[06/17/08]
The Information and Telecommunication Technology Center (ITTC) at the University of Kansas has licensed manufacturing rights of its new Agility technology, which enables passive UHF RFID tags to perform reliably and efficiently in contrary environments, to Kansas City-based Starport Technologies.
"There is conventional wisdom in the industry that tag performance degrades when the tag is near metal, and that's just the way it is; the laws of physics dictate it to be so," says Daniel Deavours, principal investigator and ITTC research assistant professor. "Conventional wisdom is wrong: you can make tags so they work well in air and on metal. You can have your cake and eat it too."
The Agility technology provides the performance of expensive asset tags but at the cost and simplicity of foam-attached (FAT) tags. The FAT tag, a passive UHF inlay attached to a thin, flexible foam spacer, is designed to improve communication by creating distance between a transponder and metal. But the quick, cheap foam fix sacrifices performance.
Agility is a new kind of FAT tag that works much better because of its unique antenna design. An Agility tag achieves typical read ranges more than three times that of other FAT tags on metal and outperforms them on cardboard, plastic and other RF-friendly materials as well. Agility technology does not provide a ground plane or rigid substrate layer for spacing from metal, as expensive asset tags do; instead it uses the metal object it is attached to as a ground plane. Deavours incorporated the metal into the solution.
The Orion Tag, a standard EPC Gen 2 tag that uses the Alien Higgs 2 integrated circuit (IC), is expected to be commercially available by August.
"The performance of the Orion Tag using Agility technology is outstanding. We have measured read ranges up to 25 feet on metal," says Jeff Nedblake, principal and managing partner of Starport Technologies. "While foam tags have been around for some time, the Orion easily outperforms them. Once people see the Orion Tag perform, they will know the difference."
Starport initially licensed ITTC technology designed specifically to work on metal or objects containing liquid in rugged industrial environments in 2007. With the Agility technology, Starport gains a tag designed as a less expensive but less rugged alternative.
"The Center is pleased to be working again with Starport, and we hope to continue developing our relationship to advance RFID technologies," says Keith Braman, ITTC director of technology commercialization. "Our relationship is a good example of how ITTC works with area industry to improve their product offerings by transferring innovative technology out of our laboratory."
Deavours said Agility technology employs 1/8 inch of foam and maybe 1/16 inch in the future, while current tags use 3/16 inch or more. Extra-thin Agility tags have a lower profile and are less likely to be accidentally removed. According to Deavours, tags using Agility technology give approximately the same read distance on metal as they do on RF-friendly materials, typically 15-20 feet. Current, thicker FAT tags are reduced to less than six feet of read distance on metal.
More information on the Agility Tag technology can be found at www.ittc.ku.edu/AGILITY. More information about Starport products, including the Orion Tag, can be found at www.starporttech.com.
ITTC is a state-of-the-art KU research facility and Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation Center of Excellence. The Center supports multidisciplinary research and development in information systems, networks, telecommunications, bioinformatics, and radar systems.
The University of Kansas also housed the RFID Alliance Lab, a mainly research center for benchmarking RFID hardware and providing research report. The site can be found at http://www.rfidalliancelab.org/
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