Omron's Standardized RFID

Filed in archive Tags and Readers on February 17, 2006

Sticking with the standardization theme introduced in yesterday's post, let me also point out a recent intriguing announcement by Omron.

Omron has developed an RFID tag that can perform at all UHF frequencies worldwide, i.e., between 860 MHz and 960 MHz.

RFID Journal has the best description I could find of how this new tag works and what it means:

"Omron RFID has announced the release of a new passive EPC Gen 2 RFID tag designed to deliver high performance no matter if it is encoded and read in the United States, Europe or Asia. Regulatory agencies within each of these regions mandate the use of different parts of the UHF band (Japan, for example, says UHF tags must transmit between 950 MHz to 956 MHz, while in the European Union 865.6 MHz to 867.6 MHz must be used).

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But according to Bill Arnold, Omron RFID's chief strategist, Omron RFID's new V750 Series EPC Gen 2 UHF Wave tag functions equally well in all parts of the UHF band, thanks to a design that 'matches the impedance of the chip to that of the antenna.'"

It is interesting to see standardization being addressed in so many different ways. First we have the movement toward standardization of the numbering system to code different products (as in yesterday's post). And now there is Omron's advances in standardization (of sorts) across UHF frequencies required in different parts of the world.