Issue #226 | Feb. 25, 2010 | by Andy Kowl

Every now and then a product announcement takes on larger importance and is worth hearing above the noise.

April of 2007 was one of those times, when we announced Intel's R1000 reader chip. Erik Wood wrote, "a Gen 2 reader in a chip, could become the single biggest market driver yet. . . . This promises to be the path to a whole new paradigm shift in applications for Gen 2 technology."

Well, the current chip model is R2000 and it did change the market as predicted—and now it is owned by Impinj.

In 2005, one of the first investigative articles I worked on regarding RFID was a behind-the-scenes look at the raucous political and scientific wranglings from which the Gen 2 protocols were born. This landed Chris Diorio, Impinj co-founder, on the cover of the late, great RFID Operations magazine. Aside from his boyish good looks, he was there because, representing Impinj, Diorio was one of the two or three people most directly responsible for the Gen 2 standards which launched RFID's new wave.

A few weeks ago I had a couple of beers with Will Smith who used to publish RFID Update. Will asked how Impinj's CEO was doing, commenting "Bill Colleran was one of the sharpest guys I met" in the business.

Are we seeing a trend here?

This week Impinj announced what could be another leap forward for ubiquitous, UHF RFID usage: the new Monza 4 family of premium tag chips which combines more power, expanded memory and innovative privacy technology to deliver significant benefits for businesses desiring fast RFID investment payback and ongoing operational improvements.

The technology behind the chips
I had the privilege to sit in a session with Chris Diorio last fall in Taiwan; and he is an expert beyond reproach. He explained tag-read sensitivity and how dual antenna tags would solve orientation issues that cause the familiar handheld reader wrist-twist. Little did I know I was hearing a preview of Monza 4.

All Monza 4 chips have two fully independent antenna ports, eliminating tags’ blind spots. For me to try and explain "usable Rp <1.5kΩ " or "T link path loss" would be pretty funny. Suffice it to say even I can understand how by adding a second antenna, what they call "True3D" should overcome awkward tag orientation in places you have no control over, such as a jumble of luggage tags on an airport carousel. Between sheer added horsepower and the True3D, Impinj claims there is 66% range improvement.

Scot Stelter of Impinj pointed out something I had not thought about: talk about read-rates all you want; if you are adding data to tags, for location, safety or security purposes, the write rate best be 100%.

“Write sensitivity is independent from the read sensitivity,” Stelter explained. “The write side must be 100% even if the read side is at 99.9%.”

What truly makes this product introduction special is that Monza tags can have multiple memory compartments. An extended user memory provides a portable, private 512-bit database that travels with the tag for when connection to a database is not available. At the same time, extended EPC memory enables compliance with regional and industry-segment mandates that require greater than 96-bit EPC numbers such as employed in the SGTIN-198 tag data standard, an effective 128 bits.

The privacy upgrade
On top of those two memory batches you can also have a 96-bit serialized tag identifier (STID). Both the EPC number and the tag's ride-along user database can be made private, with only the STID showing, making all useful information secure and changing the discussion of privacy issues.

What Impinj calls QT technology enables emerging applications that require greater security for confidential data. The ability to do a privacy-protecting data lockdown is through the use of what the EPC Gen 2 specs calls "Permalock." With Permalock the 512 bits are actually quartered into four 128-bit data batches.

The chips have "public mode" vs. "private mode" In public mode you can just have the STID available, nothing more than a randomly generated number. In a use-case like passports this could pacify public paranoia. In private mode, under whatever conditions the user deems as secure – perhaps his own facilities or those of authorized partners – all information can be accessed.

The icing on the privacy cake is the user can add range control for added privacy. You can veritably "flip the switch" into private mode and cut the read range to less than a tenth of its full capacity. The company says "this feature ensures that protected information is not readable unless the tag is very close to a reader antenna. . . So while a reader can always singulate the tag and read its currently exposed identifier from normal range, any attempts to access the Private Data Profile from a distance will cause the tag to lose power and drop out of the dialog with the reader."

Scot Stelter says current Gen 2 RFID readers employing either the R1000 or R2000 chip will have firmware available to quickly be able to make use of the new technology.

Full disclosure here: Impinj is an advertiser of ours; but if you've traveled on RFID Street, you know this space is not for sale. That original Intel chip never advertised, nor have dozens of companies extolled here.