Gentag to Commercialize Super RFID Technology

The tag could also be useful for search-and–rescue operations, or to locate a missing asset (such as a vehicle or boat), by installing mobile RR readers in helicopters or other vehicles. In this case, the Gentag system could pinpoint its location using a GPS satellite in a way similar to how the military utilizes it.

In addition, Peeters says, the system could locate firefighters or other rescue personnel. Employees could be tracked via triangulation by fixed RR interrogators located within a building, or from mobile RR readers mounted on nearby vehicles, perhaps even a helicopter. Moreover, sensors on the tags could gather vital information—such as temperature, or the presence of toxic gas—and the tag could transmit that data to the RR interrogators. RR tag batteries are expected to have a life span of about one year, since they operate in low-power mode until receiving a wake-up signal from a reader.

Within two or three years, Peeters states, Gentag hopes to see RR tags embedded in cell phones, and to deploy RR interrogators on cellular towers. "What this would then do," he says, "is allow precise geolocation [of individual cell phones] in buildings. Current cell-phone technology does not allow that." Because the system enables added sensor functionality, Peeters also envisions using it for long-distance monitoring of structures, such as tracking stress levels on bridges.

Peeters estimates Gentag will have an ASIC-based RR tag ready for the market in about one year. In the meantime, the company is compiling potential customers. Interested parties so far, he says, include an airport, which hopes to use the technology to track the movements of luggage, and to match passengers with bags on a single aircraft; a national government interested in tracking citizens susceptible to being kidnapped; and a large sorting facility seeking to track items within its premises.

Gentag is taking steps to quell privacy concerns by encoding the chips only with unique ID numbers. The company intends to make it possible for those numbers to be linked to additional data in a user's back-end system, Peeters explains, or to a server hosted by Gentag. Furthermore, the company plans to provide the requisite interrogators, labels, software (to move data from readers and satellites to a user's back-end system or to a Web-based server) and integration services (if the data is directed to a back-end system). Prices are expected to be in line with active RFID systems currently available. "This is not an expensive solution," Peeters says.