January 13, 2009- Sy Sajjad, CEO of AiRISTA, presents a platform approach to deliver a strategic advantage through integration of passive, active and semi-active RFID technologies.

I understand that AiRISTA has experience in asset and personnel tracking in criminal justice department. Could you tell us about that?

SAJJAD: We have developed an RFID platform for the corrections industry which combines detainee location tracking within the prison, all the way through electronic monitoring of offenders once they are released to society. This includes electronic monitoring using GPS with a combination of RFID.

I'd guess many of us think of ankle bracelets when we think of electronic monitoring. Is it the same thing?

SAJJAD: Most of the electronic monitoring is done using RFID ankle bracelets – some kind of a bracelet that is tamper resistant and usually waterproof. When using RFID, most of the time it’s using active RFID technology.

What frequency does the monitoring use?

SAJJAD: In our case we have several different frequencies. In North America, we have both the 900 MHz and 432 MHz frequency technology, in addition to a Wi-Fi based product that is on 2.4 GHz.

How do you determine in any given case what frequency to use?

SAJJAD: It all depends on the application. In certain correctional institutions – prisons or a juvenile facility – they already have an existing infrastructure. If they already have an existing infrastructure, like Wi-Fi, in order to make it more cost effective we use the Wi-Fi solution.

If they do not have an existing infrastructure then, most of the time, we use the regular 900 megahertz RF technology for tracking the offenders. The same tag that is put on the inmate once they’re released into society, can be worn by them while they’re in the house. Once they go onto GPS monitoring programs they can also use the same RFID tag.

Your company has an approach to implementations that you look at as a "platform approach." Can you explain that?

SAJJAD: We think of a platform as a launch pad for power solutions. We don’t think of RFID, for example, or RTLS, as solutions, but rather as launch pads for vending solutions for various industries that depend on the selection of those technologies, whatever they may be.

We’ve built various platforms to support various forms of a specific technology such as passive, semi-passive, which is battery-assisted, and active RFID tags. The same platform, the RFID platform, supports all three different technologies.

So in other words, each of those becomes basically a data source; and then the platform is the software behind it. Is that correct?

SAJJAD: The platform is the software behind it that can communicate with the information from those tags; that's correct. The same thing is also true for our platforms which use different technologies.

When you’re not working in prison systems, you work on workflow platforms in transportation, automotive, health care, that sort of thing, correct?

SAJJAD: That’s right. It’s a variety of industries. We are not claiming we have a single solution that fits all, nor do we have a single solution that fits many. Our perspective is to address needs of many different industries through different solutions, based on these platforms.

Can you also tell us whether in corrections there are hard assets, like evidence, involved, or is it all about tracking people?

SAJJAD: Well, you can track evidence; you can track assets; you can track people, so it’s designed to track personnel or assets. It could be evidence.

Are you tracking everything in real time and that’s why you use RTLS?

SAJJAD: We do track everything in real time. As the information comes in through our platforms, it gets processed through our real time messaging platform, and the real time data is fed not only to our internal systems, which is our metro location engines to determine the location, but also to third parties.

One of those systems that we use is our workflow and business rule engine, which in real time can apply policies, rules and in real time can process whether to take action or manually make a decision.

In a prison situation, I imagine there are large and small places. How widespread throughout a facility would your platform typically be?

SAJJAD: The size of the facilities vary. Let’s say a facility has several cell blocks, each of which could house up to about 500 or 1,000 beds. So you can imagine the size of a cell block. In a facility with five cell blocks and surrounding areas including the walls and so on, it actually covers a fairly large area.

Let's finish up with the types of benefits your criminal justice clients have found once they deployed your platform.

SAJJAD: Well, one of them is the accuracy in RTF technology for tracking the detainees within a Virginia prison or a facility. Second is consistency over diagnostic solution where they could use passive RFID for tracking certain personnel and active RFID for other personnel.

So they can mix and match it in any way they want to. Of course, this is a huge benefit. And the biggest part of it is using the technology that can be used throughout their entire system from the prisons all the way down to probation and parole agencies.