
head
quar
ters
resi
des
in Ir
vine
, Cal
iforn
ia w
ith te
chni
cal s
uppo
rt in
Atla
nta,
Geo
rgia
. The
Asi
a Pa
cific
op
erat
ion
is lo
cate
d in
Hon
g Ko
ng. D
esig
n, p
rodu
ctio
n m
anag
emen
t, an
d qu
ality
con
trol o
f OM
NIK
EY’s
pro
duct
s ar
e ca
rrie
d ou
t in
the
com
pany
’s tw
o R
&D c
ente
rs in
Lin
z, A
ustri
a an
d Er
furt,
Ger
man
y. O
MN
IKEY
read
ers
are
dist
ribut
ed w
orld
wid
e th
roug
h a
glob
al n
etw
ork
of p
artn
ers,
incl
udin
g va
lue
adde
d re
selle
rs, s
yste
m in
tegr
ator
s, a
nd O
EMs.
OAT
Fou
ndat
ion
Suite
OAT
Syst
ems,
Inc.
is th
e re
cogn
ized
RFI
D fr
amew
ork
lead
er w
ith s
oftw
are
that
em
pow
ers
busi
ness
es to
ach
ieve
com
petit
ive
adva
ntag
e fro
m ra
dio-
frequ
ency
id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D).
As p
ione
ers
in th
e de
velo
pmen
t of R
FID
tech
nolo
gy, O
AT
has
been
set
ting
the
stan
dard
in R
FID
for o
ver h
alf a
dec
ade
and
is
resp
onsi
ble
for i
ndus
try fi
rsts
that
incl
ude
the
larg
est s
cale
and
larg
est s
cope
of
depl
oym
ents
, as
wel
l as
the
mos
t inn
ovat
ive
appr
oach
es to
pro
vidi
ng
ente
rpris
e-w
ide
RFI
D s
olut
ions
. OAT
's m
ultin
atio
nal c
lient
bas
e, w
hich
incl
udes
co
mpa
nies
suc
h as
Hew
lett-
Pack
ard
and
Gille
tte, c
onsi
sts
of o
ver 5
0 cu
stom
ers
in re
tail,
CPG
, con
sum
er e
lect
roni
cs, m
anuf
actu
ring,
life
sci
ence
s,
aero
spac
e an
d de
fens
e. H
eadq
uarte
red
in W
alth
am, M
A, O
AT h
as o
ffice
s in
C
hica
go, L
ondo
n, S
an F
ranc
isco
and
Ban
galo
re a
nd is
on
the
Web
at
ww
w.o
atsy
stem
s.co
m.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 78
6. RFID Vendors Overview--16 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—O
mro
n R
FID
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.om
ronr
fid.c
om ;
Sch
aum
bur
g, IL
, USA
——
Svc
OTA
Tra
inin
g——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.o
tatra
inin
g.co
m ;
Dal
las
, Tex
as, U
SA
HW
——
——
Parc
o W
irele
ss—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.p
arco
mer
gedm
edia
.com
/ ; P
ortla
nd, M
E
——
Svc
Patn
i Com
pute
r Sys
tem
s Lt
d——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.p
atni
.com
; M
umba
i, M
ahar
asht
ra, I
NID
IH
W—
——
—Pa
xar C
orp.
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.pax
ar.c
om ;
Whi
te P
lain
s, N
Y, U
SA
HW
——
——
PLIT
EK—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.p
litek
.com
; D
es P
lain
es, I
L, U
SA
Paxa
r and
Mon
arch
(R)
bran
ds S
mar
t Lab
els
Paxa
r pro
vide
s sm
art t
ags
and
labe
ls, R
FID
prin
ter/
enco
der s
olut
ions
, bar
co
de s
yste
ms,
and
com
plet
e in
tegr
atio
n an
d m
aint
enan
ce s
ervi
ces
to in
dust
ry
lead
ers
like
Mar
ks &
Spe
ncer
, Del
Mon
te F
oods
, and
VF
Cor
pora
tion.
We
prov
ide
the
indu
stry
’s m
ost r
elia
ble
RFI
D p
rodu
cts,
incl
udin
g M
onar
ch(R
) br
and,
and
the
best
ser
vice
and
sup
port
avai
labl
e.U
HF
EP
C R
FID
Lab
els
and
Tags
Whe
ther
you
nee
d an
RFI
D la
bel s
olut
ion
to s
atis
fy a
com
plia
nce
man
date
or
to im
prov
e op
erat
iona
l effi
cien
cy, r
educ
e in
vent
ory,
or m
anag
e as
sets
bet
ter,
PLIT
EK h
as th
e hi
gh q
ualit
y R
FID
labe
l and
tag
solu
tions
you
nee
d fo
r su
cces
s. B
acke
d by
ove
r 30
year
s of
con
verti
ng e
xper
tise,
PLI
TEK
has
beco
me
an in
dust
ry le
adin
g R
FID
labe
l and
tag
supp
lier s
ervi
cing
the
reta
il,
defe
nse,
pha
rmac
eutic
al, h
ealth
care
, and
tran
spor
tatio
n in
dust
ries.
Our
pr
imar
y fo
cus
is to
pro
vide
our
cus
tom
ers
supe
rior q
ualit
y, c
ost e
ffect
ive
RFI
D
labe
l and
tag
solu
tions
…w
orld
wid
e.
Parc
o In
tegr
ated
W
eara
ble
Wris
tban
dPa
rco
Wire
less
is a
priv
atel
y he
ld c
ompa
ny h
eadq
uarte
red
in P
ortla
nd, M
aine
. Th
e co
mpa
ny h
as e
mer
ged
as th
e in
dust
ry le
ader
for t
he h
ealth
car
e an
d sa
fety
indu
stry
pro
vidi
ng th
e m
ost a
ccur
ate
and
relia
ble
track
ing
syst
ems
avai
labl
e to
hos
pita
ls. P
arco
is th
e on
ly o
ne-s
ourc
e w
irele
ss h
ealth
car
e co
mm
unic
atio
n sy
stem
s pr
ovid
er u
sing
FC
C a
ppro
ved
UW
B de
vice
s an
d op
en
plat
form
sof
twar
e de
sign
s. P
arco
's w
irele
ss h
ealth
care
com
mun
icat
ion
softw
are
suite
incl
udes
mid
dlew
are,
an
appl
icat
ion
prog
ram
mer
's in
terfa
ce, a
nd
wire
less
ope
ratin
g sy
stem
and
sof
twar
e de
velo
pmen
t kits
.
So
ftwar
e Se
rvic
es
The
Gen
2 "
Wav
e"
Glo
bal t
ag/V
750
Hea
dqua
rtere
d in
Kyo
to, J
apan
, Om
ron
is a
glo
bal l
eade
r in
the
field
of
auto
mat
ion
with
$5.
5 bi
llion
in a
nnua
l rev
enue
. Est
ablis
hed
in 1
933
and
head
ed
by P
resi
dent
and
CEO
His
ao S
akut
a, O
mro
n ha
s m
ore
than
26,
000
empl
oyee
s in
ove
r 35
coun
tries
. Om
ron
has
been
in th
e R
FID
bus
ines
s fo
r ove
r 20
year
s.
An E
PC
glob
al m
embe
r, O
mro
n of
fers
a w
ide
rang
e of
RFI
D p
rodu
cts
incl
udin
g a
“One
Day
Com
plia
nce”
pac
kage
, inl
ays,
and
read
ers
for H
F (1
3.56
MH
z),
UH
F (9
15 M
Hz)
and
oth
er fr
eque
ncie
s. F
or m
ore
info
rmat
ion,
writ
e to
in
fo@
omro
nrfid
.com
, vis
it th
e W
eb s
ite a
t ww
w.o
mro
nrfid
.com
or c
onta
ct
Om
ron’
s U
.S. o
ffice
at (
888)
303
-RFI
D (3
03-7
343)
.
E3 L
earn
ing
Syst
emTM
Vend
or-n
eutra
l ind
ustry
edu
cato
r. O
TA T
rain
ing,
LLC
. pro
vide
s th
e m
ost
Com
preh
ensi
ve, V
endo
r Neu
tral,
Han
ds-o
n R
FID
trai
ning
ava
ilabl
e to
day
to
enha
nce
the
skills
of e
very
one
from
the
novi
ce to
eve
n th
e m
ost e
xper
ienc
ed
tech
nica
l pro
fess
iona
l.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 79
6. RFID Vendors Overview--17 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—Po
wer
Pap
e r, P
ower
ID D
ivis
ion—
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.pow
er-id
.com
; Ki
ryat
Ary
eh, P
etah
Tik
va
HW
——
——
Prec
isio
n D
ynam
ics
Cor
pora
tion—
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.pdc
orp.
com
; Sa
n Fe
rnan
do, C
A, U
SA
HW
——
——
Prin
troni
x, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.prin
troni
x.co
m ;
Irvin
e, C
A, U
S
SW—
—Pr
ogre
ss S
oftw
are—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.pro
gres
s.co
m/re
altim
e ; B
edfo
rd, M
A, U
S
HW
——
——
Que
st S
olut
ions
, Inc
.——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.que
stso
lutio
n.co
m ;
Euge
ne, O
R, U
SAR
FID
Prin
ters
Que
st S
olut
ions
ext
ends
app
licat
ions
to th
e m
obile
wor
kfor
ce.
We
prov
ide
wor
ld c
lass
RFI
D, A
utoI
D, a
nd s
oftw
are
syst
ems
that
elim
inat
e er
rors
, sav
e tim
e, re
duce
inve
ntor
y, a
nd im
prov
e pr
ofits
. W
e si
mpl
ify th
e pr
oces
s w
ith th
e m
ost e
xper
ienc
ed te
am w
ho u
se b
est p
ract
ices
and
pro
ven
prob
lem
sol
ving
so
lutio
ns.
SL50
00r M
P2/S
mar
tLin
e R
FID
Prin
ter F
amily
Prin
troni
x, In
c., i
s a
glob
al le
ader
ena
blin
g pr
intin
g te
chno
logi
es fo
r the
in
dust
rial m
arke
tpla
ce a
nd d
istri
butio
n su
pply
cha
in. I
t is
a w
orld
lead
er in
line
m
atrix
man
ufac
turin
g an
d ha
s ea
rned
an
outs
tand
ing
repu
tatio
n fo
r its
hig
h-pe
rform
ance
ther
mal
and
fanf
old
lase
r prin
ters
. Exp
ert a
t ada
ptin
g ne
w
tech
nolo
gies
to c
reat
e in
nova
tive
prog
ram
s, th
e co
mpa
ny o
ffers
the
next
ge
nera
tion
of R
FID
pro
duct
s an
d se
rvic
es. P
rintro
nix’
s R
FID
Sm
art™
te
chno
logy
sol
utio
ns fa
st tr
ack
RFI
D a
dopt
ion
. Prin
troni
x's
inte
grat
ed n
etw
ork
prog
ram
s, s
uch
as O
nlin
e D
ata
Valid
atio
n (O
DV(
tm))
and
Prin
tNet
(r)
Ente
rpris
e, im
prov
e th
e pr
intin
g of
bar
cod
es, l
abel
s an
d fo
rms
whi
le v
erify
ing
accu
racy
and
offe
ring
diag
nost
ic te
chno
logy
.
Prog
ress
Apa
ma
ESP
Plat
form
Prog
ress
Sof
twar
e, h
eadq
uarte
red
in B
edfo
rd, M
assa
chus
etts
(NAS
DAQ
: PR
GS)
, pro
vide
s ev
ent p
roce
ssin
g, d
ata
man
agem
ent,
acce
ss a
nd
sync
hron
izat
ion
prod
ucts
- al
l of w
hich
focu
s on
pro
vidi
ng th
e lo
w-la
tenc
y in
frast
ruct
ure
need
ed to
sup
port
the
requ
irem
ents
of t
he re
al-ti
me
ente
rpris
e.
Pow
erID
Pow
erID
is a
div
isio
n of
Pow
er P
aper
Ltd
., a
lead
ing
prov
ider
of m
icro
-pow
er
sour
ce te
chno
logy
and
dev
ices
that
are
bas
ed o
n its
pat
ente
d, u
ltra-
thin
and
fle
xibl
e, e
nviro
nmen
t frie
ndly
ene
rgy
cells
. P
ower
ID d
evel
ops
high
pe
rform
ance
RFI
D la
bel s
yste
ms
base
d on
a n
ew g
ener
atio
n of
labe
l tra
nspo
nder
s: b
atte
ry-p
ower
ed la
bels
. The
inco
rpor
atio
n of
the
Pow
er P
aper
ba
ttery
into
a th
in a
nd fl
exib
le, p
rinta
ble
RFI
D la
bel e
nabl
es u
npre
cede
nted
vi
sibi
lity,
relia
bilit
y an
d su
perio
r per
form
ance
for s
uppl
y ch
ain
man
agem
ent,
fixed
ass
et tr
acki
ng a
nd m
anuf
actu
ring
envi
ronm
ents
, am
ong
othe
r ap
plic
atio
ns, e
ven
in to
ugh
RF
envi
ronm
ents
that
incl
ude
liqui
ds, m
etal
s an
d fo
ils.
Smar
t Ban
d® R
FID
W
ristb
and
Solu
tions
(H
ealth
care
)
With
50
year
s of
exp
erie
nce,
PD
C is
the
glob
al le
ader
and
pac
eset
ter i
n th
e de
velo
pmen
t of a
utom
atic
iden
tific
atio
n w
ristb
and
syst
ems
for h
ealth
care
, pa
tron
man
agem
ent,
and
law
enf
orce
men
t. T
he c
ompa
ny in
trodu
ced
the
first
pa
tient
Bar
Cod
e ID
Wris
tban
d Sy
stem
in 1
984,
Sm
art B
and®
Rad
io
Freq
uenc
y Id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D) W
ristb
and
Syst
em in
200
0, A
geBa
nd®
El
ectro
nic
Age/
ID V
erifi
catio
n Sy
stem
in 2
004,
and
Sm
art K
iosk
™ C
ashl
ess
POS
RFI
D S
yste
m in
200
5. P
DC
is c
omm
itted
to 1
00%
qua
lity
in s
ervi
ce,
desi
gn, a
nd m
anuf
actu
ring.
ISO
-900
1: 2
000
and
ISO
-134
85: 2
003
certi
fied.
.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 80
6. RFID Vendors Overview--18 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usSW
——
Rad
io B
eaco
n In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.radi
obea
con.
com
; To
ront
o, O
ntar
io, C
a
SW—
—R
afC
ore
Syst
ems—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rafc
ore.
com
; Su
nnyv
ale,
CA,
USA
HW
——
——
Rep
acor
p La
bel P
rodu
cts—
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.re
paco
rp.c
om ;
Tipp
City
, Ohi
o, U
nite
d S
HW
SW—
—R
eva
Syst
ems—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.reva
syst
ems.
com
; C
helm
sfor
d, M
A, U
S
HW
——
——
RF
Cod
e, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rfco
de.c
om ;
Mes
a, A
Z, U
SA
——
Svc
RFI
D4U
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rfid
4u.c
om ;
, CN
, USA
Educ
atio
nal S
ervi
ces
Tag
Acqu
isiti
on
Proc
esso
r (TA
P)R
eva
Syst
ems
deve
lops
net
wor
k-in
tellig
ent p
rodu
cts
for t
he e
mer
ging
radi
o fre
quen
cy id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D) m
arke
t. El
imin
atin
g th
e pr
oprie
tary
des
ign
and
scal
abilit
y pr
oble
ms
of fi
rst-g
ener
atio
n R
FID
sol
utio
ns, R
eva’
s Ta
g Ac
quis
ition
N
etw
ork
(TAN
) arc
hite
ctur
e an
d Ta
g Ac
quis
ition
Pro
cess
or (T
AP) d
evic
es u
se
prov
en n
etw
orki
ng c
once
pts
to e
nabl
e sc
alab
le, r
epea
tabl
e, a
nd re
liabl
e en
terp
rise-
wid
e R
FID
read
er d
eplo
ymen
ts.
Man
tisR
F C
ode
is a
lead
ing
deve
lope
r of R
FID
ass
et tr
acki
ng s
olut
ions
and
ena
blin
g te
chno
logi
es.
Toge
ther
with
our
par
tner
s, w
e m
ake
ente
rpris
e as
set v
isib
ility
a re
ality
and
del
iver
a re
mar
kabl
y fa
st R
OI t
hrou
gh th
e in
tegr
atio
n of
AID
C
(Aut
omat
ic Id
entif
icat
ion
and
Dat
a C
olle
ctio
n) d
evic
es a
nd w
irele
ss n
etw
orks
. Si
nce
1997
, we
have
des
igne
d hi
gh-p
erfo
rman
ce, l
ow c
ost s
olut
ions
that
ac
cura
tely
man
age
and
track
phy
sica
l ass
ets,
info
rmat
ion
and
pers
onne
l. R
F C
ode
offe
rs p
aten
ted
radi
o fre
quen
cy te
chno
logi
es, s
cala
ble
RFI
D s
oftw
are,
po
wer
ful d
evel
opm
ent t
ools
and
dom
ain
expe
rtise
. Our
TAV
IS™
sof
twar
e su
ite
is a
com
preh
ensi
ve m
anag
emen
t pla
tform
for a
sset
dat
a co
llect
ion
and
dist
ribut
ion
supp
ortin
g es
tabl
ishe
d, s
tand
ards
-bas
ed R
FID
, sen
sor d
evic
es a
nd
netw
orks
. O
ur M
antis
™ a
ctiv
e R
FID
tags
and
read
ers
inco
rpor
ate
adva
nced
te
chno
logi
es w
hich
pro
vide
sta
te-o
f-the
-art
func
tiona
lity
at th
e lo
wes
t cos
t.
RAI
S M
anag
erR
afC
ore
Syst
ems
prod
uct s
uite
pro
vide
s yo
u po
wer
ful r
eal-t
ime
RFI
D A
naly
tics
and
Inte
grat
ion
capa
bilit
ies
to e
xtra
ct th
e m
ost v
alua
ble
info
rmat
ion
from
RFI
D
data
and
brin
g re
al-ti
me
visi
bilit
y to
you
r Ent
erpr
ise
Info
rmat
ion
Sys
tem
s.
RFI
D E
nabl
ed S
mar
t La
bels
and
Tag
sFo
unde
d in
197
4, R
epac
orp
Labe
l Pro
duct
s ha
s gr
own
to b
ecom
e on
e of
the
natio
n's
larg
est l
abel
-con
verti
ng a
nd s
peci
alty
prin
ting
com
pani
es. R
epac
orp
now
offe
rs h
igh-
volu
me
RFI
D in
lay
inse
rtion
into
labe
l and
tag
stoc
k. O
ur la
bel
and
tag
prod
ucts
are
com
plia
nt w
ith E
PC a
nd IS
O s
tand
ards
and
our
m
anuf
actu
ring
proc
ess
is c
hip-
neut
ral a
nd c
ompa
tible
with
any
sta
ndar
d in
lay
avai
labl
e to
day.
RAD
IO B
EAC
ON
WM
SR
adio
Bea
con
is a
dev
elop
er o
f war
ehou
se m
anag
emen
t sof
twar
e th
at a
dapt
s w
ith th
e gr
owin
g bu
sine
ss n
eeds
of t
hird
par
ty lo
gist
ics
prov
ider
s,
man
ufac
ture
rs a
nd d
istri
buto
rs. W
orki
ng w
ith in
dust
ry-le
adin
g ha
rdw
are
prov
ider
s, R
adio
Bea
con’
s w
areh
ouse
man
agem
ent s
oftw
are
inte
grat
es
seam
less
ly w
ith b
arco
de, R
FID
and
mat
eria
l han
dlin
g te
chno
logy
. The
RAD
IO
BEAC
ON
WM
S is
dis
tribu
ted
loca
lly th
roug
h gl
obal
par
tner
s.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 81
6. RFID Vendors Overview--19 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
us—
—Sv
cR
FID
Car
eers
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.R
FID
care
ers.
com
; W
inst
ed, C
T, U
SA
HW
——
——
RFI
D, I
nc.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rfid
inc.
com
; Au
rora
, CO
, USA
HW
SW—
—R
FID
Ltd
. ——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.rf
id-lt
d.co
m ;
Den
ver,
CO
, USA
——
Svc
RFI
D R
ecru
iters
, LLC
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rfid
recr
uite
rs.c
om ;
Addi
son,
TX
, U.S
.A.
——
Svc
RFI
D R
evol
utio
n, L
LC—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.R
FID
Rev
olut
ion.
com
; Si
lver
Spr
ing,
MD
HW
——
——
RFI
D S
ourc
es C
orp—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rfid
sour
ces.
com
; Ta
ntzu
, Tai
chun
g, T
aiw
HW
——
Svc
RFI
DSu
pply
Cha
in.c
om—
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.rfid
supp
lych
ain.
com
; M
isha
wak
a, IN
, USPV
C &
PET
G S
mar
t C
ards
, The
rmo
Rew
rite
RFI
D c
ard,
tag,
and
tran
spon
der
RFI
D R
eade
rsR
FID
Sup
plyC
hain
.com
, an
onlin
e R
FID
sto
re o
fferin
g do
-it-y
ours
elf k
its a
nd
solu
tions
to c
omm
on R
FID
app
licat
ions
, is
the
“One
-Sto
p Sh
op” f
or a
ll of
you
r R
FID
tech
nolo
gy n
eeds
. RFI
DSu
pply
Cha
in.c
om is
a le
ader
in p
rovi
ding
RFI
D
hard
war
e, s
oftw
are,
ser
vice
s an
d so
lutio
ns. W
e ha
ve p
artn
ered
with
the
top
RFI
D m
anuf
actu
rers
, suc
h as
Alie
n, In
term
ec, S
ymbo
l, O
mro
n, P
rintro
nix
and
Zebr
a, to
pro
vide
the
best
and
late
st R
FID
tags
, rea
ders
, ant
enna
s, s
mar
t la
bels
, prin
ters
, por
tals
, and
sol
utio
ns.
R
FID
Rec
ruite
rs is
100
% fo
cuse
d on
RFI
D re
crui
ting.
RFI
D R
ecru
iters
find
s an
d re
crui
ts th
e be
st p
eopl
e fo
r com
pani
es e
ngin
eerin
g, m
anuf
actu
ring,
m
arke
ting,
sel
ling,
impl
emen
ting,
sup
porti
ng, a
nd u
tiliz
ing
RFI
D te
chno
logi
es,
prod
ucts
, app
licat
ions
, and
ser
vice
s.
R
FID
Rev
olut
ion
LLC
pro
vide
s R
FID
(rad
io fr
eque
ncy
iden
tific
atio
n)
mar
ketp
lace
con
sulti
ng s
ervi
ces
to v
endo
rs a
nd e
nd-u
sers
. W
e pr
ovid
e a
mar
ket-b
ased
per
spec
tive
on h
ow to
clo
se th
e ga
p be
twee
n a
prom
isin
g te
chno
logy
and
suc
cess
ful c
omm
erci
al s
olut
ion.
R3
125
KHz
- Tag
s an
d R
eade
rs; 1
48 K
Hz
- Tag
s an
d R
eade
rs; 1
3.56
MH
z - T
ags
and
Rea
ders
; 433
MH
z - A
ctiv
e Ta
gs a
nd R
eade
rs to
incl
ude
GPS
/Cel
lula
r m
odem
s.Pr
imar
y m
arke
ts in
clud
e 1.
Pro
cess
con
trols
(fac
tory
floo
r) w
ith ty
pica
l Rea
der o
utpu
ts o
f Pro
fibus
, D
evic
eNet
, TC
PIP,
Eth
erne
t IP,
Mod
bus,
Dis
cret
e I/O
, Ser
ials
.2.
OEM
/Cus
tom
Har
dwar
e D
esig
ns -
Indu
stria
l ide
ntifi
catio
n m
arke
t, cu
stom
er
loya
lty p
rogr
ams,
clie
nt tr
acki
ng a
nd d
ata,
ver
ifica
tion/
auth
entic
atio
n, e
tc.
3. V
ehic
le, p
erso
nnel
, ass
et ID
& tr
acki
ng.
Blac
k Bo
x R
FID
Foun
ded
out o
f the
gro
win
g de
man
d fo
r hig
h qu
ality
, cos
t effe
ctiv
e R
FID
“m
anda
ted
com
plia
nce”
sup
port,
RFI
D, L
TD.(O
TCBB
:RFD
L) fo
rmed
an
orga
niza
tion
that
inte
grat
es o
ver 5
0 ye
ars
of te
chno
logy
and
sup
ply
chai
n ex
perie
nce,
with
an
emph
asis
on
unde
rsta
ndin
g th
e bu
sine
ss o
bjec
tives
and
st
rate
gic
dire
ctio
n of
sm
all-t
o-m
ediu
m s
ized
DoD
and
Wal
-Mar
t sup
plie
rs.
RFI
D te
chno
logi
es h
ave
been
pro
ven
in c
orpo
rate
and
gov
ernm
ent s
ettin
gs fo
r de
cade
s; h
owev
er, t
he o
nce
dorm
ant i
ndus
try is
boo
min
g w
ith n
ew
deve
lopm
ents
and
mor
e im
porta
ntly
bet
ter w
ays
to a
pply
and
ext
ract
val
ue
from
the
tech
nolo
gy.
RFI
DSh
ipIT
!®W
e pr
ovid
e In
tellig
ent S
taffi
ng S
olut
ions
for t
he G
loba
l RFI
D /
Wire
less
In
dust
ry. O
ur c
lient
s in
clud
e co
mpa
nies
des
igni
ng, m
anuf
actu
ring,
bui
ldin
g,
and
sellin
g cu
tting
edg
e AI
DC
and
wire
less
com
mun
icat
ions
infra
stru
ctur
e in
tegr
atio
n te
chno
logy
. The
se c
ompa
nies
focu
s on
com
pone
nts
and
syst
ems
that
pro
vide
- ei
ther
as
man
ufac
ture
d pr
oduc
ts o
r ser
vice
s - t
he d
eliv
ery
of
voic
e, d
ata,
aud
io, o
r vid
eo s
igna
ls.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 82
6. RFID Vendors Overview--20 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—R
ight
Tag
Inc—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.ri
ghtta
g.co
m ;
Sant
a C
lara
, C
A, U
SA
HW
——
Svc
RSI
ID T
echn
olog
ies—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.rs
iidte
ch.c
om ;
Chu
la V
ista
, CA,
USA
——
Svc
Rus
h Tr
acki
ng S
yste
ms—
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.Rus
hTra
ckin
gSys
tem
s.co
m ;
Lene
xa, K
S
HW
——
——
SAM
Sys
Tech
nolo
gies
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
amsy
s.co
m ;
Dur
ham
, NC
, USA
SWSv
cS
AP
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ap.c
om ;
Palo
Alto
, Cal
iforn
ia, U
SA
HW
——
——
SATO
Am
eric
a——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
atoa
mer
ica.
com
; C
harlo
tte, N
C, U
SA
myS
AP B
usin
ess
Suite
SAP
is a
lead
ing
prov
ider
of b
usin
ess
softw
are
solu
tions
*. To
day,
mor
e th
an
32,0
00 c
usto
mer
s in
mor
e th
an 1
20 c
ount
ries
run
SAP®
sof
twar
e—fro
m
dist
inct
sol
utio
ns a
ddre
ssin
g th
e ne
eds
of s
mal
l and
mid
size
ent
erpr
ises
to
suite
offe
rings
for g
loba
l org
aniz
atio
ns.
(*) S
AP d
efin
es b
usin
ess
softw
are
solu
tions
as
com
pris
ing
ente
rpris
e re
sour
ce p
lann
ing
and
rela
ted
softw
are
solu
tions
suc
h as
sup
ply
chai
n m
anag
emen
t, cu
stom
er re
latio
nshi
p m
anag
emen
t, pr
oduc
t life
-cyc
le m
anag
emen
t and
sup
plie
r rel
atio
nshi
p m
anag
emen
t.C
L408
e R
FID
and
C
L412
e R
FID
Prin
ter
SATO
Cor
pora
tion,
Jap
an, w
as e
stab
lishe
d in
194
0 to
man
ufac
ture
and
sel
l pa
ckag
ing
mac
hine
ry. I
n 19
62, S
ATO
was
a p
ione
er in
intro
duci
ng o
ne o
f the
fir
st h
and-
held
labe
lers
and
ope
ratio
ns a
s an
inte
rnat
iona
l sup
plie
r of l
abel
ing
mac
hine
ry. T
he U
S su
bsid
iary
was
est
ablis
hed
in 1
977
and
even
tual
ly b
ecam
e SA
TO A
mer
ica,
Inc.
in 1
987.
SAT
O d
evel
oped
the
wor
ld's
firs
t the
rmal
tran
sfer
ba
rcod
e pr
inte
rs a
nd c
ontin
ues
to b
e in
the
fore
front
of t
herm
al p
rintin
g te
chno
logi
es.
Our
pro
duct
line
incl
udes
dire
ct th
erm
al a
nd th
erm
al tr
ansf
er
prin
ters
, OEM
prin
t eng
ines
, prin
ter a
cces
sorie
s, la
bel d
esig
n so
ftwar
e, la
bels
an
d th
erm
al tr
ansf
er ri
bbon
s.
R
ush
Trac
king
Sys
tem
s is
a le
adin
g en
d-to
-end
RFI
D s
yste
ms
inte
grat
or
offe
ring
turn
key
solu
tions
thro
ugh
a pr
oven
, rep
eata
ble
proc
ess
base
d on
ye
ars
of re
al-w
orld
impl
emen
tatio
n. A
s R
FID
inno
vato
rs, i
mpl
emen
ters
and
pa
rtner
s, w
e ha
ve u
sed
our e
xper
tise
and
real
-wor
ld e
xper
ienc
e to
gen
erat
e ra
pid
resu
lts fo
r maj
or c
ompa
nies
in a
wid
e ra
nge
of in
dust
ries.
MP9
320
Aqui
red
by S
irit
BT R
IGH
TRea
der
Rig
htTa
g is
a le
adin
g m
anuf
actu
rer o
f sta
ndar
ds c
ompl
iant
RFI
D e
quip
men
t an
d re
late
d ap
plic
atio
n so
ftwar
e. R
ight
Tag
help
s co
mpa
nies
to c
ome
up w
ith
the
cost
effe
ctiv
e AI
DC
(Aut
omat
ic Id
entif
icat
ion
and
Dat
a C
aptu
re) s
olut
ions
.
Pres
siza
/RFI
D T
ags
& In
lays
RSI
ID T
echn
olog
ies,
Inc.
is o
ne o
f the
nat
ion'
s on
ly v
ertic
ally
inte
grat
ed
prov
ider
s fo
r rad
io fr
eque
ncy
iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
) tec
hnol
ogy,
incl
udin
g sy
stem
s in
tegr
atio
n, d
ata
colle
ctio
n an
d al
l man
ufac
turin
g an
d as
sem
bly
of
com
pone
nts.
RSI
als
o of
fers
a fu
ll ra
nge
of s
uppo
rt se
rvic
es, t
rain
ing
and
cons
ultin
g se
rvic
es.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 83
6. RFID Vendors Overview--21 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
WSW
Svc
Savi
Tec
hnol
ogy—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
avi.c
om ;
Sunn
yval
e, C
alifo
rnia
, U.S
.A.
HW
SWSv
cSA
VR C
omm
unic
atio
ns—
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.met
roau
tom
atio
n.co
m/s
avrc
om ;
Irvin
g, T
HW
——
——
Scan
ning
Dev
ices
Inc—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
cann
ingd
evic
es.c
om ;
Burli
ngto
n, M
A, U
HW
——
——
Secu
riCod
e Li
mite
d——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ecur
icod
e.co
.uk
; Sw
indo
n, W
iltsh
ire, U
HW
SW—
—Se
nse
Hol
ding
s In
c——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ense
me.
com
; Su
nris
e , F
L, U
SA
HW
——
——
Shen
zhen
Pro
mat
ic C
omm
erci
al S
afet
y C
o.—
——
ww
w.p
rom
atic
grou
p.co
m ;
Futia
n, S
henz
hen,
HW
SW—
—Sk
andS
oft T
echn
olog
ies,
Pvt
. Ltd
.——
——
——
—
w
ww
.ska
ndso
ft.co
m ;
Mum
bai,
Mah
aras
htra
, SE
TU (T
M)
Skan
dSof
t Tec
hnol
ogie
s is
a R
FID
/ AID
C s
olut
ions
com
pany
with
a p
ione
erin
g so
lutio
n de
velo
pmen
t pla
tform
SET
U(T
M)
Smar
tcod
e D
evel
oper
s'
Kit,
RFI
D T
ags
SEN
SE H
oldi
ngs
Inc.
™ (S
EH
O) i
s a
lead
ing
prov
ider
of b
iom
etric
sol
utio
ns,
and
mic
ro-s
enso
r ide
ntifi
catio
n sy
stem
s. S
ense
dev
elop
s pr
oduc
ts ta
rget
ing
Hom
elan
d S
ecur
ity, a
nd o
ffers
sol
utio
ns th
at im
prov
e an
d se
cure
man
y bu
sine
ss, m
ilitar
y, a
nd p
erso
nal p
roce
sses
. Sen
se o
wns
pat
ents
and
in
telle
ctua
l pro
perty
for a
MEM
S ba
sed
expl
osiv
es d
etec
tion
tech
nolo
gy
licen
sed
thro
ugh
a na
tiona
l gov
ernm
ent l
abor
ator
y. T
he c
ompa
ny h
as fo
cuse
d its
effo
rts o
n th
e H
omel
and
Secu
rity
initi
ativ
e.
RFI
D O
pen
Acc
ess
Con
trol S
yste
mTh
e en
terp
rise
aim
is to
bec
ome
the
mos
t exc
elle
nt s
uppl
ier o
f com
mer
cial
se
curit
y, lo
ss p
reve
ntio
n sy
stem
and
RFI
D te
chno
logy
for m
oder
n lo
gist
ics
and
reta
iling
in A
sia
thro
ugh
thei
r sin
cerit
y pr
inci
ple
and
dedi
catio
n to
cus
tom
er
satis
fact
ion.
SD T
ag P
rogr
amm
er, L
oadB
uild
er S
yste
m
Fini
shed
Tag
s or
Inla
ys
(Act
ive)
Secu
riCod
e pr
ovid
es s
ecur
e, g
loba
lly-u
niqu
e ac
tive
iden
tity
met
hods
for
peop
le, a
llow
ing
them
to b
e ac
cura
tely
iden
tifie
d, a
utho
rised
and
/or l
ocat
ed
with
out f
ear o
f ide
ntity
thef
t. A
uni
que
encr
ypte
d du
al-id
entit
y sy
stem
pro
vide
s bo
th a
pub
lic id
entit
y th
at m
ay b
e sh
ared
by
othe
rs a
nd a
per
sona
l ide
ntity
that
pr
otec
ts th
e in
divi
dual
’s id
entit
y.
Echo
Poin
t(TM
)W
ith o
ver 1
6 ye
ars
expe
rienc
e, S
avi i
s a
prov
en le
ader
in R
FID
sol
utio
ns fo
r th
e m
anag
emen
t and
sec
urity
of s
uppl
y ch
ain
asse
ts, s
hipm
ents
and
co
nsig
nmen
ts. S
avi's
inte
grat
ed R
FID
har
dwar
e an
d so
ftwar
e so
lutio
ns d
rive
busi
ness
val
ue, s
uch
as re
duci
ng s
uppl
y ch
ain
asse
ts, i
nven
tory
and
op
erat
iona
l cos
ts. T
he c
ompa
ny ta
ilors
its
solu
tions
to th
e de
fens
e, c
omm
erci
al
supp
ly c
hain
ass
et m
anag
emen
t and
glo
bal s
uppl
y ch
ain
visi
bilit
y an
d se
curit
y m
arke
ts. S
avi's
sol
utio
ns m
eet t
he s
uppl
y ch
ain
need
s of
def
ense
and
go
vern
men
t org
aniz
atio
ns, g
loba
l shi
pper
s, m
anuf
actu
rers
, ret
aile
rs, a
nd
supp
liers
as
wel
l as
serv
ice
prov
ider
s su
ch a
s te
rmin
al o
pera
tors
, ass
et o
wne
rs
and
third
-par
ty lo
gist
ics
prov
ider
s. F
ound
ed in
198
9, S
avi T
echn
olog
y is
pr
ivat
ely
held
, with
hea
dqua
rters
in S
unny
vale
, Cal
if., a
nd o
ffice
s in
Jo
hann
esbu
rg, L
ondo
n, M
elbo
urne
, Sin
gapo
re, a
nd W
ashi
ngto
n D
.C.
Cus
tom
mod
ule
desi
gn
for C
onne
ct &
C
omm
unic
ate
Inte
rrog
ator
s, R
FID
i
tti
dt
k
SAVR
Com
mun
icat
ions
com
mits
itse
lf to
pro
duci
ng u
niqu
e, lo
w-c
ost R
FID
pr
oduc
ts fo
r tod
ay's
dyn
amic
glo
bal m
arke
tpla
ce. T
heir
goal
is to
offe
r ad
apta
ble
prod
ucts
that
ser
ve in
dust
ry re
quire
men
ts w
hile
stil
l pro
vidi
ng e
ase-
of-u
se a
nd a
rapi
d re
turn
rate
on
your
inve
stm
ent.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 84
6. RFID Vendors Overview--22 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—Sk
yeTe
k, In
c.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.sky
etek
.com
; W
estm
inst
er, C
O, U
SA
HW
——
——
Smar
tCod
e C
orp.
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
mar
tcod
ecor
p.co
m ;
New
Yor
k, N
Y, U
SH
W—
——
—So
cket
Com
mun
icat
ions
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ocke
tcom
.com
; N
ewar
k, C
A, U
SAH
W—
——
—SO
KYM
AT—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
okym
at.c
om ;
GR
ANG
ES-V
EVEY
SE, F
HW
——
——
STM
icro
elec
troni
cs—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.st.c
om/rf
id ;
GEN
EVA,
CH
122
8 Pl
an-L
e
HW
SW—
—St
ratu
m G
loba
l——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
tratu
mgl
obal
.com
; Li
ttlet
on, C
O, U
SA
SW—
—Su
n M
icro
syst
ems—
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.sun
.com
; Au
burn
, CA,
USA
SWSv
cSu
pply
Insi
ght—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.sup
plyi
nsig
ht.c
om ;
Ham
dem
, CT,
USA
HW
SWSv
cSu
reID
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.sur
eid.
com
; M
arlto
n, N
J, U
SA
rPla
tform
Prov
ides
cos
t effe
ctiv
e so
lutio
ns fo
r diff
eren
t tar
get m
arke
ts a
nd h
elps
DoD
su
pplie
rs m
eet U
ID, R
FID
com
plia
nce
and
WAW
F in
tegr
atio
n. A
ll of
the
com
pany
's c
usto
m R
FID
bus
ines
s so
lutio
ns a
re b
uilt
on it
's s
oftw
are.
R
FID
Dep
loym
ent
Man
ager
Foun
ded
1990
. Su
re ID
is a
reco
gniz
ed le
ader
in th
e ra
pidl
y ex
pand
ing
mar
ket
for a
uthe
ntic
atio
n pr
oduc
ts a
nd a
uthe
ntic
RFI
D e
xper
tise.
Spe
cial
izin
g in
Item
-le
vel R
FID
, our
team
of e
xper
ts h
as h
elpe
d co
mpa
nies
der
ive
busi
ness
val
ue
from
RFI
D s
ince
199
0. O
ur s
olut
ions
are
em
ploy
ed in
thou
sand
s of
loca
tions
, au
then
ticat
e m
illion
s of
item
s, a
nd p
rovi
de u
nbrid
led
visi
bilit
y.
TagN
et R
FID
Sol
utio
n Su
iteSt
ratu
m G
loba
l is
a so
ftwar
e so
lutio
ns c
ompa
ny a
nd s
yste
ms
inte
grat
or th
at
deve
lops
and
mar
kets
Tag
Net
, a re
leas
e su
ppor
ted,
pla
tform
agn
ostic
Rad
io
Freq
uenc
y Id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D) s
olut
ion
suite
. Stra
tum
Glo
bal’s
sol
e bu
sine
ss
is R
FID
. We
prov
ide
com
plet
e im
plem
enta
tion
serv
ices
incl
udin
g si
te s
urve
ys,
hard
war
e in
stal
latio
n, e
nter
pris
e in
tegr
atio
n, ta
gs, s
ervi
ces
and
educ
atio
n to
su
ppor
t the
tota
l RFI
D s
olut
ion.
Sun
Java
RFI
D E
vent
M
anag
erC
ompu
ter s
yste
ms,
sto
rage
, net
wor
king
, wor
ksta
tions
, RFI
D M
iddl
ewar
e (E
vent
Man
ager
, Inf
orm
atio
n Se
rver
). C
ompa
ny ta
glin
e: "T
he n
etw
ork
is th
e co
mpu
ter"
ACC
ESS
& SE
CU
RIT
YD
evel
opm
ent a
nd m
anuf
actu
ring
of R
FID
tran
spon
ders
for L
F, H
F &
UH
F ap
plic
atio
ns s
uch
as a
cces
s &
secu
rity,
indu
stry
sup
ply
chai
n an
d lo
gist
ics,
fo
od &
ani
mal
, gov
ernm
enta
l doc
umen
ts.
Exte
nded
Ran
ge (X
R) -
EP
CG
loba
l and
180
00-6
Com
mitt
ed to
hig
h-vo
lum
e/lo
w-c
ost i
dent
ifica
tion
solu
tions
, ST
offe
rs lo
w-c
ost,
stan
dard
-com
plia
nt R
FID
chi
ps a
nd c
ompl
ete
syst
ems
thro
ugh
its w
ide
partn
er
netw
ork
(rea
der a
nd c
onve
rter m
aker
s, in
lets
mak
ers
etc.
).
EPC
Gen
1 /
Gen
2
Labe
lsLo
wes
t Cos
t EPC
Gen
2 In
lays
and
Tag
s. IS
O14
443A
/B T
ags
and
Rea
ders
, N
FC T
ags
and
Rea
ders
, Act
ive
Tags
.C
ompa
ctFl
ash
Rea
der
Car
dC
ontro
llers
, rea
ders
Skye
Mod
ule
M8
Skye
Tek,
Inc.
, mak
er o
f Rea
derW
are™
, is
a le
adin
g su
pplie
r of R
FID
read
er
softw
are
and
refe
renc
e de
sign
s th
at e
nabl
e th
e pe
rvas
ive
adop
tion
of R
FID
te
chno
logy
. Sk
yeTe
k’s
Tagn
ostic
™ re
ader
tech
nolo
gy w
orks
with
mos
t in
dust
ry s
tand
ard
tags
and
sm
art l
abel
s. I
ts lo
w p
ower
requ
irem
ents
and
a
smal
l for
m fa
ctor
mak
e it
the
optim
al c
hoic
e fo
r em
bedd
ing
into
new
or e
xist
ing
prod
ucts
. Sk
yeTe
k’s
RFI
D re
ader
tech
nolo
gy is
ava
ilabl
e in
sev
eral
form
ats
incl
udin
g re
ader
mod
ules
, har
dwar
e re
fere
nce
desi
gns,
and
the
Rea
derW
are™
so
ftwar
e su
ite.
Skye
Tek
mar
kets
to O
EM c
usto
mer
s in
targ
eted
ver
tical
m
arke
ts w
ith s
ever
al h
igh-
volu
me
licen
sing
opt
ions
ava
ilabl
e. S
kyeT
ek is
ba
sed
in C
olor
ado.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 85
6. RFID Vendors Overview--23 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usSW
——
Syba
se/iA
nyw
here
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ybas
e.co
m\rf
id ;
Dub
lin, C
alifo
rnia
, USA
HW
——
——
Sym
bol T
echn
olog
ies—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ymbo
l.com
; H
olts
ville
, New
Yor
k, U
SA
HW
——
——
Syne
rgex
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
ynrfi
d.co
m ;
Mis
siss
auga
, Ont
ario
, Can
HW
——
——
Syrm
a Te
chno
logy
pvt
Ltd
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.syr
mat
ech.
com
; C
henn
ai, T
amil
Nad
u, I
SW—
—T3
Ci—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.t3ci
.com
; M
ount
ain
View
, CA,
USA
HW
SW—
—Ta
gMas
ter—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.ta
gmas
ter.s
e ; K
ista
, , S
wed
en
T3 A
naly
tics
T3C
i, th
e le
adin
g R
FID
ana
lytic
s an
d ap
plic
atio
ns c
ompa
ny, o
ffers
a w
ide
varie
ty o
f RFI
D s
ervi
ces
and
softw
are.
T3C
i dev
elop
s an
d m
arke
ts s
oftw
are
and
softw
are-
as-a
-ser
vice
for l
eade
rs o
f RFI
D in
itiat
ives
at m
ajor
reta
il su
pplie
rs a
nd m
ajor
reta
ilers
who
are
resp
onsi
ble
for d
eliv
erin
g bu
sine
ss v
alue
fro
m th
eir c
ompa
ny's
RFI
D in
vest
men
t. T3
Ci's
ent
erpr
ise-
clas
s so
lutio
ns
incl
ude
RFI
D a
naly
tics
as w
ell a
s a
suite
of h
igh-
valu
e ap
plic
atio
ns in
clud
ing
prom
otio
ns e
xecu
tion
and
out o
f sto
ck m
anag
emen
t. Ta
gs, r
eade
rs, c
ompl
ete
softw
are
deve
lopm
ent
kit,
acce
ssor
ies
It is
our
aim
to a
ssum
e a
lead
ing
role
in te
rms
of R
FID
tech
nolo
gy fo
r the
mos
t de
man
ding
app
licat
ions
, whe
re th
e sa
ving
s po
tent
ial f
or th
e en
d-cu
stom
er is
cr
ucia
l. To
acc
ompl
ish
this
, Tag
Mas
ter t
akes
the
role
of a
pur
e pr
oduc
t su
pplie
r, a
partn
er w
ith m
ajor
com
pani
es a
nd a
dev
elop
er o
f new
con
cept
s th
at
requ
ire R
FID
tech
nolo
gy.
Softw
are
and
supp
ort
devi
ces
incl
udin
g pr
inte
rs, t
ags,
and
m
obile
dev
ices
, RFI
D
enab
lem
ent a
nd
tt
lti
Syne
rgex
Tec
hnol
ogy
focu
ses
on d
evel
opm
ent o
f nov
el te
chno
logy
and
de
liver
ing
cust
omiz
ed s
olut
ions
for c
lient
s. S
yner
gex'
team
of p
rofe
ssio
nals
de
sign
s, d
evel
opes
and
impl
emen
ts c
usto
mer
focu
sed
solu
tions
aim
ed a
t pr
ovid
ing
busi
ness
pro
cess
es a
nd o
pera
tions
. The
com
pany
has
pac
kage
d so
lutio
ns fo
r a v
arie
ty o
f ind
ustry
seg
men
ts.
Hita
g1, E
M40
12Sy
rma
Tech
nolo
gy P
vt. L
td. i
s a
lead
ing
tech
nolo
gy c
ompa
ny in
to D
esig
n an
d m
anuf
actu
re o
f Pre
cisi
on C
oils
, RFI
D P
assi
ve T
ags
(125
/134
KH
z an
d 13
.56
MH
z) a
nd M
agne
tics.
Loc
ated
at C
henn
ai, I
ndia
, Syr
ma
Tech
nolo
gy h
as a
n illu
strio
us tr
ack
reco
rd o
f ove
r 25
year
s in
the
man
ufac
ture
of e
lect
roni
c co
mpo
nent
s. T
he c
ompa
ny e
mpl
oys
adva
nced
tech
nolo
gy, e
xper
ienc
ed
prof
essi
onal
s an
d st
ate-
of-th
e-ar
t man
ufac
turin
g ca
pabi
litie
s to
brin
g ou
t the
m
ost p
reci
se a
nd c
ost e
ffect
ive
tech
nolo
gy p
rodu
cts.
Syr
mat
ech
is IS
O
9001
:200
0 C
ertif
iedc
ompa
ny.
RFI
D E
nter
pris
eSy
base
is a
n en
terp
rise
softw
are
com
pany
exc
lusi
vely
focu
sed
on m
anag
ing
and
mob
ilizin
g in
form
atio
n. O
ur e
nd-to
-end
RFI
D s
olut
ion
sim
plifi
es e
very
st
age
of e
nter
pris
e R
FID
impl
emen
tatio
ns. O
ur s
oftw
are
prov
ides
com
plet
e in
tegr
atio
n an
d ne
twor
k m
anag
emen
t ser
vice
s fo
r int
ellig
ent d
evic
es a
nd d
ata.
Sy
base
's in
tegr
ated
dev
elop
men
t env
ironm
ent d
eliv
ers
mod
elin
g,
prog
ram
min
g, a
nd d
ata
man
agem
ent t
ools
to e
nsur
e th
at R
FID
dat
a an
d ev
ents
are
sto
red
and
prop
agat
ed fo
r app
licat
ion
inte
grat
ion,
aud
iting
, rep
ortin
g an
d bu
sine
ss in
tellig
ence
pur
pose
s.
MC
9000
-GSy
mbo
l Tec
hnol
ogie
s, In
c., T
he E
nter
pris
e M
obilit
y C
ompa
ny™
, is
a le
ader
in
ente
rpris
e m
obilit
y, d
eliv
erin
g pr
oduc
ts a
nd s
olut
ions
that
cap
ture
, mov
e an
d m
anag
e in
form
atio
n in
real
tim
e to
and
from
the
poin
t of b
usin
ess
activ
ity.
Sym
bol e
nter
pris
e m
obilit
y so
lutio
ns in
tegr
ate
adva
nced
dat
a ca
ptur
e pr
oduc
ts,
radi
o fre
quen
cy id
entif
icat
ion
tech
nolo
gy, m
obile
com
putin
g pl
atfo
rms,
wire
less
in
frast
ruct
ure,
mob
ility
softw
are
and
wor
ld-c
lass
ser
vice
s pr
ogra
ms
unde
r the
Sy
mbo
l Ent
erpr
ise
Mob
ility
Serv
ices
bra
nd.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 86
6. RFID Vendors Overview--24 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—Ta
gSen
se, I
nc.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.tags
ense
.com
; C
ambr
idge
, MA,
USA
HW
——
——
TAG
SYS—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.tags
ysrfi
d.co
m ;
Cam
brid
ge, M
assa
chus
HW
——
——
Tape
mar
k——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.ta
pem
ark.
com
; W
est S
t. Pa
ul ,
MN
, USA
HW
SW—
—TI
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.ti.c
om/s
cn ;
Attle
boro
, M
A, U
SA
HW
——
——
Thin
gMag
ic, I
nc.—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.th
ingm
agic
.com
; C
ambr
idge
, MA,
USA
HW
SW—
—To
pflig
ht C
orpo
ratio
n——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.topf
light
.com
; G
len
Roc
k, P
a., U
SA
Mer
cury
4Fo
unde
d in
200
0, T
hing
Mag
ic is
a le
adin
g de
velo
per o
f rad
io fr
eque
ncy
iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
) tec
hnol
ogy.
Mer
cury
4™, T
hing
Mag
ic's
four
th g
ener
atio
n ag
ile R
FID
read
er, b
uild
s on
and
sub
stan
tially
enh
ance
s th
e co
mpa
ny's
orig
inal
pl
atfo
rm c
reat
ed fo
r ear
ly fi
eld
test
s of
the
Elec
troni
c P
rodu
ct C
ode
(EPC
). D
esig
ned
to m
eet t
he b
usin
ess
need
s of
a fu
ture
whe
re n
etw
orke
d ob
ject
s ar
e pe
rvas
ive,
the
Mer
cury
4 lin
e of
RFI
D re
ader
s al
so in
clud
es a
n em
bedd
ed
read
er m
odul
e, M
ercu
ry4e
, and
a h
andh
eld
read
er m
odul
e, M
ercu
ry4h
.
Cus
tom
ized
tags
, re
ader
s, a
nd s
oftw
are
Cus
tom
des
igne
d eq
uipm
ent a
llow
s un
limite
d co
nver
ting
of ta
gs a
nd la
bels
, al
ong
with
ESD
pro
tect
ion,
sho
rt w
eb p
aths
and
set
ups
to d
rive
cost
s do
wn,
an
d in
terc
hang
eabl
e st
atio
ns to
han
dle
intri
cate
con
stru
ctio
ns. W
e ca
n w
ork
with
a v
arie
ty o
f chi
ps, i
nclu
ding
rew
ritab
le a
nd re
ad o
nly
desi
gns.
Num
erou
s m
ater
ial a
nd a
dhes
ive
optio
ns c
an b
e ut
ilized
, and
mor
e co
mpl
ex d
esig
ns c
an
crea
te ta
mpe
r pro
tect
ion
with
dev
ice
dest
ruct
ion
capa
bilit
ies.
Chi
ples
s ID
Tape
mar
k is
a le
adin
g-ed
ge c
ontra
ct m
anuf
actu
rer,
prov
idin
g in
nova
tive
solu
tions
for y
our u
niqu
e re
quire
men
ts. W
e co
nver
t a w
ide
rang
e of
flex
ible
m
ater
ials
, int
egra
ting
coat
ing,
prin
ting,
die
cut
ting
and
pack
agin
g in
ord
er to
m
axim
ize
the
func
tiona
lity
and
cost
-effe
ctiv
enes
s of
eve
ry p
rodu
ct w
e de
liver
. O
ffers
UH
F C
hipl
ess
ID ta
g.TI
-Rfid
UH
F an
d H
igh
Freq
uenc
y IS
O
Tran
spon
ders
, rea
ders
, an
tenn
as, s
oftw
are
dow
nloa
ds
Texa
s In
stru
men
ts R
adio
Fre
quen
cy Id
entif
icat
ion
(TI-R
Fid™
) Sys
tem
s is
an
indu
stry
lead
er in
radi
o fre
quen
cy id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D) t
echn
olog
y an
d a
maj
or
inte
grat
ed m
anuf
actu
rer o
f RFI
D ta
gs, R
FID
sm
art l
abel
s, a
nd R
FID
read
er
syst
ems.
App
roac
hing
500
milli
on R
FID
tags
man
ufac
ture
d, T
I-RFi
d™
tech
nolo
gy is
use
d in
a b
road
rang
e of
RFI
D a
pplic
atio
ns w
orld
wid
e.
Nan
o-U
HF
TagS
ense
is a
dev
elop
er o
f cus
tom
RFI
D s
yste
ms
and
wire
less
sen
sors
. O
ur
RFI
D s
enso
r pla
tform
s in
clud
e: E
PC G
en1/
Gen
2, Z
igbe
e ta
gs, 1
3.56
Mhz
, ch
iple
ss ta
gs a
nd p
rinte
d in
ks. T
agS
ense
als
o se
lls s
mal
l low
-pow
er, l
ow-c
ost
RFI
D re
ader
OEM
mod
ules
for p
rinte
rs, h
andh
elds
, sm
art s
helv
es, a
nd m
obile
de
vice
s su
ch a
s ce
ll ph
ones
and
PD
As.
ARIO
13.
56 M
Hz
HF
TAG
STA
GSY
S is
a g
loba
l lea
der i
n ite
m-le
vel R
FID
infra
stru
ctur
e. T
AGSY
S R
FID
pr
ovid
es R
FID
sys
tem
s an
d ta
gs fo
r end
-to-e
nd it
em-le
vel t
rack
ing
that
au
tom
ates
labo
r-in
tens
ive
proc
esse
s, a
uthe
ntic
ates
and
saf
egua
rds
good
s,
and
enab
les
real
-tim
e in
vent
ory
and
asse
t vis
ibilit
y. W
ith a
pro
ven
track
reco
rd
of d
eliv
erin
g R
elia
ble,
Acc
urat
e an
d Se
cure
(R.A
.S.)
RFI
D s
yste
ms
and
tags
, TA
GSY
S ha
s de
ploy
ed o
ver 6
0 m
illion
tags
and
50,
000
read
er s
yste
ms
to o
ver
500
cust
omer
s in
mor
e th
an 4
0 co
untri
es. T
AGSY
S R
FID
sol
utio
ns a
re
curr
ently
bei
ng d
eplo
yed
in a
rang
e of
hig
hly
spec
ializ
ed v
ertic
al m
arke
ts th
at
incl
ude
phar
mac
eutic
al, f
ashi
on a
ppar
el, l
ibra
ries,
text
ile re
ntal
, cas
h-in
-tran
sit
and
gas
cylin
der t
rack
ing.
TAG
SYSR
FID
e-c
onne
ctin
g go
ods.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 87
6. RFID Vendors Overview--25 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—To
shib
a (T
EC A
mer
ica)
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.te
cam
eric
a.co
m ;
Toky
o, ,
Japa
n
HW
SW—
—Tr
ansC
ore—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.tran
scor
e.co
m ;
Hum
mel
stow
n, P
a., U
SA
SW—
—Tr
ueD
eman
d So
ftwar
e——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.td
eman
d.co
m ;
Los
Gat
os, C
A, U
.S.A
HW
——
——
Turc
k In
c——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.tu
rck.
com
; H
alve
r, , G
erm
any
HW
——
——
Turs
so C
ompa
nies
Inc.
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.tu
rsso
.com
; St
. Pau
l, M
N, U
SAH
WSW
Svc
Tyco
Sen
sorm
atic
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.s
enso
rmat
ic.c
om ;
Boca
Rat
on, F
L, U
SALa
belin
gR
FID
13.
56 M
hz IS
O15
693
Agile
2 A
nten
nas,
UH
F R
eade
rs, D
evic
e C
omm
ande
rs a
nd E
OS
Softw
are,
Lab
els
Sens
orm
atic
sol
utio
ns p
rovi
de v
ital l
oss
prev
entio
n an
d su
ppor
t for
the
reta
il in
dust
ry. B
acke
d by
mor
e th
an 1
,500
pat
ents
and
pat
ents
-pen
ding
for
inno
vativ
e, m
arke
t-lea
ding
tech
nolo
gies
, our
sol
utio
ns p
ortfo
lio is
man
ufac
ture
d an
d su
ppor
ted
by a
div
isio
n of
Tyc
o Fi
re &
Sec
urity
. Fro
m th
e fro
nt o
f the
sto
re
thro
ugh
the
entir
e re
tail
supp
ly c
hain
, our
pro
duct
s an
d se
rvic
es h
elp
keep
lo
sses
low
er –
and
pro
fits
high
er.
True
Dem
and
Fore
cast
ing
& R
eple
nish
men
t
True
Dem
and
Softw
are
is a
pio
neer
in th
e de
velo
pmen
t of n
ew s
uppl
y ch
ain
appl
icat
ions
that
take
adv
anta
ge o
f bot
h R
FID
and
non
-RFI
D d
ata
to h
elp
solv
e su
pply
cha
in p
lann
ing
and
exec
utio
n pr
oble
ms.
Serie
s of
tags
, tra
nsci
ever
s, c
onne
ctor
s in
clud
ing
'OC
' 'Or'
'GEI
' et
c.
From
hum
ble
begi
nnin
gs in
Hal
ver,
Ger
man
y to
a g
loba
l com
pany
with
25
wor
ldw
ide
loca
tions
, TU
RC
K ha
s be
com
e a
pion
eer i
n in
dust
rial a
utom
atio
n te
chno
logy
. Our
mis
sion
, as
a le
adin
g va
lue-
adde
d su
pplie
r of p
rodu
cts
to th
e fa
ctor
y an
d pr
oces
s au
tom
atio
n m
arke
ts, i
s to
pro
vide
cus
tom
ers
with
a
com
preh
ensi
ve li
ne o
f qua
lity
and
adva
nced
tech
nolo
gy p
rodu
cts
in a
fast
, fle
xibl
e an
d ac
cura
te m
anne
r. O
ur e
xten
sive
line
of p
rodu
cts
incl
udes
th
ousa
nds
of s
enso
r, in
terfa
ce, c
ords
et a
nd c
onne
ctor
com
bina
tions
that
mee
t cl
ient
s’ n
eeds
.
B-SX
and
B-S
A4T
prin
ter
As p
art o
f Tos
hiba
's c
ontin
ing
com
mitm
ent t
o ne
w te
chno
logy
, now
we
prov
ide
the
abilit
y to
pro
vide
a c
ondu
it to
the
late
st in
form
atio
n te
chno
logy
. Thi
s is
the
abilit
y to
enc
ode
RFI
D c
hips
usi
ng th
e B-
SX a
nd B
-SA
serie
s pr
inte
rs. T
o be
ab
le to
mee
t the
var
ious
sta
ndar
ds a
nd fr
eque
ncie
s, T
oshi
ba is
offe
ring
the
uniq
ue a
bilit
y to
use
diff
eren
t rea
ders
and
ant
enna
on
the
sam
e m
odel
.
eGo
Fam
ily o
f Tag
sTr
ansC
ore’
s 60
-yea
r her
itage
as
a tra
nspo
rtatio
n se
rvic
es c
ompa
ny s
pans
the
deve
lopm
ent o
f RFI
D a
pplic
atio
ns a
t Los
Ala
mos
Nat
iona
l Lab
s to
the
wor
ld’s
fir
st R
FID
-bas
ed e
lect
roni
c to
ll co
llect
ion
syst
em to
set
ting
the
stan
dard
for r
ail
car a
dopt
ion
of R
FID
tech
nolo
gy, w
ith tw
o Tr
ansC
ore
tags
on
99 p
erce
nt o
f all
rail
cars
in N
orth
Am
eric
a. W
ith in
stal
latio
ns in
41
coun
tries
, mor
e th
an 1
00
pate
nts
and
pion
eerin
g ap
plic
atio
ns o
f RFI
D, G
PS a
nd s
atel
lite
com
mun
icat
ions
tech
nolo
gies
, Tra
nsC
ore'
s te
chni
cal e
xper
tise
is u
npar
alle
led
in th
e m
arke
ts it
ser
ves.
Tra
nsC
ore
is a
uni
t of R
oper
Indu
strie
s (N
YSE:
RO
P).
Tran
sCor
e pr
ovid
es te
chno
logi
es a
nd re
late
d se
rvic
es in
are
as s
uch
as ra
dio
frequ
ency
iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
), sa
tellit
e-ba
sed
com
mun
icat
ion,
mob
ile a
sset
tra
ckin
g, s
ecur
ity a
pplic
atio
ns, a
cces
s co
ntro
l and
com
preh
ensi
ve to
ll sy
stem
an
d pr
oces
sing
ser
vice
s.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 88
6. RFID Vendors Overview--26 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
WSW
Svc
Uni
fied
Barc
ode
& R
FID
, Inc
. ——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.uni
fiedb
arco
de.c
om ;
Pala
tine,
IL, U
SA
HW
SW—
—U
nova
Inc
(Inte
rmec
Tec
hnol
ogie
s)—
——
——
——
ww
w.in
term
ec.c
om ;
Ever
ett,
WA,
USA
HW
——
——
UP
M R
afla
tac—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.upm
rafla
tac.
com
; Ta
mpe
re, n
/a, F
inla
nd
——
Svc
VeriS
ign—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.v
eris
ign.
com
; D
ulle
s, V
irgin
ia, U
SA
HW
——
Svc
WAN
/LAN
Sol
utio
ns, I
nc.—
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.w
anla
n.ne
t ; R
osev
ille, C
A, U
SAH
W—
——
—W
avet
rend
(UK
) Ltd
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.wav
etre
nd.n
et ;
Ric
hmon
d, S
urre
y, U
K
HW
——
——
Web
er M
arki
ng S
yste
ms,
Inc.
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.web
erm
arki
ng.c
om ;
Arlin
gton
Hei
ghts
, I
HW
——
——
Whe
reN
et—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.whe
rene
t.com
; Sa
nta
Cla
ra, C
A, U
SA
Smar
tTra
k R
FID
Lab
els
Web
er is
a le
adin
g w
orld
wid
e m
anau
fact
urer
and
sup
plie
r of l
abel
ing
solu
tions
, in
clud
ing
labe
l prin
ters
, app
licat
ors
and
prin
ter-
appl
icat
ors
for b
ar c
ode
and
RFI
D e
ncod
ing
appl
icat
ions
, plu
s co
mpl
emen
tary
pre
ssur
e-se
nsiti
ve a
nd R
FID
sm
art l
abel
mat
eria
ls a
nd la
bel d
esig
n/R
FID
enc
odin
g so
ftwar
e.
Rea
l-Tim
e W
irele
ss
RFI
D A
sset
Tra
ckin
g an
d Lo
catin
g Sy
stem
s
Whe
reN
et o
ffers
a w
irele
ss lo
catio
n an
d co
mm
unic
atio
n in
frast
ruct
ure
that
re
liabl
y m
anag
es m
obile
reso
urce
s an
d de
liver
s a
com
plet
e re
turn
on
inve
stm
ent w
ithin
6-1
2 m
onth
s. B
ased
on
pate
nted
, sta
ndar
ds-c
ompl
iant
te
chno
logy
resu
lting
from
a c
olle
ctiv
e 10
0+ y
ears
of d
evel
opm
ent.
Con
ecta
g pr
oduc
tsR
FID
(Rad
io F
requ
ency
Iden
tific
atio
n) ta
gs.
Tags
Foun
ded
in 1
999,
Wav
etre
nd is
hea
d-qu
arte
red
in R
ichm
ond,
Lon
don,
and
has
of
fices
in W
ashi
ngto
n D
C a
nd J
ohan
nesb
urg.
Wav
etre
nd is
a w
orld
-lead
ing
prov
ider
of U
ltra
Long
Ran
ge (U
LR) A
ctiv
e R
adio
Fre
quen
cy Id
entif
icat
ion
(RFI
D) t
echn
olog
y. In
col
labo
ratio
n w
ith it
s gl
obal
net
wor
k of
stra
tegi
c an
d ac
cred
ited
chan
nel p
artn
ers,
whi
ch in
clud
es IB
M, M
otor
ola,
Qin
etiQ
, Red
Pr
airie
and
Sym
bol,
Wav
etre
nd p
rovi
des
hard
war
e an
d so
ftwar
e so
lutio
ns fo
r th
e R
FID
mar
ket.
At t
he c
ore
of th
e gr
oup’
s te
chno
logy
is a
n op
en p
latfo
rm
arch
itect
ure
whi
ch is
hig
hly
scal
able
and
sim
ple
to in
tegr
ate.
ULR
act
ive
RFI
D
tags
con
tain
thei
r ow
n po
wer
sou
rce,
ena
blin
g re
al-ti
me
asse
t mon
itorin
g an
d tra
ckin
g ov
er d
ista
nces
of l
ess
than
1 m
etre
to g
reat
er th
an 2
50 m
etre
s.
Inte
rnal
bat
tery
life
of u
p to
8 y
ears
.
HF
& U
HF
tags
and
in
lays
UPM
Raf
lata
c is
a w
orld
-lead
ing
supp
lier o
f pre
ssur
e se
nsiti
ve la
bels
tock
for a
w
ide
varie
ty o
f nee
ds in
pro
duct
and
info
rmat
ion
labe
ling.
In a
dditi
on, t
he
com
pany
is a
t the
glo
bal f
oref
ront
in th
e de
velo
pmen
t and
hig
h-vo
lum
e pr
oduc
tion
of ra
dio
frequ
ency
iden
tific
atio
n (R
FID
) tag
s an
d in
lays
. The
co
mpa
ny h
as a
glo
bal s
ervi
ce n
etw
ork
cons
istin
g of
11
fact
orie
s on
five
co
ntin
ents
. UPM
Raf
lata
c is
par
t of U
PM, a
lead
ing
glob
al fo
rest
pro
duct
s co
mpa
ny.
Ve
riSig
n's
Inte
lligen
t Sup
ply
Cha
in S
ervi
ces
plat
form
ena
bles
trus
ted,
sec
ure
and
scal
able
info
rmat
ion
exch
ange
and
col
labo
ratio
n am
ong
glob
al s
uppl
y ch
ain
parti
cipa
nts.
Syst
ems
Inte
grat
ion
Serv
ices
Whe
ther
you
are
look
ing
to im
plem
ent y
our f
irst b
arco
de s
yste
m, u
pgra
de to
an
RFI
D s
yste
m, o
r rep
lace
out
date
d ha
rdw
are,
Uni
fied
Barc
ode
& R
FID
pr
ovid
es e
xper
t dat
a co
llect
ion
solu
tions
to m
eet y
our o
rgan
izat
ion'
s ne
eds.
Th
e co
mpa
ny c
arrie
s va
rious
line
s, a
s w
ell a
s cu
stom
sof
twar
e an
d co
nsul
ting.
Inte
llitag
Gen
erea
tion
2 U
HF
RFI
D, R
FID
Dep
loy
Suite
With
yea
rs o
f exp
erie
nce
inst
allin
g co
mpl
ete
RFI
D s
yste
ms
arou
nd th
e w
orld
, In
term
ec is
com
mitt
ed to
wor
king
with
com
pani
es to
mak
e su
re e
ach
impl
emen
tatio
n of
RFI
D te
chno
logy
is s
ucce
ssfu
l, to
day
and
tom
orro
w.
Inte
rmec
sup
ports
ope
n st
anda
rds
and
glob
al in
tero
pera
bilit
y, e
nsur
ing
com
pani
es' i
nves
tmen
t pro
tect
ion
as R
FID
glo
bal s
tand
ards
con
tinue
to e
volv
e.
RFID Hardware: What You Must Know
© ChainLink Research, June 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page 89
6. RFID Vendors Overview--27 of 27
Com
pany
Prod
uct
Area
s of
Foc
usH
W—
——
—W
inco
ID—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.win
coid
.com
; N
ashu
a, N
H, U
SA
HW
——
Svc
Wire
less
Net
wor
k So
lutio
ns—
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.wire
less
ns.c
om ;
Way
zata
, MN
, USA
HW
——
——
WJ
Com
mun
icat
ions
——
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.wj.c
om ;
San
Jose
, CA,
USA
HW
——
——
Wor
ldla
bel.c
om—
——
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.w
orld
labe
l.com
; N
ew Y
ork,
New
Yor
k, U
HW
——
——
Xte
rpris
e In
corp
orat
ed—
——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.xte
rpris
e.co
m ;
Car
rollt
on, T
X, U
SA
HW
——
——
Zebr
a Te
chno
logi
es—
——
——
——
——
——
——
ww
w.rf
id.z
ebra
.com
; Ve
rnon
Hills
, IL,
US
A
HW
——
——
ZeitC
ontro
l Car
dsys
tem
s——
——
——
——
——
—
w
ww
.zei
tcon
trol.d
e ; M
inde
n , ,
Ger
man
yBa
sicC
ard
Prod
uces
the
first
sm
art c
ard
avai
labl
e in
BAS
IC.
XAR
M™
100
0X
terp
rise
deve
lops
RFI
D s
uppl
y ch
ain
solu
tions
com
pris
ed o
f mat
eria
l ha
ndlin
g, s
yste
m h
ardw
are
and
RFI
D S
ervi
ce O
rient
ed A
rchi
tect
ure
(SO
A)
appl
icat
ions
sof
twar
e, e
nter
pris
e sy
stem
s in
tegr
atio
n, d
ata
anal
ytic
s, d
eman
d si
gnal
ing
appl
icat
ions
and
rem
ote
solu
tion
supp
ort.
Xte
rpris
e w
orks
with
oth
er
RFI
D &
Sup
ply
Cha
in in
dust
ry le
ader
s, in
clud
ing
Alie
n Te
chno
logy
, Zeb
ra
Tech
nolo
gies
, Sym
bol,
Apris
o, T
rueD
aman
d, D
PI, W
eber
and
oth
ers.
The
se
tech
nolo
gy v
endo
r’s p
rodu
cts
are
disp
laye
d in
Xte
rpris
e’s
6,00
0 sq
uare
foot
R
FID
Sol
utio
n C
ente
r, w
here
thei
r ver
tical
mar
ket s
olut
ions
are
sho
wca
sed.
R11
0Xi
A pr
oven
pio
neer
in R
FID
, Zeb
ra h
as h
elpe
d le
ad in
tern
atio
nal d
evel
opm
ent f
or
near
ly 1
1 ye
ars.
Zeb
ra's
UH
F R
FID
prin
ter/e
ncod
ers
are
now
ava
ilabl
e fo
r sal
e in
39
coun
tries
on
five
cont
inen
ts w
orld
wid
e.
RFI
D m
odul
es, r
eade
rs,
sem
icon
duct
ors,
W
J C
omm
unic
atio
ns, I
nc. i
s a
lead
ing
desi
gner
and
sup
plie
r of R
F so
lutio
ns
serv
ing
mul
tiple
mar
kets
targ
etin
g w
irele
ss c
omm
unic
atio
ns, R
FID
, bro
adba
nd
cabl
e, a
nd d
efen
se a
nd h
omel
and
secu
rity.
WJ
addr
esse
s th
e R
F ch
alle
nges
in
thes
e m
ultip
le m
arke
ts w
ith it
s hi
ghly
relia
ble
ampl
ifier
s, m
ixer
s, R
F in
tegr
ated
circ
uits
(RFI
Cs)
, RFI
D re
ader
mod
ules
, chi
pset
s, a
nd m
ulti-
chip
(M
CM
) mod
ules
.X
track
RFI
D S
mar
t la
bels
em
bedd
ed w
ith
Labe
ling
Smar
tlabe
l, W
AWF-
DD
250
with
inte
grat
ed
proc
essi
ng U
ID a
nd
RFI
D s
uppo
rt
Man
y in
dust
ries
are
affe
cted
by
both
Fed
eral
and
indu
stry
com
plia
nce
man
date
s an
d so
me
will
have
to c
ompl
y w
ith s
ever
al m
anda
tes.
Eac
h ha
s its
ow
n se
t of r
ules
, and
the
pena
lties
for n
on-c
ompl
ianc
e do
wn
to th
e le
vel o
f "a
mis
take
" can
cos
t you
mor
e th
an y
our p
rofit
s on
a s
hipm
ent.
Win
coID
aim
s at
as
sist
ing
thos
e un
der m
anda
te to
acq
uire
RFI
D ta
ggin
g.
RFI
D Q
uick
Sta
rt ki
tW
NS
iden
tifie
s ke
y bu
sine
ss p
roce
sses
that
can
be
impr
oved
with
wire
less
da
ta te
chno
logy
, cre
ates
dat
a co
llect
ion
solu
tions
, val
idat
es a
nd in
tegr
ates
the
solu
tion
into
you
r exi
stin
g in
frast
ruct
ure
utiliz
ing
Web
tool
s or
Tel
net C
lient
to
ols
to e
nsur
e co
nnec
tivity
and
com
mun
icat
ion
com
plet
enes
s.
Harvard Square Center 124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200 N.
Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: (617) 762-4040
Email: [email protected]. Website: www.clresearch.com