ATLANTA – Product gone missing is a massive expense: some $24 billion in European distributors centers alone each year. Thus it is easy to grasp why supporters of active RFID are so high on its future.

If the hype at the Active RFID Summit last week in Atlanta is to believed, active RFID means unlimited potential and a $7 billion opportunity in the next 10 years. 
According to Dan Lawrence, VP of business development at research firm IDTechEx, which sponsored the event, active tags are a boon in-waiting. Reason: The tags afford any industry a reliable means to track and locate hard assets.

Some say RFID holds promise because it doesn’t threaten incumbent technologies. Speaker Campbell Tingey, COO of Wavetrend Technologies, repeated IDTechEx's Dr. Peter Harrop, saying, “RFID tags will replace nothing.

” Tingey calls RFID a new industry with the strengths of distance, direction, data capacity, storage, environment and asset value. “There is potential value to your business knowing where your assets are, how many you have per site, and knowing which ones are scheduled for maintenance.”

For the semiconductor industry, explains David Theriault of Ubisense, wireless sensor real-time location systems (RTLS) can provide a “full solution.” For example, he suggested manually locating lost wafers takes about 20 minutes, whereas using an active tag can reduce the time to two minutes, locating an object down to 30 cm. A map with an object’s correct location is displayed, while the tag has buzzing or flashing capabilities for visibility.

The potential savings are enormous. In Europe alone, Theriault states, the cost of shrinkage of goods going through distribution centers is $24 billion, or 2% of the value of the products processed. With ultrawide band tags (UWB) attached to mobile objects, an automated trail can reduce the amount of lost or missing goods in storage.

And in harsher environments such as automotive and industrial, sensors are encapsulated in a molding process to prevent moisture, says Tom Anderson, AVX Corp. For this process, he continues, hand soldering is no longer necessary. “We put PCBs and batteries into a mold and seal plastic around them creating a protected device.” This protected device is free to be in a chemical environment without the possibility of leakage.

The molding process Anderson described is called Modified Reaction Injection Molding (RIM): a low-temperature, low-pressure procedure (branded PolyTect). Only one temperature spike to 100 to 150C occurs during the process – below the threshold of components soldered to the board, says Anderson. The result is a void-free polyurethane package durable to UV and salt air, he suggests.

According to Parelec CEO Geva Barash, RTLS holds “the unanswered need for more accurate, reliable solutions.” His company, a conductive inks manufacturer for printed circuits, just purchased an active RFID company. He explained that smart agent tags permit high accuracy optical location (one meter); a zone location using a customizable beaconing device of three to 200 m, and a 250-m range. He stated, “It’s a low-cost, low footprint device, with no infrastructure needed.”

Can active RFID really live up to these kinds of accolades? What was conveyed at the summit was almost solely a positive view of the technology. Will it be the “next big thing” as the industry professionals portend? Are there drawbacks? Well, at least one. Tingey said that tags currently cost anywhere between $20 and $50 each, while readers range broadly in price, from $90 to $750. For the technology to take off as projected, costs will likely need to come down.

If that happens, active RFID’s potential appears to be wide open.

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