Global IC technology company NXP Semiconductors has released a new chip aimed at being more sensitive and easier to assemble into labels, with brand-identification features. The UCODE 8 RAIN RFID chip is designed to make retail and other RFID technology deployments easier and more effective, the company reports. The UCODE 8 is the latest in the company’s UCODE family of chips that are built into ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID labels by global label manufacturers.
The new chip features 20 percent less power consumption compared to its closest competitor, according to NXP, based on increased sensitivity, and also offers fast and automatic response to interrogations from UHF readers in all global regions. What’s more, it comes with the capacity to include a dedicated ID number for a company using the label to provide brand authentication.
In addition, the new chip’s pad structure is designed to better accommodate the application of glue, in order to ensure a better connection between the chip and the antenna, thereby allowing for higher assembly speed and a more reliable, robust label for label manufacturers. These gains, says Ralf Kodritsch, NXP’s RFID solutions director, will enable retailers and brands to more effectively meet the needs of omnichannel sales by better understanding inventory levels and locations globally.
The chip’s greater sensitivity comes from the company’s engineering on the analog and digital portions of the chip, Kodritsch says. “We have also put a lot of focus in process technology,” he explains. As a result of this effort, the chip offers -23dBm read sensitivity.
The chip is available in two versions: one with 32 bits of user memory, and one without user memory. It comes with write sensitivity of -18dBm writing at a rate of 3.6 milliseconds for a full 96-bit Electronic Product Code (EPC) number. In the case of brand authentication, the chip features the ability for NXP to encode a brand identifier to chips for large brands. The chip could then be read when purchases are made, or when goods are received from a distribution center, and any label lacking that brand-identification number could be identified before the product ends up in consumers’ hands.
The auto-adjust feature in the chip enables it to be read faster and more effectively, no matter what region of the world it is in or to what material or product the label is applied. For instance, although the UHF band covers 860 MHZ to 960 MHz, Europe uses the UHF 865 to 868 MHz frequency range, while North America uses 902 to 928 MHz.
Currently, tags may not be read as reliably in a different region of the world if they were built for a specific frequency band. “One label may be optimized for a particular region,” Kodritsch says, such as Asia, and then be shipped through a distribution center in Europe, where it must be interrogated with a different frequency, and then to a store in North America with yet another frequency within the UHF band.
The assembly of labels with the UCODE 8 is made easier due to the unique shape of the chip’s pads. It comes with a four-sided pad structure that provides dual-axis glue spacer (space for glue to affix the chip to the antenna) along with the UCODE’s standard, corrosion-free, large-area gold bumps that ensure a better application of glues and thus faster, more effective assembly as the chips are affixed to antennas.
Although the chip is being marketed as a solution to support omnichannels in the retail sector, Kodritsch says, it is also intended for use in other industries. “Retail is the biggest market today,” he states, “but the UCODE 8 is perfectly suited for other applications in industrial, medical and fast-moving consumer goods sectors.”
The new chip is being sampled in July 2017 and is expected to be made commercially available in September. The company is demonstrating the new chip at its booth at RFID Journal LIVE! 2017, being held this week in Phoenix, Ariz. It has thus far been tested by Auburn University’s RFID Lab, Kodritsch reports, “and it’s already produced very promising results.”