French RFID technology company ELA Innovation has released a compact RFID reader for its proprietary 433 MHz active RFID tags. The device, known as the Sciel Reader Lite, measures about 3.75 inches by 1.5 inches by 0.75 inch, is designed to fit under or on a truck’s dashboard, and plugs into an automatic vehicle location (AVL) device (typically, a piece of equipment that combines GPS technology with a cellular communication unit). The reader would identify the tags attached to goods being transported by that truck, and the AVL would then transmit that information to the company managing the vehicle.
ELA Innovation spent its first four years developing active RFID tags and readers that were smaller than similar hardware already on the market, while offering a longer read range and life cycle. The firm is now focusing much of its business on the cold chain industry, in order to track the locations and conditions of goods being transported.
An ELA tag consumes very little power, according to Willy Le Mercier, ELA’s commercial business development manager. This, he explains, is because the tag is designed to transmit a low power pulse, via a proprietary air-interface protocol, in the microwatt range as opposed to milliwatts used by other active RFID tags. This low power consumption, Le Mercier reports, results in an average tag battery life of up to 10 years.
ELA’s latest reader, the Sciel Reader Lite, is the smallest that the company has developed to date, and is designed to be easily attached to a dashboard so that a user can begin collecting data regarding tagged goods in the trailer—as well as the driver if he, too, is wearing an RFID tag in a badge. The reader comes with an internal RFID antenna. However, Le Mercier says, read range can be boosted from about 15 meters (49 feet) to approximately 80 meters (262 feet) with the installation of an external antenna. Like ELA’s other readers, the Sciel Reader Lite model serves as a “hub” for active tags that can also transmit sensor data, such as temperature, humidity and door-lock status. The hub receives the RFID transmissions and forwards the data to a server via an AVL unit’s cellular connection.
ELA was founded in 2000 to provide active RFID tags and readers that were compact and offered long read ranges. Compared with passive RFID tags, active tags can generally be interrogated at a greater distance, and their signals can pass more readily through a trailer wall or other materials. However, an active tag’s larger size (compared with that of a passive tag) can make it cumbersome to attach to any small item. Engineers at ELA thus developed their own integrated circuit, as well as an antenna design that would allow for a very small form factor, even with the inclusion of a battery. ELA’s tags are compact; the company’s smallest tag, the Coin ID, measures just 36 millimeters (1.4 inches) in diameter and 10 millimeters (0.39 inch) in thickness, with a read range of up to 80 meters in open air.
ELA initially developed RFID hardware for tracking tools and equipment in the logistics industry, as well as man-down alarm technology. The firm began offering an RFID system with temperature monitoring capabilities for the transportation of blood products in 2008, Le Mercier says, and a year later introduced a solution for counting workers in tunnel construction areas to ensure site safety.
During the past few years, the company’s greatest growth has been in the deployment of what it calls “telematics solutions” for trucks and trailers, in which data about goods and drivers is transmitted via wireless sensors and tags to a reader, and is then forwarded by a cellular connection to a back-end server. Most of ELA’s technology is sold to NAOCOM and other fleet-management solutions providers, which, in turn, sell packages to customers that include ELA Innovation’s tags and reader, as well as an AVL device and the fleet-management solutions provider’s own software and integration services. The systems are used to identify the conditions of goods within a trailer, along with when a trailer door may be opened. That culled information is paired with GPS-based data collected by a user’s AVL box and sent to a server. Users can receive alerts of such events as the unexpected opening of a trailer, or the breeching of an accepted temperature range within the trailer.
One early adopter of a Sciel reader is a construction firm that tracks the movements of construction tools and the truck driver’s identity as the tools are delivered and then retrieved from the construction site each day. The French construction firm using a Sciel reader has attached ELA’s Coin ID tags to its various tools that are typically high in value but also small and highly portable, and thus at risk of being misplaced or stolen from a construction site. Tools are stored in trailers, and the trucks used to haul those trailers to the work site are equipped with a reader that interrogates the ID of each tag on the equipment. That information is then sent to the back-end software in order to identify which tools are being transported to a particular construction site.
At the end of the day, workers return the tools to the trailer, which is transported back to the company’s equipment depot. As the trailer leaves the work site, the reader captures the tag ID numbers once more, and forwards that data to the server. If the software determines that any piece of equipment is missing, a text message can be sent to the driver, warning him that a specific item was not returned. Because the driver is also wearing ELA’s Thinline IR tag, designed for tracking personnel, the software knows which driver and vehicle is transporting which equipment, for the company’s own records.
According to Le Mercier, ELA’s RFID sensor tags—which include the Coin RH, with a built-in humidity sensor, or the Coin T, with a temperature sensor—are likely to be used most frequently with the new Sciel Reader Lite, thereby providing data about the conditions inside the trailer throughout the transportation of blood products, produce or other goods. Initially, most of ELA’s customers are located in France, but the company is marketing the technology throughout Europe and intends to provide it to end users and systems integrators worldwide during the coming years. Le Mercier predicts that within the next two years, several thousand Sciel Reader Lite devices will be in use around the globe.
In the meantime, Le Mercier says, ELA is “focused on development,” with plans to release even smaller, longer-range tags. In addition, the company intends to extend its reader and sensor portfolio.