PRESS RELEASES
Alien Technology® Introduces European Standards-Compliant ALR-8800 Enterprise RFID Reader
New High-Performance Reader Extends Alien Gen 2 Solution Set To European Market
June 12, 2006, Morgan Hill, CA – Alien Technology Corporation today announced the Alien® ALR-8800 Enterprise RFID Reader, the European version of the widely deployed Alien ALR-9800 Reader, fully compliant to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) EN 302-208 specification. The new ALR-8800 enables Alien European value-added solutions providers to deliver high-performance EPC Gen 2 RFID solutions across the European Union, and allows systems integrators to leverage their existing ALR-9800 investments elsewhere in the world to help quickly and cost-effectively address fast-emerging European Gen 2 RFID opportunities.
“Based on the same software and hardware platform as the North America-proven ALR-9800 reader, the ALR-8800 delivers enterprise scalability and outstanding read performance, but with European industry standards compliance,” said Scot Stelter, Director of Strategic Marketing, Alien Technology. “The ALR-8800 is designed to help companies derive maximum return on their RFID investments, starting with lower cost implementation and easy manageability and extending to dense reader coordination, enterprise-class reliability, and interoperability with middleware and enterprise software systems.”
The ALR-8800 leverages the Alien Enterprise RFID Platform, which provides a flexible architecture for meeting current EPC Class 1 Gen 2 performance, management and protocol requirements—. The ALR-8800 also hosts the Alien Reader Protocol, which is used by all Alien readers and is supported by BEA, GlobeRanger, IBM, Microsoft, OATSystems, Oracle as well as other companies. An Intel XScale processor running Linux handles system and network management tasks and a DSP processor provides high read performance for current and future protocols.
Enterprise scalable
The ALR-8800 is designed for scalable, easy-to-manage data collection with a low total cost-of-ownership. The ALR-8800’s integrated, , general purpose I/O (GPIO) capability eliminates the need for costly external programmable logic controllers when integrating the reader with sensors, indicators and actuators, which helps reduce initial equipment and installation costs. To further reduce implementation costs, the ALR-8800 utilizes an advanced “multistatic” antenna design that eliminates the need for dedicated transmit and receive antennas, thus achieving high read performance with fewer number of antennas than are typically required by other readers.
The ALR-8800 also helps reduce the costs of on-going maintenance through its integrated management and monitoring capabilities, including remote firmware management and support for SNMP. The unit protects against loss of tag data due to power or network outages through an automated recovery process. Additionally, the ALR-8800 can be run in Autonomous Mode, which enables it to collect data only when triggered by an external event (electronic eye, vibration, etc.), thus reducing on-time and decreasing the number of readers operating at any given moment in a dense reader environment.
European compliance
In addition to being fully compliant with the EN 302-208 specification, the ALR-8800 carries the CE Mark and is compliant with all relevant emissions and safety standards in Europe including EN 60950, EN 50364 and EN 301-489. Further, ALR-8800 support for the EN 300-220 standard will be available in Q3 2006 for countries that have not yet ratified EN 302-208.
Availability
The ALR-8800 Enterprise RFID Reader is available and shipping now.
About 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 products include RFID tags, RFID readers and related training and professional services. 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 1994. The company's facilities include: its corporate headquarters in Morgan Hill, CA; an RFID tag manufacturing facility in Fargo, ND; the Alien RFID Solutions Center, in the Dayton, Ohio area, and sales offices in the US, Europe and Asia. Alien is a member of EPCglobal. More information about Alien is available at www.alientechnology.com.
Alien, Alien Technology, the Alien logo, Squiggle and FSA, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Alien Technology Corporation in the United States and other countries. Copyright 2007 Alien Technology Corporation. All rights reserved.
