Tag Flexibility and Emerging Applications
Wednesday, February 04, 2009 - RFID Connections
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Victor Vega
Marketing Director
Alien Technology
RFID Connections spoke with Victor Vega, Marketing Director for Alien Technology® and the 2008 recipient of AIM Global's Ted Williams award which is given to the individual who has made exceptional contributions to the AIDC industry as a teacher, researcher and entrepreneur about how configurable memory will address new application requirements.
Victor's views can be heard by clicking on the “podcast” in the article. So if you don’t have time to read the interview now, download it onto your iPod/MP3 player and listen in on your way home.
Note: Written transcript has been edited from audio interview for grammar and syntax.
RFID Connections: By way of background, Alien Technology has developed what it calls the "H3" or "Higgs 3" Gen 2 UHF IC (integrated circuit) that provides long read range, a 64-bit tag ID, 512 bits of lockable user memory and rapid write speeds. What I'd like to focus on are the reasons Alien developed this tag and the type of applications for which it might be particularly well-suited.
For starters, is there significance to the designation "Higgs" in the tag's name?
Victor Vega: That's and interesting question. Actually, there is. Alien has traditionally named its ICs after subatomic particles which are the building blocks of matter so Higgs is our fourth platform following our Quark, Omega and Lepton families and Higgs 3 is actually our fifth generation Class 1 silicon IC.
Clearly Alien saw a need for an IC or "chip" with the capabilities I mentioned. Can you talk briefly about the types of applications and the requirements for those applications in which you see this chip being used?
Certainly. As the industry and the technology matured, we began seeing new opportunities which would justify RFID adoption even further. Our existing silicon had some fundamental features -- in particular the 96-bit EPC -- but it was limited at pretty much that feature set.
The opportunities that we encountered were authentication and this comes into play for combating counterfeits and market diversion. In addition to that we saw the opportunity to have scalable EPC memory. What I mean by that is that the protocol actually enables you to have 496 bits of EPC memory. Allowing the user to scale the memory as needed we would still provide them a 96-bit functionality, or data set if you will, however, we would give them the opportunity to reduce that down to 16 bits or increase that to 496.
Now, why would they do that?
One particular application that comes to mind where we reduced the memory from the traditional 96 bits down to 16 bits was high speed motorcycles. Now, remember, in the early days, where there was a lot of concern about us reading tags that were placed on the likes of a conveyor. If it was going over 300 feet or, for that matter, 600 feet per minute, people were concerned you might not read the tag.
In this particular instance, the customer was on a racing motorcycle on a professional track going over 140 miles an hour and we were reading those tags at those speeds and at quite a distance -- so those days are gone now.
By virtue of condensing the memory to 16 bits, it allowed us to make faster transactions. All we needed to know is which bike it was.
On the other extreme, where you need more memory, was one that was addressed by the SGTIN (Serlialized Global Trade Item Number) 198 for electronics. In this particular instance, rather than using the 96-bit EPC code, 198-bit EPC code was required. This is used in particular for the electronics industry where they are tagging assets such as LCD monitors and computers and things of that nature.
And the FSTC financial consortium is also looking at using the same Gen2 platform but a different numbering scheme so -- lots of flexibility.
Can you go into a little more detail about the extended memory -- how it's configured and how it's managed?
The user memory is an extra bank of memory in addition to the 96-bit conventional EPC memory. We have decided to deploy a version that has 512 user bits of memory. This particular bank of memory has some very interesting features for applications where the customer may wish to parse the data into public and private viewing areas. Where this might address issues is, for example, in the pharmaceutical arena or in applications where a customer may have grey market or authentication issues. I can speak more to this a little later on if you like but, at a higher level, it gives the user quite a bit of extra memory with viewing privileges and locking privileges of the data.
The H3 has a 64-bit unique tag ID (TID). EPCglobal does not require a TID for its Gen2 UHF tags. Can you talk a little about the TID: how it's designed and what it's intended to be used for?
This has actually proved to be a very popular feature that we've deployed. The TID or Tag Identifier is a memory bank that helps you identify that it's in fact ISO/IEC 18000-6c but it also tells you the manufacturer and model of the IC. That's permanent data that resides on each and every silicon chip that's compliant and that's not alterable but it's always going to be the same information.
Additionally, to that portion of the TID what we chose to do was to implement a 64-bit unique factory programmed serial number. You can think of this much like you might expect from a MAC address on a network card or a laptop. We call this the unique tag identifier or the UTID. What this allows you to do is, in addition to the user's serial number which might be 96 bits, he can also have the advantage of having a unique 64-bit serial number that cannot be altered in the field.
So, if a customer has a concern about authenticity, and he also has the concern that this is a Gen2 open standard and the question pops up, "What do I do if someone takes the tag that I've got and duplicates the number?" Nothing is going to stop anyone from doing that -- it is an open standard -- but by tying this to the UTID now you have a truly unique number. This is a very inexpensive way to help alleviate counterfeits and to help curb the grey market problems that the industry is seeing.
That's clearly a valuable feature for anti-counterfeiting, authenticity and so forth. Specifically, how is the TID constructed?
The first part we talked about is unique to Alien for example: the "E2" designator that says "I'm a Gen2 tag" or, for that matter, an ISO/IEC 18000-6c, would designate that you're the proper type of tag but the second portion that is unique only to the manufacturer of the IC, that's registered with EPCglobal, says, "I am an Alien tag and I am, in fact, a Higgs 3 tag." In our particular instance, the tag identifier would be number 3 and that would say, "This is Alien" and then 412 would say that's your Higgs 3 model.
Can you talk a bit more about user memory. How is that configured and where would it be most useful?
For sake of discussion, let's say you have your 512 bits which is your user memory but you want to block off certain portions of that memory such that it is not viewable by others that do not have a password and yet there's additional information in here that you want to share with your trading partners. One of the features of Higgs 3 is that you can designate the memory in blocks of 64 bits. What the customer can do is designate block number 1, for example, to have viewing privileges that are public. The next portion -- block number 2 or block number 4 or block number 6 -- can be designated such that you are restricting the viewing permissions unless they have a 32-bit password which you designate.
That allows you to have information, let's say for the pharmaceutical industry, such you may want to have pricing for return fraud which is a huge issue that they have. It might be for market diversion to try to find out where the leak is coming from. You might also want to have lot dates: when the product was manufactured or expiration date. Some of that information you may want to make public or you may not. That's proved to be a very interesting feature set and pharmaceuticals being a great candidate for that.
Particularly with the availability of user memory, there are some concerns about the security of data on tags -- that it could be read or changed by unauthorized individuals. And there are also some privacy concerns about certain data being read if the tag is in the hands of a consumer. Does the H3 address these concerns?
It absolutely does. In addition to the data that we mentioned that could be read-protected, the user memory also has in those same 64-bit blocks that can be perma-locked. Additionally, as you mentioned, the EPC protocol provides provisions such that you could provide a 32-bit access and 32-bit kill password. With that password you could render the silicon completely useless. Once you kill the tag, that's it.
That covers my basic questions. Is there anything else you'd like to share with out listeners or any information about new applications you see opening up?
Higgs 3 does go above and beyond the performance of Higgs 2. We've got additional sensitivity with Higgs 3. Where that really helps is for applications that don't necessarily need additional range because we're getting tremendous read range, it allows us to put tags on more difficult products.
When you place a tag on something, for example, liquid-based, something that's aqueous in nature, it absorbs a lot of the energy. But if your chip doesn't require much to activate then, because it's more efficient, it will have better performance on or next to that liquid.
But it also allows us to make smaller tags and that's allowing us to make tags that could fit form factors that we could never do before such as in the jewelry industry, the high end cosmetics, perfumes, and it can also be placed in high value garments where you don't want a large tag, you don't want it very obvious but you want to be able to authenticate the product.
Some of the new applications we're seeing in the industry that are non-traditional, non-compliance or mandate-driven include reusable assets, IT assets, windshields for toll ways or even access control for vehicles, baggage tags, apparel and a while slew of new applications requiring smaller tags.
A lot of this activity is not compliance- or mandate-driven. Most of it is organizations that see a positive ROI and are doing it on their own accord.
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Victor Vega
Victor has long been on the forefront of RFID, having led early RFID product development at Motorola. He has held positions in design engineering, project management, applications, and product marketing, and is author to 19 RFID related patents.
He has been the recipient of numerous RFID related honors and awards, including U.S. Presidential recognition. His 15 years of RFID experience includes near and far-field coupling in the LF, HF, UHF and Microwave spectrum.
Additionally, Victor developed RFID curriculums and educated scores of individuals from industry-leading companies. Prior to Alien, Victor was employed in various capacities as an electronics development engineer for Motorola, IBM and NASA. He received his BSEE from New Mexico State University and worked towards his MSEE at Santa Clara University.
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Alien Technology
Alien Technology provides UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products and services to customers in retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, defense, transportation and logistics, pharmaceuticals and other industries. Organizations use Alien's RFID products and services to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and security of their supply chains, logistics and asset tracking operations. Alien's patented Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA®) technology and related proprietary manufacturing processes are designed to enable the manufacture of high volume, low cost RFID tags. Alien was founded in l994. For more information, please visit: www.alientechnology.com.
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