Dec 02, 2014German engineering firm Siemens is beginning the shipment of three new fixed EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID readers this month that, according to the company, are aimed at making the deployment of RFID systems in industrial and logistics settings simpler and less expensive. The Simatic RF680R and RF685R readers, geared toward use by manufacturers and other industrial companies, are intended to be less expensive to install since they do not require the same degree of preliminary testing most RFID systems need in order to ensure that they will operate well within a specific environment. The Simatic RF650R, meanwhile, is built for "light-industrial" applications and costs about 30 percent less than the other two models.
Siemens sells a wide variety of electrical and electronics-related products and services. In 2005, the company released its first UHF RFID readers intended to serve the industrial market, as well as logistics centers and warehouses, with a ruggedized design built to read well in environments that can include the presence of metal, numerous conveyor belts onto which readers may be attached, and heavy equipment for moving automotive parts and other items through portals and past readers. In fact, says Markus Weinländer, the head of product management at Simatic Ident (the company's division for automatic identification products and services), Siemens began developing the first UHF RFID readers because it found that there were not any effective readers built specifically for the use cases of industrial companies, like manufacturers.
The most recent Simatic readers build on the company's existing portfolio of UHF readers, the RF600 series. The RF680R connects to four external antennas and can be set to interrogate tags only within its immediate vicinity. The RF685R has a built-in antenna that can use both circular and linear polarization to improve read rates. The RF650R has the same functionality as the RF680R, but features a lower IP rating and lacks the Programmable Logic Computer (PLC) integration functionality built into the other two models, so it can be sold at about a 30 percent lower cost.
The older reader models of the RF600 series will be gradually phased out, Weinländer says, while replacement parts will typically remain available for up to 10 years.
Siemens has been developing the three latest readers to meet the changing needs of its customers, Weinländer says. The companies that use Siemens readers—such as car manufacturers, automotive-parts companies, pharmaceutical firms and logistics providers—have been expanding their use of RFID from one or two key read locations within their facilities, to RFID systems that extend through work-in-progress, warehouse and supply chain management. However, he notes, many businesses still consider the deployment of UHF RFID a risky endeavor, since there may be considerable work around the reader installation to ensure that they can capture the RFID numbers on tags within a specific setting, but only those tags directly in front of them.
According to Weinländer, Siemens' customers worldwide found that, for some situations, the installation of RFID readers was too expensive, given the quantities needed. For instance, most customers are installing 30, 40 or 50 readers within a facility, and occasionally hundreds of units. For some companies, he says, installing high-frequency (HF) RFID or bar-code systems seems to be less expensive and require less testing to ensure that the devices are operational.
Siemens' three new readers are intended to lower implementation costs by making the set-up, commissioning and maintenance of the reader infrastructure easier. "We did a lot of research and development for our reader antennas," Weinländer says, to make the devices easier to install and configure. Traditionally, he explains, users install an interrogator with either a circular or linear antenna, and then must test the reader and antennas to ensure that they function properly in that environment. In some cases, users would need to test several readers or repeatedly relocate a reader's antenna before they were able to achieve the necessary read rate. While users may still want to test the new Siemens readers, the length and quantity of those tests would be reduced.
The RF685R comes with a built-in adaptive "polarization variable antenna" that can operate as a circular antenna, as well as a linear version. The reader can be manually set for use in linear or circular mode, or it can automatically alternate from circular to linear as necessary, in order to improve read rates. In this way, users can simply install and power up the reader. This is intended to reduce the need to switch out or move readers or antennas to ascertain the proper orientation.
The RF680R comes with the same reader hardware. Instead of including the built-in variable-polarization antenna, however, it can be connected to as many as four exterior antennas that a user could install as needed.
The RF650R, RF680R and RF685 are also designed for deployments within a small space (such as an assembly or logistics area) requiring multiple readers—for instance, at a location where several conveyor belts are situated close to each other, each requiring its own reader. For such an environment, the new readers have two features to ensure that they capture no stray reads intended for a neighboring reader. They can dial down their radio power automatically, Weinländer explains, and can set their algorithms to differentiate the angle from which a tag is being interrogated, as well as filter out all tag reads that are not coming from directly in front of—or under—a reader. What's more, all three models are designed so that end users can easily install the devices and configure the read settings according to their needs, thereby resulting in lower implementation costs.
Users can integrate both the RF680R and RF685R readers into automation systems by connecting them to a controller via a Profinet port. Siemens makes such controllers—the Simatic S7, for instance.
The RF650R is similar to the RF680R, also with four antenna ports, but is priced 30 percent lower. It has an IP30 rating, rather than IP65 (which both the RF680R and RF685R have). Unlike the RF680R and RF685R, it does not come with PLC integration—easy-to-use software "function blocks" for PLC programming. The IP30 rating makes the RF650R model less rugged than its RF680R and RF685R counterparts. Customers in Asia and India, as well as others globally, have asked for this low-cost alternative to make RFID deployments less expensive.
Each of the new readers also has diagnostic functionality that is intended to reduce the need for maintenance by detecting a problem automatically. That diagnostic feature measures the reader's signal strength, recording frequency and transmission power, and the resulting data can then be accessed via an Internet connection.
The company expects to begin shipping all three new readers to customers next week.
This summer the RF685R reader was piloted at four different locations, though the end users have asked not to be named. In one deployment, tagged items were moved through a reader portal within a logistics environment. The RF685R was also tested for its ability to track parts in a kanban material flow system used in automotive manufacturing. For this deployment, the parts' tags were interrogated as trolleys carried the components toward assembly stations.
A third scenario was a pilot in which vehicles had passive UHF tags attached inside one of their wheel housings, and each car's tag was read at the paint shop after the painted vehicle came out of the oven. The RF685R was configured to interrogate tags in a tightly focused zone about 1 meter (3.3 feet) away, thereby preventing stray reads from tags not located directly in front of the reader. This, Weinländer says, contrasts with traditional UHF readers that typically have a 15-meter (49-foot) read range in that type of environment and thus would interrogate tags on vehicles during a different phase of the paint and assembly process.
A fourth pilot involved testing how well a UHF RFID software solution could manage data collected from the RF685R reader. The provider of that solution has also asked to remain unnamed. Although only the RF685R reader was piloted, Weinländer notes, the other two models have the same hardware and, therefore, can be expected to operate as well in the real-world setting.
"We have customers asking us about the three readers from all over the globe," Weinländer states. He predicts the devices will make it manageable for companies that require the reading of tags within a variety of environments—such as in an assembly area, in a warehouse or by a customer—to install a single RFID reader infrastructure for the tags throughout the supply chain.
