PRESS RELEASES
Alien Technology® Expands Gen2 RFID Tag Family
New Alien® World Tags enable economical and uniform global usage of EPC-compliant RFID
October 9, 2006, Morgan Hill, Calif. – Alien Technology Corporation today announced a major expansion of its leading family of Gen2 UHF RFID tags, including new “World Tags” designed for uniform use around the globe, and the small form factor tags ideal for cost-effective, high-performance item level tagging. The new tags extend Alien’s growing portfolio of tag designs and form factors optimized for a broad range of supply chain management, asset tracking, item level identification and other RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) applications.
The expanding Alien World Tag family addresses the cost and performance issues of global tag usage. Like the previous Alien Squiggle tags, all new Alien World Tags operate globally within a narrowly defined performance band from 860 to 960 MHz, which enables each individual tag to be used successfully across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa and their unique RFID operating frequencies. This is in contrast to tags which exhibit widely varying performance around the globe.
Alien World Tags enable companies to manufacture products on one continent and ship them worldwide utilizing a single RFID tag that exhibits uniform behavior and delivers consistent performance regardless of its destination. When used with Alien Enterprise RFID Readers, this enables companies to deploy a common RFID infrastructure worldwide, thus reducing the number of infrastructure designs, software interfaces, development projects and equipment models they need to ensure accurate, reliable tag reads across their global supply and delivery chains. Consequently, upfront implementation and ongoing maintenance costs are minimized, overall RFID effectiveness is maximized, and returns on RFID investment can be accelerated.
“The use of Alien World Tags helps ensure that what works at the point of origin, also works at the point of destination and all points in between, without requiring extraordinary investments,” said Keith McDonald, SVP, Sales & Marketing, Alien Technology. “By providing the same tag globally, Alien is able to develop economies of scale that result in lower tag and infrastructure costs for end users. In expanding our World Tag family and introducing new extremely small form factor tags, Alien is touching all the bases where UHF RFID can provide value today – from freight, baggage and asset tracking to item level pharmaceuticals, apparel and commodities to products containing liquids and metals.”
New World Tags
The three new tags in Alien’s Gen2 World Tag family include:
- Gen2 M Tag: optimized for plastic reusable containers and other difficult-to-tag applications
- Gen2 Castle Tag: optimized for corrugate packaging and 3-inch labels
- Gen2 2x2 Tag: optimized for apparel and baggage tag applications and 2-inch labels
New Small Form Factor Tags
In addition to expanding the World Tag family, Alien has introduced two new small form factor Gen2 tags, both optimized for 902 to 928 MHz operation for use in the Americas and Asia, and both able to operate in near-field and far-field operation modes. Both new tags can be incorporated in packaging in such a way that they can leverage metal components within the packaging to extend their read range.
The new Alien small form factor Gen2 tags include:
- Gen2 Mini-Squiggle: Ideal for item level tagging
- Gen2 1x1: Optimized for plastic packaging such as pharmaceutical pill bottles
Availability
All of the new Alien Gen2 tags are available now in commercial quantities.
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.
