Instrumentation and Control News

The Smart Card Guard sleeves contain a thin layer of metallic material preventing the penetration of radio frequency signals directed toward the envelope, thereby making the RFID inlay unreadable. The company says the Smart Card Guard material has undergone extensive testing by InfoGard Laboratories, located in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

At the facility, companies interested in deploying RFID technology to enhance supply chain management, fight counterfeiting or improve in-store retail operations, or for other applications, can watch demonstrations of numerous RFID solutions. These include source tagging, automated goods receipt, an RFID-based sorting system, replenishment and store inventory management and point-of-sale analytics and security.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology released this week its guidelines describing the various risks to data security and personal privacy that RFID deployments may pose...

The installation will include 3M's SelfCheck systems, enabling patrons to check out, return and renew RFID-tagged loaned media, as well as to pay fines and other fees, without the aid of library staff. The library serves a growing population of more than 1.25 million citizens and will become one of the largest municipal library systems in the United States to utilize RFID technology to facilitate faster and more efficient circulation and inventory procedures...

Impinj hopes its relationship with Yeon Technologies will support the growth of Chinese RFID product manufacturers and distributors, while helping ramp up RFID end-user adoption in Taiwan. Production quantities of the Speedway reader are available today from Yeon Technologies and Impinj's other VAR and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners worldwide.

The EM4205 and EM4305 chips comply with the ISO 11784 and 11785 RFID standards, developed for transponders that meet livestock tracking requirements. The ICs can be encoded to meet to the EN14803 waste management standard, EM Microelectronic reports, and they can also be used in tags for physical access control.

Mikoh has also revealed its first contract manufacturer that will help the company bring the tags to market. The security solutions provider is teaming up with Twinlinx, a French chip maker, to manufacture 13.56 MHz chips compliant with the ISO 15693 and 14443 air-interface standards.

With the ISO-standardized RFID technology, South Korea will be able to protect its domestic mobile RFID market, which is expected to reach $752 million in 2010,

Afilias Discovery Services provide a unique standards-based solution that companies can implement to link their supply chain partners to historical information concerning the life cycle of RFID tags, while still keeping competitive data secure

"The expense to pharmaceutical companies is in changing processes as much as it is in RFID equipment and tags. The single drug doses used in trials are very expensive to develop, so the cost of RFID is relatively small."