The company said that while adoption of RFID was spurred by Wal-Mart and US Department of Defense mandates, the large majority of its growth was now in closed loop applications outside of its mandate business.
It will release two new Squiggle RFID tags that comply with EPC Gen 2, the global RFID standard. The tags, called squiggle because of the shape of their antenna design, are for item-level tagging for consumer packaged goods, retail, transportation, government and defense industries, Alien said.
The Squiggle-SQ (ALN-9529) is size of a postage stamp and geared toward pharmaceutical and other high-value, item-level applications. It is tuned to operate in the 902 to 928 MHz frequency range and will be available for sampling in October with volume production in December.
The Squiggle-SH is for tag inlays that work with a 3-inch RFID label. They too are available for sampling in December with volume production in the first quarter of next year.
Morgan Hill, California-based Alien also will announce three new EPC Gen 2 RFID readers.
The ALR-9900 enterprise reader has been designed for demanding manufacturing, asset management and supply chain applications. It is 50% smaller than the company’s ALR-9800 and has improved read rates and deployability, according to Alien.
The new ALR-9650 is a smart antenna-class, quick-start RFID reader for in-building asset- and item-level tracking, while the new ALR-9824 reader is for dock-door portal applications.
Alien will also announce two new RFID training courses at its RFID Solutions Center in Dayton, Ohio.
The EPCglobal-certified Applied Tag Performance Testing courses promise to help companies ensure the readability of their EPC/RFID-tagged goods as they move through the supply chain globally.
The two new courses are called RFID Certified, which prepares attendees for the Computing Technology Industry Association RFID+ Certification exam, and RFID Ready for non-technical Department of Defense managers.
