March 26, 2021
2021
On February 19, 2021, RFID tag company Tageos released two new products for the aviation, automotive and logistics industries. These two new products can provide more memory, higher sensitivity and wider reading range. Two new products named EOS-400U7xm and EOS-500U7xm both use NXPUCODE7xm chips, enabling users to store data such as product manufacturing and maintenance records.
Both passive UHFRFID products are equipped with 2KB of expandable user memory for storing EPC numbers and additional data. According to the company, EOS-400U7xm is used for asset tracking and supply chain applications. It has a compact structure and a theoretical reading range of 6 to 12 meters; the larger EOS-500U7xm has a theoretical reading range of 8 to 12 meters, providing long-distance reading. For higher sensitivity, it can be applied to materials such as glass and non-stick surfaces. Both tags contain up to 448 bits of EPC memory and additional 2048 bits of user memory, and the operating temperature ranges from -40°C to +85°C.
Tageos' EOS-500 (left) and EOS-400 labels (right).
According to Jeremy Wade, Director of Business Development for Tageos Americas, both labels use aluminum antennas, transparent plastic or paper-based, and acrylic adhesives. They can be used in large quantities as dry inlay, wet inlay or paper-based. Inlay. The release of this product means that the new high-memory UHF tags will be aimed at users in the industrial market who have long been eager for RFID technology.
The company is headquartered in France and traditionally designs and manufactures paper, low-cost, item-level RFID tags for inventory and supply chain management in the retail industry. Since 2020, the company has been expanding into other areas where RFID applications are growing. Therefore, these two new products are the first batch of the company's RFID tag series for manufacturing, logistics and medical fields.
Chris, head of product at Tageos? Reese (ChrisReese) said: "Our business focus used to be in the retail sector. With the release of these two new products, we began to focus on the industry. Two similar labels will be released in the second quarter of this year."
At the same time, the availability of high-memory RFID tags has declined. Wade explained that many high-memory tags currently provide more memory at a higher cost. Although existing passive tags can store up to 8KB bytes of data, other performance is lower.
The company hopes that the new label can provide an alternative to the existing 8KB byte label used in aerospace and manufacturing. Wade said that the new tag has only 2KB of memory, which is lower in cost and has a 20% to 40% longer reading range than standard EPC tags. Airlines are currently testing these tags to store and transmit data about the use of manufacturing and maintenance items.
Since the aviation industry issued the ATASpec2000 requirements, the aviation industry's demand for high-memory tags has continued to increase. This requirement stipulates an industry-wide aircraft system numbering method, file output format and data content standard. Reese said that although there are currently solutions applied in the aerospace field, "the sensitivity is too low and the number of complaints is too much." This means that airlines must bring hand-held readers within close range of the tag to actually interrogate the tag and receive a response.
Users told Tageos that this operation is as time-consuming and labor-intensive as scanning a bar code.
Due to the longer reading distance of the new tags, they have similar functions to standard EPC tags while being able to store more information. RFID tags in the aviation field have many uses, such as emergency equipment on airplanes, so that the fuselage can be counted and inspected on a regular or even daily basis. The tag is applied to a life jacket or oxygen mask, and the user only needs to walk along the aisle to capture the ID number of the tag on the entire fuselage without going through the entire aisle. Reese said that in the current system, people must open the partition or lift the seat cushion to query all the tags.
European car companies are also currently testing these tags to track data such as the history of new car parts. These tags are also applied to reusable containers and other items in the logistics field.
Wade predicts that the impact of these tags on the applied market is to make the availability of high-memory inlays better. Whether due to insufficient production capacity or increased demand, the entire industry has already experienced shortages of certain products. With the launch of two new products, customers have more choices for Inlay products, which also brings great benefits to the non-retail market.
According to Reese, for companies that rely on raw RF data, product quality must be guaranteed. Products designed by Tageos have exactly this quality, and the cost of tags is much lower than many existing high-memory tags that provide kilobytes of memory.
