RFID Changes Course

Replacing the silicon chip

Another hot topic is chipless tags, with many now abandoning hope of tags with a chip in them ever sustainably achieving less than a few cents in price and therefore more than 100 billion units yearly in sales. Here, two new chipless tag technologies were announced that work at 60 GHz and others at frequencies that are secret. By contrast, the printed transistor option described is being launched this year at the world’s most popular frequency HF. However, none can meet the complex Gen 2 UHF and planned EPC HF specifications in full and there was much talk of these specifications being overkill for the mass market. Promised chipless tag prices were often in the 0.1 to one cent region but technical problems remain such as multi-tag reading and sensitivity to orientation at microwave frequencies. There is now talk of writing chipless tag specifications, with the printed transistor “plastic chip “ people such as PolyIC, who presented, in the lead.