Nov 04, 2009NXP Semiconductors, the world's largest producer of microchips used in radio frequency transponders, has shared with RFID Journal its plans for new products over the next few years. The company intends to introduce new ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) chips based on the ISO 18000-6C protocol by the end of this year, a dual-frequency chip (HF and UHF) in 2011, and the further evolution of its Mifare chips, including enhanced security.
"We remain committed to the RFID business in a big way," says Tim Newsom, NXP's director of marketing and business strategy for RFID in the Americas. "It's a healthy, profitable business for us, and we believe the market will only continue to grow."
In 2007, NXP introduced its Ucode G2XL and G2XM chips—two UHF chips based on the ISO 18000-6C standard (which is the same as EPCglobal's Gen 2 protocol) and offering a longer read range and strong use-case performance (see NXP Boosts EPC Gen 2 Tag Memory, Performance). Newsom anticipates NXP's newest ISO 18000-6C chips will perform better in applications than the top UHF chips currently available, and that the chips will begin shipping before the end of the year. "We hope to share more information very soon on the products' details," he says, "but it will offer some interesting new use cases, and continue to support the traditional ones with higher performance."
"We focused on high performance in the total use case with our previous UHF chips, and were behind the leader in pure read range," Newsom said during a meeting with RFID Journal at the company's Applications and Systems Center (ASC) in Graz, Austria (for more information on the center, see Optimizing Chip and Tag Designs in the Lab). "With these new chips, we'll improve upon the performance available today, and remain a leader in application performance."
Testing and application support conducted at NXP's ASC focuses on ensuring tags that incorporate NXP chips are fully interoperable with all application hardware and tags, including those made with competitors' chips. "We are certain our chip will not only outperform in applications," Newsom states, "it will also be fully interoperable, because of the support of the ASC."
Heinze Elzinga, NXP's director of product management, indicates that his company is "in the early phases of the development" of a new integrated circuit that will operate at both HF and UHF. "The product features have been defined," he says, "and the development team is now working on the design."
"Customers have been requesting a dual-frequency IC," Elzinga explains. "We have customers already using our HF products—i.e., the I-code—in applications for product authentication. NFC modules are currently being deployed in mobile phones, and therefore, consumers can interact via RFID with the product. The combination of HF and UHF allows for the maximum benefits of RFID. Companies can use UHF when data needs to be managed over a longer distance in production control and supply chain. And with a retail shop or the home environment, low-cost 13.56 MHz readers can be used."
The chip will comply with the EPC Gen 2 UHF protocol and the ISO 18000-3 Mode 1 HF standard, established specifically for item-level applications (in contrast, Newsom says, the ISO 14443 and 15693 protocols were created for proximity and vicinity smart-card applications, respectively). Newsom and Elzinga envision the dual-frequency chips will be incorporated in tags that companies will utilize for product authentication and supply chain management, and that consumers will read the tags by means of NFC-enabled devices, such as cell phones, supporting the ISO 18000-3 Mode 1 standard. NXP expects that the dual-frequency tag will be used in applications at an item level for product authentication or functionality that will enhance consumer experiences with brands.
The dual-frequency chip is not meant to be used in ultra-low-cost tags, Elzinga says, as it will likely include a large amount of user memory—enough to encode product data, authentication or consumer information. But the additional expense of adding components to the chip to support communication using a second frequency, he notes, is not significant. "In some applications," Elzinga says, "where the HF infrastructure is installed or consumers want to use their NFC phone for product authentication, a dual-frequency tag will be required," because companies will also want to employ the UHF band to read that same tag when that item is making its way through the supply chain.
NXP continues to enhance the features of its Mifare chips, which the company claims are the most widely used RFID chip in the world, with more than 1 billion units sold to date. One growing market for Mifare is transportation ticketing. "There are some issues in the transportation market, such as privacy and the sharing of data," says Martin Gruber, NXP's marketing director for automatic fare collection. "If you have trains, buses and others using e-tickets, who acts as a clearinghouse for the data so people can use the tickets nationwide? We're actively working on ways to address these issues at the chip level."
Another big market for RFID chips is electronic passports. NXP estimates that only 250 million of the 1 billion passports currently in circulation contain RFID transponders (of which 80 percent use NXP chips), so new passports and ongoing replacements will remain an important business.
