RFID

A neat "robot" terminal has just been announced by electronics giant NEC. It combines a touch-sensitive screen in its chest with an RFID reader terminal for gathering data from the e-money phones that are popular in Japan.

Kovio Inc., a privately held Silicon Valley company, announced this week the development of the world's first silicon ink based RFID and launch of its printed silicon RFID platform for item-level intelligence.

A unique combination of wireless technologies will allow the next generation of cell phones, PDAs, or wireless laptops to be used as readers for virtually any sensor application, ranging from glucose testing with a cell phone to remote temperature checking of an appliance in a secondary home, using a laptop.

At Europe's largest RFID conference, RFID Europe, in Cambridge UK 30th September - 1 October, the most impressive users, developers and suppliers of ruggedised and apparel RFID will present their new advances and view of the future.

While most investment in printed electronics has been by material companies, KURZ is one of the few printing companies that has invested significantly in the subject, bringing much needed printing expertise to the industry.

Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London are helping to perfect a technique used to catch serial killers, by testing it on bumblebees.

IDTechEx report on the SEMICON West event held in San Francisco in mid July - an event with over one thousand exhibitors covering the silicon supply chain.

Printed RFID is only part of an emerging $300 billion business in printing many forms of electronics and electrics.

Acquisition expands Impinj product portfolio and increases customer base

New antenna advances will be covered at RFID Europe later this year - presentations include Leonhard Kurz of Germany developers of printed RFID and other futuristic capabilities. You can also visit Conductive Inkjet Technology which has new antenna technology and Marshall Aerospace.

European researchers have taken a major step towards the goal of developing printable electronics that can be used for creating radio frequency identification tags and flexible watch displays.

Printed electronics is used in RFID to a steadily increasing extent as volumes start to exceed those met in any other form of electronics.

Currently, counterfeiting and the illegal distribution of many brand goods and other products continues throughout the world but now many countries and industries have introduced countermeasures using cutting-edge technologies.

Taking medication wrongly is a huge problem, resulting in more than 150,000 people dying unnecessarily in both North America and in Europe every year.

The big penetration of transport ticketing by the more reliable, faster and less easily defrauded RFID will only happen when it is entirely printed and costing under 5 cents per disposable ticket.

Printed electronics is evolving so fast that the full variety of benefits arising has yet to become clear.

3M uses balls with self levelling RFID tags in them for location and identity of gas and other pipelines in the USA - a similar function is now being performed in China.

MacDermid Electronics Solutions has developed a novel additive circuit formation process called MicroCat.

Soligie Appoints Printed Electronics Veterans Richard Morris & Mark Duarte to Lead Business Development & Sales.

One day there may be laws to tag all 150 million dogs in China and 2.4 billion pigs yearly but IDTechEx finds that there is no hurry to do this and when it is done it will almost certainly be on a province by province basis.

The Chinese are anxious to leapfrog the foreign competition in RFID and they are trialling the U-Code alternative to EPC as something lower cost, simpler and more likely to have printed logic, not just antennas.

These very affordable hand held devices and tiny tags permit items, people and animals to be located in 3D and, where necessary, electronically ring fenced.

It sounds like science fiction but smart paint may be available in the near future.

China was the world's largest RFID market in 2007 on the back of the huge city card schemes and the $6 billion national ID card scheme, all now largely completed.

Further to our article of yesterday regarding news of printed RFID at Smart Labels USA in Boston February 20-21, this event also included Vubiq, Nano eprint and PolyIC.

By popular request, printed RFID received much more prominence at this year's RFID Smart Labels USA in Boston February 20-21.

Only RFID offers the electronic printing industry the potential of ten trillion devices yearly, in this case replacing barcodes.

At the Aichi World Fair in Japan in 2005, Hitachi Mew Solutions 2.45 GHz passive RFID inserts were in 25 million admission tickets that were issued.

The largest RFID orders - here comes China - huge advances coming in HF RFID - new vibrant technologies.

The new IDTechEx report RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2008-2018 is the summation of extensive new research in late 2007 and early 2008 including interviews with RFID adopters and solution providers in the various applicational RFID markets, giving an unprecedented level of insight into the total RFID industry and what is really happening. Here Raghu Das, CEO, gives a summary of our findings.

Replacing the silicon chip: progress with printed RFID.

Gentag Inc, US has been notified by the Korean Patent Office that its patent entitled

Zebra Technologies has recently bought several impressive RFID companies, putting over $200 million on the table. In different RFID sectors, Assa Abloy buys at least one RFID company every year. Inside Contactless has just raised $38 million to boost its effort on RFID enabled mobile phones with the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia leading the group of investors. Clearly RFID is taking off - big time.

In the build up to the annual IDTechEx RFID USA event in Boston this February and the latest IDTechEx RFID forecasts, Raghu Das reviews RFID progress in 2007.

IDTechEx look at aspects relevant to printed electronics from the Active RFID and Real Time Locating Systems RTLS conference.

The prosperous RFID business is on track to grow from about $5 billion in 2007 today to over $25 billion in 2017. Without collusion, most analysts agree to figures in that region and several of them see huge volumes of extremely low cost tags forming a part of the growth - even hundreds of billions in ten years from now. This seems to sit awkwardly with some press reporting that RFID retail initiatives have stalled. As one of those analysts, let IDTechEx explain.

Organic materials are of great interest for electronics applications, as they have many advantages over their inorganic counterparts.

Using room-temperature processing, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have fabricated high-performance field effect transistors with thin films of Carbon 60, also known as fullerene.

The researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany will be focusing on printing processes for electronic and photovoltaic products whilst working towards developing technologies for printed electronics and 'functional packaging' over the next 3 years.

Stamping foil manufacturer Kurz has developed a new thin layer product for industrial use that will go to full production in the autumn of 2007 - a transponder antenna for RFID tags called Secobo.

The millions to billions of tags involved in the Ubiquitous Sensor Networks often have RFID and power sources and be made by printing to achieve the necessary very low cost.

It was sad that the Food and Drug Administration backed off from urgently pushing through standards and rapid adoption of RFID at item level on drugs, after its earlier firm lead in 2005-6. However, its recommendation remains but with industry left to set the pace.

At the IDTechEx conference, RFID Europe in Cambridge, UK, 18-19 September, both Cypak of Sweden and Jos Geboers of The Compliers Group of the Netherlands announced improved smart blisterpacks that record which pills are removed when and have RFID for identifying the patient.

IDTechEx has hosted several successful RFID conferences in Tokyo, Japan but the Printed Electronics Asia conference, September 11-12 was a first for them. It was very successful. Indeed, it was sold out, with over 180 people attending and an exhibition. IDTechEx will now do a much bigger conference and exhibition on this subject in Tokyo next year. Many new trends were revealed by the international line up of best-in-class speakers.

Although most UHF passive tag suppliers lose money, some spectacularly so, several are in it for the long haul and they continue to improve their products.

This year, China leapt to become the world's largest market for RFID by value, with 40% share of money spent worldwide mainly driven by a few huge projects.

The wider the frequency range, the bigger the market for a printed transistor circuit.

It is inevitable that the choice of best markets for printed electronics will change as developers establish the strengths and weaknesses of their products and learn which users are keen and which are not.

The term Active RFID incorporates many technologies including Real Time Locating Systems, Ubiquitous Sensor Networks and Active RFID with Zigbee, RuBee, Ultra Wide Band and WiFi. A new research report by IDTechEx

A cold chain RFID pilot project in Australia has found that EPC RFID can be successfully rolled out in a sub-zero production environment.

The market for RFID continues to surge forward, with investments, acquisitions and orders at record levels. The premier European IDTechEx conference RFID Europe, on the 18-19 September in Cambridge UK, will air all these aspects.

The IDTechEx RFID Smart Labels Europe Conference and Exhibition on September 19-20 broke new ground, showing how the subject has moved on. Here are some highlights of the event.

The correlation between the volume and pricing of RFID tags has been a much debated topic in recent times. Here is Dr Peter Harrop's forecast on pricing for the next ten years and his justification behind the figures.

Item level RFID is set for substantial growth over the next decade. A new study from IDTechEx forecasts and explores key markets that will apply item-level tagging, advances in technology and the mass adoption that will follow. Dr. Peter Harrop from IDTechEx summarises this study. See www.idtechex.com/item for more information.

Item level tagging is happening faster than most realize - 200 million tags will be used in 2006 for item level tagging alone - mainly on apparel, books and drugs to name a few applications.The seventh annual RFID Smart Labels Europe event focuses on the progress to item level tagging, giving analysis of suitable technologies from global experts.

IDTechEx recently visited Japan to learn about the latest RFID developments there. Read highlights from our full report on the country's RFID progress published in the March issue of Smart Labels Analyst.

In the last few weeks several analysts have published forecasts for the RFID market in 2010 ranging from $1.5 Billion to $30 Billion. Why the difference?

The requirements of the pharmaceutical industry are very different from those of any other industry and this is reflected in its rapid adoption of RFID. Learn how pharmaceuticals are pioneering the use of RFID.

RFID System Frequency mismatch for printed antennas and chips

Exclusive: announced this week at Smart Labels Europe

The promise of ultra-low cost tags

July 2004