Apr 11, 2011—Alien Technology is unveiling a passel of new products—an addition to its ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) Gen 2 integrated circuit family, a line of handheld readers, and four RFID inlays—at this week's RFID Journal LIVE! 2011 conference, being held on Apr. 12-14, in Orlando, Fla.

The Higgs 4 integrated circuit is the newest member of Alien's widely used Higgs family of RFID tag chips. The company has migrated much of the performance and functionality of the Higgs 3 model into the Higgs 4 IC—though with the Higgs 4, says Mike Frieswyk, Alien's VP of sales and marketing, the company has made improvements to the chip's RF-sensitivity and noise-interference capabilities, which he says will boost the reliability and performance of the RFID tags in which the chip is used. The major change in the Higgs 4 version is a decrease in the chip's overall memory (512 bits in Higgs 4, versus 800 bits in Higgs3), and how that memory is allotted.

Alien's handheld EPC readers feature a 3.5-inch color touch screen and a built-in bar-code reader.

Whereas the Electronic Product Code (EPC) portion of the memory bank in a Higgs 3 chip (which Alien will continue to manufacture) can be configured from 96 bits up to 480 bits, the EPC field in a Higgs 4 chip is fixed at 128 bits. The Higgs 3 model has 512 bits of user memory, while Higgs 4 has 128 bits. (Like its predecessor, the Higgs 4 version stores a 64-bit unique tag ID, and sets aside 32 bits of memory for an access password and another 32 bits for a kill password.)

"We looked at how our customers were using the chip's memory," Frieswyk explains. "In 90 percent of the usage models, they weren't using [all of] the user memory." Reducing the user memory in the Higgs 4, he says, will make tags utilizing that chip more affordable than those using the Higgs 3 iteration, since memory equals cost. End users who want more than 128 bits of user memory can employ tags with Higgs 3 chips instead.

Alien intends to make samples of the Higgs 4 chip available in June 2011, with general availability scheduled for late September. The company, however, has yet to release pricing information.

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Alien Technology Announces New IC, Handheld Readers and Inlays

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