Alien Technology Releases Slim Tag, Windows Mobile RFID Handhelds mobile_rfid

Sep 25, 2012For RFID tag users unable to find a passive EPC ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tag slim enough for their particular applications, Alien Technology has released a possible solution. The SlimLine tag (ALN-9745), available as a dry inlay (without an adhesive layer) or as a wet inlay, is intended to be slender enough to place in a book's spine or along the side of a mobile phone. The dry inlay includes alignment targets (dots on either side of the antenna, used by some inlay-converting machines to optically align RFID die), but if the targets are unnecessary, they may be ignored, thereby reducing the inlay's length from 5.8 millimeters (0.23 inch) down to 3.05 millimeters (0.12 inch). The dry inlay's width is 94.0 millimeters (3.7 inches). The wet inlay (which includes a lower layer of adhesive and an overlay made of thermal transfer printable white film) measures 9.0 millimeters by 97.2 millimeters (0.35 inches by 3.83 inches).

The SlimLine inlay, released this week, is currently being tested by companies in North America, Asia and Europe. Simultaneously, Alien is releasing the next generation of its ALH-9000 series handheld readers. The new handhelds, models ALH-9010 and ALH-9011, operate with Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system for mobile phones. Alien's first handhelds, the ALH-9000 and ALH-9001 models—launched in April 2011 (see Alien Technology Announces New IC, Handheld Readers and Inlays)—employ the Windows CE 5.0 operating system (Alien will continue to offer CE versions).

The release of the new tag and readers, says Neil Mitchell, Alien Technology's director of marketing, reflects continued growth in the RFID market, as well as the company's commitment to the products it sells—namely, the ALH series handhelds and the Higgs-4 chip, used in the SlimLine tag.

The SlimLine inlay is designed for end users that, until now, have had a hard time fitting UHF tags to the items they wish to track. The new solution aims to enable the tagging of books, pharmaceutical packets, cigarette packs and other narrow items. Customers are already testing the tags, Mitchell says, including a company in Asia that, as a test, applied the tags to every page of a book and then read the closed book, thereby capturing all of the tag IDs. "The tags are providing very high performance," he states, noting that the Higgs-4 chip typically provides a read range of about 33 feet (10 meters).

Mitchell speculates that the cost of the tag may be slightly less than that of larger tags, since its antenna requires less aluminum, adding, "but it will be in the same ball park."

The ALH-9010 and ALH-9011 readers are also intended to solve problems for customers that may have determined RFID to be out of reach for their use cases because they were unable to obtain interrogators designed to operate with Windows Mobile 6.5.

The ALH-9010 comes with Wi-Fi capability, a 1-D bar-code reader, USB connectivity and a 3.5-inch QVGA touch screen. The ALH-9011 includes the same features, plus a camera, a 2-D bar-code scanner, Bluetooth capability, high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) cellular connectivity, GPS functionality and an additional battery in the reader handle.

Tagit Solutions, a California-based RFID tracking solutions provider, will offer the new Windows Mobile reader to customers that request it. The firm has already built solutions for businesses worldwide, using ALH-9000 series readers, to manage such assets as servers or office equipment.

The Alien readers contain faster processors and greater memory capacity than most handheld interrogators currently on the market, says Sandee Mukherjee, Tagit's VP of business development. Because of that increased processing power, he says, the company is able to provide the algorithms necessary to operate multiple functions on the reader software. For example, Tagit has developed a solution utilized by several Fortune 400 companies to locate servers within a large data center. A user can simply launch the system on a handheld reader, and then begin walking between the shelves of servers. The handheld will capture the unique ID number of each server's tag, as well as each shelf's tag. The software then compares the signal strength of the server tags against that of the shelf tags, and determines on which specific shelf the server is mounted.

In another application, Tagit is helping a West Coast city track its voting equipment. When the equipment is shipped to a voting location, city employees use the Alien handheld, with Tagit Solutions software loaded, to scan all items transported. The software compares that information with GPS data indicating the objects' locations, and reviews what equipment is intended for that site, issuing an alert in the event that a discrepancy is discovered.

Other handheld readers could manage the same software, Mukherjee says, but not as fast.

According to Mitchell, many users of Alien handheld readers have been in the retail environment, as well as in distribution centers. "This year has been very good for us," he says. "There's been a big uptick in RFID across the board, but we've especially seen that growth in retail in the past six months."