Apr 26, 2012The following are news announcements made during the past week.
Bluesfest Program Includes Intellitix RFID Solution
RFID has found its way into Canada's largest blues festival, the RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest, and will be used for cashless payment and access control. The festival, which runs July 4-15 in Ottawa, Ontario, is using technology supplied by Intellitix, a provider of RFID access-control and cashless-payment solutions. The solution leverages Intellitix custom-built access control portals that feature Feig Electronics reader antennas, have multiple battery backups and are hard-wired for Internet and Wi-Fi connectivity. The access portals also are rated IP65, meaning that testing has confirmed it is dustproof and waterproof. The solution also includes wristbands with ISO 15693-compliant inlays and handheld RFID readers from M3 Mobile. According to Intellitix, more than a quarter-of-a-million music fans will be able to use their RFID wristband to pay for food, drink and other goods around the site, while the chip securely stores their entrance tickets. The technology also prevents any counterfeit ticketing, the company says. Intellitix has provided similar solutions to other customers, including Eurosonic Noorderslag, an annual festival and conference in Holland, to showcase new music (see Eurosonic Noorderslag Attendees Use RFID to Access Concerts, Workshops and Panels).
Ekahau's Quarterly Results Indicate Healthy Growth for RTLS Market in 2012
Ekahau, a provider of Wi-Fi-based real-time location system (RTLS) solutions, has announced that its first quarter 2012 RTLS business doubled compared to the previous year. During the first quarter of 2012, the company says it added 27 major enterprise-wide RTLS customers, while over the past 12-month period, it provided solutions to over 800 small and large enterprise customers worldwide. The Ekahau Site Survey family of Wi-Fi tools had the best quarter since the product was launched in 2003. According to Antti Korhonen, Ekahau's president and CEO, the growth exceeded all of Ekahau's financial targets and indicates that the RTLS market is shifting toward Wi-Fi-based solutions. Ekahau's RTLS technology lets users track any assets in real time throughout a campus, using active Wi-Fi tags. Korhonen says Ekahau closed more deals compared with a year ago, and both the quantity and the average deal size is bigger. The largest growth sector has been in health care. "For hospitals this technology acts as a painkiller for their financial problems, and generates significant operational savings fast," he says, adding that deployments in the health-care RTLS marketing are shifting from single hospitals to multi-hospital, enterprise deployments. The company reports that the value of the RTLS is in improving operational efficiencies as well as staff and patient safety. Ekahau says its customers typically achieve a 200 percent ROI over the first 12-month period. Korhonen also points to plan announced by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to implement RTLS in 152 medical centers and 1,400 community clinics and non-patient VHA facilities (see U.S. Veterans Department Announces RFP for Nationwide RTLS Solution) as indicative of Wi-Fi-enabled RTLS taking hold. Per the VA Department's RFP, the system may include active RFID tags (predominantly Wi-Fi-based), as well as passive RFID tags, to address four use cases: asset management, temperature tracking, supply chain management and sterilization process flow management. Ekahau already supplies Wi-Fi-enabled RTLS to some VA hospitals, including the VA Nebraska—Western Iowa Health Care System.
Xerafy Secures $5M
In its first funding round ever, industrial RFID tag supplier Xerafy has announced that it has secured a $5 million Series A Funding from IPV Capital. Xerafy says the money will be used to help fuel growth and business expansion, including the penetration of new key markets and expansion of Xerafy's product offerings to customers. Among its products, is the newly announced Metal Skin, a ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID inlay compliant with EPCglobal's standards and designed for tracking metal assets, as well as its XS Series of RFID tags, which are tiny passive EPC Gen 2 read-on-metal RFID tag designed for source tagging of small tools and surgical instruments. "Our products are proven, we are expanding our team, and sales growth is strong. We are honored that IPV Capital supports our vision to bring a global wave of adoption for RFID in industries beyond retail," Dennis Khoo, CEO of Xerafy, said in a prepared statement. The funding, according to Khoo, will allow Xerafy to keep accelerating in size and speed and support its new manufacturing plant in Nantong, China.
RFID provider Intelleflex has announced a partnership with DeltaTrak, a provider of cold chain management solutions, including portable test instruments and software that monitor and record environmental conditions for the aerospace industry (see Aerospace Materials Provider Automates Prepreg Temperature-Tracking). The partnership will enable DeltaTrak to extend its family of cold chain solutions by offering Intelleflex tags and readers under the DeltaTrak brand. Intelleflex's product line includes its battery-assisted passive (BAP) RFID tags, which are based on the company's XC3 technology, which is complies with the ISO/IEC 18000-6 and EPCglobal Gen 2 RFID standards. The tags are designed for temperature monitoring, asset tracking and other applications, to enable wireless, on-demand, product-level monitoring. According to the company, the technology enables the tags to have a read distances up to 100 meters (328 feet) in open air, or to be readable in RF-challenging environments that include metals, liquids and inside packages and containers. The company reports that its patented technology is uniquely suited for the cold supply chain, in which product-level monitoring is critical but has been cost-prohibitive to date. Under the terms of the agreement, DeltaTrak will offer XC3 Technology-based fixed, cellular and handheld readers and TMT-8500 temperature monitoring tags to customers throughout the world. DeltaTrak will also incorporate Intelleflex's recently announced Zest Data Services into its solution offerings. The Zest Data Services platform is designed to receive and manage data acquired from each RFID read (see Intelleflex Launches Self-Contained Reader to Bring Visibility to Remote Sites). "The importance of food safety, brand protection, and compliance with new and future regulations has never been greater than it is today," Frederick Wu, president and CEO of DeltaTrak, said in a prepared statement. "The partnership of DeltaTrak and Intelleflex makes it possible for us to integrate modern XC3 technology RFID products into DeltaTrak's applications and solutions for our customers."
HID Global Unveils Manufacturing Process for Smallest LF Tags, Expands Latin American Presence
HID Global has announced a new manufacturing process that it says enables the use of the world's smallest integrated low-frequency (LF) chips ever produced for contactless ID applications. The process, which leverages the company's patented direct-bonding technology, allows HID Global to attach an antenna to a chip surface less than 0.3 millimeters square, which is smaller than the pinpoint of a needle. This area is 50 to 75 percent smaller than the industry's smallest chips previously used for deployment in LF radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and transponders, according to HID Global. In doing so, the company reports, the integrated chips use less material, thereby improving production efficiencies for chip manufacturers and enabling the use of increasingly smaller form factors for finished RFID tag products. Previously, RFID engineers were restricted by process limitations as equipment could not handle the tiny chips, nor could effective antennas be mounted to them, according to HID Global. "We've been successful in producing smaller chips with different memory size options," Chris Feige, general manager for tags and labels at NXP Semiconductors, said in a prepared statement. "Now, HID Global has eliminated the barriers to integrating these micro-sized chips into tiny RFID solutions, allowing our next generation chip to reach its full potential." In addition, HID Global's new manufacturing process offers RFID system engineers more design options. For example, there is more room for a larger antenna, which can improve read range and performance, and in space-restricted applications, engineers can now design smaller form factors without compromising performance, HID Global says, adding that these smaller chip and antenna combinations would be ideal for glass tags for animal identification. HID Global also announced it has opened an office in Mexico City that will enable the company to deliver more comprehensive and responsive support and other services to customers and integrator partners in the region. "Mexico and adjacent markets in Latin America represent important emerging growth opportunities for HID Global. We are excited to be establishing a substantial presence here, from which we can provide our customers and partners with a variety of important resources, tools and services," said Humberto De la Vega, HID Global's VP of sales for Latin America and the Caribbean, in a prepared statement.
Kathrein RFID Intros UHF Reader
German RFID company Kathrein RFID has announced a new mid-range ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID reader compliant with the EPC Gen 2 and ISO 18000-6C specifications. The M-ARU RS232 has is waterproof and dustproof, earning it an IP65 rating, and making it suitable for production-automation applications and on forklifts and features a circular dual-feed patch antenna. According to the company, the device can achieve read distances of up to 1.5 meters. The initial version of the device is equipped with an RS232 interface and two digital inputs and outputs. An additional version featuring an Ethernet interface is in development. Like all other Kathrein RFID systems, the M-ARU functions with the KBRP protocol, which is Kathrein RFID's proprietary protocol to control all the readers.
