Jun 08, 2023Presented here are recent news announcements in the radio frequency identification and Internet of Things industries.
Sensormatic Solutions Intros Acousto-Magnetic Metal Label
Sensormatic Solutions, a global retail solutions portfolio of Johnson Controls, has introduced a new acousto-magnetic (AM) metal label designed to protect high-risk products such as cookware, canned foods and power tools. "With shrink growing, securing high-risk and hard-to-protect products without impacting customer experiences will be key to ongoing success," said Craig Szklany, Sensormatic's VP and product general manager for loss prevention and liability, in a prepared statement. "Our new AM metal sheet label will help retailers safeguard previously vulnerable items with more precision while eliminating the friction that comes with locked cases and other physical barriers."
The AM metal labels, according to the company, were designed to protect merchandise with metal surfaces, addressing an ongoing pain point for retailers. The labels allow retailers to protect previously unprotectable items, reducing some risks associated with carrying these products, along with the labor demand associated with tagging and monitoring them. This labels are among three new options that Sensormatic Solutions offers to overcome the growing challenge of retail crime.
In addition, Sensormatic has expanded its magnetic InFuzion hard tag family, including an ink version for visual deterrence and a wide-gap version for thicker items and footwear, both with an integrated pin design to reduce tagging and checkout times, as well as self-checkout integration capabilities, and a benefit-denial version for visual theft deterrence in tough markets. Also released is a magnetic, two-tone alarming boot-wrap tag designed to tag and secure footwear without putting barriers between shoppers and merchandise.
"Across the industry and the globe, the number of retail crime incidents continues to rise," Szklany said in the statement. "In 2021, the U.S. alone saw a 27 percent increase in retail crime incidents. Our new selection of merchandise protection solutions is part of Sensormatic Solutions holistic response to this ongoing trend, intended to help retailers safeguard their merchandise, people, customers and bottom lines."
XO2Tech Offers AI and RFID Meal-Planning App
XO2Tech has announced its AI-Meal-Planner app, which provides an automatic list of recipes on a smartphone or refrigerator display. The app is based on a product inventory, or a specific product using RFID tag data to identify that item and generate recipes with a suggested or recommended list of products, ingredients and brands.
According to the company, the app provides several retail self-checkout or home purchase, delivery and payment options. It can automatically purchase missing ingredients to complete a recipe, and it can provide user account profile data to personalize generated product marketing materials. In addition, the app can provide product filters for users' food allergies, health conditions or food-related diseases, as well as supply product recall information.
Silicon Labs Dual-Band SoC Extends Connectivity for Multiple Protocols
Silicon Labs, a provider of secure, wireless connected technologies, has revealed its new dual-band FG28 SoC, designed for long-range networks and protocols like Amazon Sidewalk, Wi-SUN and other proprietary protocols. The FG28, according to the company, includes radios for sub-Gigahertz and 2.4 Ghz Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a built-in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) accelerator, and Silicon Labs' Secure Vault technology.
"The FG28 SoC addresses several key needs for our customers when it comes to developing and deploying low-power wide-area networks," said Daniel Cooley, Silicon Labs' chief technology officer, in a prepared statement. "By including Bluetooth, it gives users an easy way to provision and deploy new devices onto the network, while the sub-Ghz band is designed to support device communications over one mile, allowing for new edge applications in areas like smart agriculture, smart cities and neighborhood networks like Amazon Sidewalk."
As connectivity and computing power are pushed to the edge, Silicon Labs explains, emerging applications require solutions that can provide a variety of connectivity options. By providing sub-Ghz connectivity using networks like Wi-SUN, the FG28 can serve as the battery-operated end node in smart cities, for example. It can act as a tracker on dumpsters to locate them and check the last time they were emptied, or in irrigation systems across multi-acre commercial farming operations, or as livestock trackers and health monitors on sprawling ranches. Bluetooth connectivity allows devices to be deployed on the network, and it enables operators to connect to the devices locally for diagnostics, data downloads and other purposes.
The integrated AI/ML hardware accelerator allows for machine learning inference at the edge, enabling predictive maintenance warnings and the monitoring of soil conditions for moisture and pH levels. Other features include 1024 kB of flash storage and 256 kB of RAM, to meet the memory needs of a range of protocols and technology stacks; Secure Vault Mid and High support, to build device trust and allow designers to choose the level of security they need for their applications; an energy-efficient radio core with low active and sleep currents and fast wakeup times, for use with battery-operated end nodes; and up to 49 general-purpose input/output pins for peripheral connectivity.
5G Open Innovation Lab Partners with F5, GXC, Spirent Communications
The 5G Open Innovation Lab, along with ecosystem partners F5, GXC and Spirent Communications, has announced a collaboration to showcase an enterprise private mobile network (PMN) solution for hard-to-reach locations, designed to provide greater security, control and resilience, as well as lower operational costs. As 5G infrastructure becomes more mainstream, the 5G Open Innovation Lab explains, enterprises and organizations are deploying more private networks and telco clouds into strategic locations to leverage newly available connectivity, lower latency and agility.
According to the 5G Open Innovation Lab, the consistent throughput and capacity on these PMNs are intended to bring 5G to revenue-driven use cases such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and network slicing, while enabling security to expand beyond legacy policies and be thoroughly tested. In edge use cases, the lab explains, there is a need for local breakout to route traffic as part of a mobile edge compute infrastructure, or hosted within a data center.
F5, a hybrid and multi-cloud application services and security company, deployed carrier-grade BIG-IP Virtual Editions. These security functions were consolidated with an N6/SGi-LAN solution, adding a layer of speed and security at the network level. Critical functions such as Firewall, DDoS, Secure DNS, CGNAT, TCP and Video Optimization with this consolidated N6 configuration are already running in high-volume Tier 1 providers.
GXC, a NaaS communications early-stage tech company which is part of the 5G Open Innovation Lab ecosystem, contributed its distributed mesh configuration for deployment of a private network with the coverage and capacity of a cellular network. This collaboration was validated using Spirent's Landslide test and emulation platform. The telecom testing company's solution provided device and RAN emulation to create a diversity of traffic flows across multiple data networks through the 5G core, which is monitored and managed by F5.
The solution was pressure-tested through technology made available through the lab and its enterprise and operator partners, deployed with GXC's ONYX Portal. F5's BIG-IP Virtual Editions will optimize traffic flows between the lab and the content network, enabling visibility of user activity and security against unwarranted traffic ingress. The Landslide AMF Nodal application will bring real-world traffic modelling to emulate 5G mobile subscribers and 5G access nodes, performing a realistic distribution of traffic flows across slices and DNNs toward emulated content servers supported by the core.
AsReader, Xemelgo Unveil App to Guide Manufacturers on Tagging
Last year, Walmart announced plans to require suppliers to perform RFID tagging on products before shipping them. Many suppliers rushed to meet the retailer's demands but discovered obstacles in tagging their products, making the mandate difficult or impossible to satisfy. The main obstacle for RFID has been source tagging, as some suppliers could not detect whether tags were correct, or they had duplicate information, while others had the wrong encoding for the tags, or no information imprinted on the tags at all. With that in mind, AsReader, in partnership with Xemelgo, has developed a free app called the QC Checker, now available at the App Store.
Using either AsReader's sled, pocket, dock-type or gun-type scanning devices (pictured above), suppliers can read an RFID tag and discover encoding errors or duplicated tags, as well as confirm the correct information is encoded. Users can determine whether a tag is encoded with an EPC number and if it matches the correct UPC, and locate multiple tags encoded with the same EPC. The app works with AsReader's ASR-0230D (barcode and RFID) and ASR-L251G gun and ASR-030D (RFID only) sleds.
Similar to how barcodes are ubiquitous in retail, RFID has been moving into the mainstream. "We have seen dramatic results in our ability to ensure product is available for our customers, leading to improved online order fulfillment and customer satisfaction," Shelly McDougal, Walmart's senior director of merchandising, told RFID Journal in January 2022 (see Walmart Recommits to RFID).
"Meeting the Walmart mandate for manufacturers set a high bar," said Kris Doane, AsReader's innovative business development executive, in a prepared statement. "Some have never worked with RFID tagging before, and this isn't something you enter into lightly. Suppliers may need some added support and navigation to ensure they're providing the correct info to Walmart, both for the staff and for their customers, and the QC Checker is here to do this for them."
