From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- Jan. 7, 2015 -
RFID News Round Up for Jan, 7, 2015
New GS1 Testing Standards, New Jeans Block "Digital Pickpocketing," Interesting New Flexible, Low Power Chip from Imec
SCDigest Editorial Staff
Here are our top RFID stories for the week of Jan. 7, 2015:
GS1 Releases New Guideline for RFID Performance Testing
As interest in RFID tagging continues to grow in retail, for the most part each retailer has been on its own in terms of how to conduct all important performance testing on various tag and reader combinations, both generally and for specific types of products. Retailers have been conducting their own testing, using their own unique test methodology to determine which inlays perform well in their store environments.
SCDigest Says: |
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Imec says the chip operates at a supply voltage of just 0.55V while consuming only 2.5 micro watts of power. A commercial AAA battery could power the chip for more than 20 years.
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These individual test then result in the retailer producing an approved list of inlays, which are then shared with the supplier community. With no best practices or guidelines in place, these lists may vary from retailer to retailer, and put undue operational costs and constraints on the supplier community.
GS1 has recently stepped into this challenge with what it calls the Tagged-Item Performance Protocol (TIPP) Guideline, a series of documents that aim to providing a standard means to express performance requirements and a standard test protocol to verify the performance of a tagged item (not an inlay).
By specifying performance for tagged items (rather than tags, inlays, labels and such), that performance can be verified independently by retailers, suppliers or any 3rd party, GS1 says.
The TIPP Guideline includes the following four documents:
• Tagged Item Grading Overview - provides an overview of the tagged-item grading guideline
• Tagged Item Performance Protocol Grade Definition - defines the grade specifications
• Tagged Item Performance Protocol Test Methodology - presents the test procedure and measurement methods to qualify or establish the grade for a tagged item
• Tagged Item Performance Protocol Test Configuration - defines the orientation for various types of tagged items (which is critical for repeatable testing using the TIPP procedure)
They are available free of charge here: GS1 TIPP Guidelines
SCDigest will look at these new standards in more detail soon.
New Blue Jeans Block RFID Card Reads
There continues to be concerns about surreptitious reads of credit cards with embedded with RFID chips, a move the credit card industry is increasingly moving towards.
Several local television stations, for example, have shows on film just how easy it is for a bad guy to bring a handheld RFID reader close a person’s pocket or purse and quickly read all the detail from the RFID chip on the credit cards inside, giving them all the information needed to use those cards say to order items on line.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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