PRESS RELEASES
Alien Technology® Enables Global Deployment Of Gen 2 RFID With Unified “World-Ready” Readers and Tags
New Alien® World Readers and World Tags enable lower risk, economical RFID deployments worldwide
October17, 2006, Morgan Hill, Calif. – Alien Technology Corporation today announced it has completed its global product offering for UHF RFID with the introduction of a series of high-performance, Gen2 RFID “World Readers,” enabling a common reader hardware platform and universal software APIs to be leveraged across the Americas, Europe and Asia/Pacific. Alien® recently announced an expanded family of Gen2 “World Tags,” also designed for uniform usage around the globe. Together, Alien Gen2 readers and tags enable organizations to implement a single, unified RFID infrastructure worldwide to substantially reduce the costs, risks and complexities of international RFID deployment.
The new Alien World Readers include the Alien ALR-9800-WR1, designed to meet the radio emissions standards of Australia, Hong Kong and Thailand, and the Alien ALR-9800-CHN for use in China. The new readers join with the ALR-9800 Enterprise RFID reader for North and South America, the ALR-8800 Enterprise RFID Reader for Europe and New Zealand, and the ALR-9800-KOR for South Korea to enable systems integrators and end-user organizations to leverage the Alien Enterprise RFID platform throughout most of the industrialized world. Alien 9800/8800 readers are now certified for use in 33 countries on 4 continents.
“Alien’s market-leading Gen2 solution set now extends globally, with all Alien ALR-9800/8800 readers for varying geographies based on the same advanced hardware and software platform,” said Scot Stelter, Director, Strategic Marketing, Alien Technology. “This means that global systems integrators can leverage their investment in the US version of the ALR-9800 to quickly deliver compatible Gen2 solutions for Asia and Europe, software vendors can easily leverage their development work around the world, and end customers can benefit from lower overall costs and faster time-to-value when implementing RFID internationally.”
Flexible architecture for global deployment
As with all Alien ALR-9800/8800 readers, the new World Readers are based on the Alien Enterprise RFID Platform, which provides a flexible architecture for meeting current EPC Class 1 Gen 2 performance, management and protocol requirements. The new readers host the well-supported Alien Reader Protocol, featuring a rich array of programmable functions for optimizing reader performance. The readers maintain high read rates under dense reader situations, making them well-suited for deployment in larger-scale rollouts.
Low cost implementation and enterprise scalability
All ALR-9800/8800 readers deliver scalable, easy-to-manage data collection with a low total cost-of-ownership. An integrated, general purpose I/O (GPIO) capability reduces the need for costly external hardware when integrating the readers with sensors, indicators and actuators, which helps reduce initial equipment and installation costs. To further reduce implementation costs, the readers utilizes a “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 costs of on-going maintenance are also reduced through the new readers’ integrated management and monitoring capabilities, which include remote firmware management and support for SNMP. Additionally, an automated recovery process protects against loss of tag data due to power or network outages through an automated recovery process. The readers can be run in Autonomous Mode, which enables them to collect data only when triggered by an external event (electronic eye, vibration, etc.), thus improving read rates in a dense reader environment by decreasing the number of readers operating concurrently.
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.
