Where RFID, sensing, and RTLS meet: new developments bring together RFID and sensors--and add location-identification capabilities.(WIRELESS, ASSET ASSESSMENT)

Two announcements touting recent RFID advances stood out among many. SecureRF's new RFID tag with security and cold chain management features (including a temperature sensor), claims to actively authenticate and encrypt reader/tag communications--an industry first. It will help pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors provide a tamperproof record--right down to the item level--that will prove the packaged drug is authentic, and ensure privacy by allowing only authorized readers access to sensitive information. (www.sensorsmag.com/1206/SCrfid1)

Another developer, AirGATE Technologies, says its surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based RFID tags passed tests for operation at extremely high temperatures. The tags were heated to 700[degrees]F (371[degrees]C), and then successfully read with Air-GATE's SAW reader. SAW devices make accurate temperature sensors and also work well in the presence of liquids and metals. (www.sensorsmag.com/1206/SCrfid2)

Location, Location, Location

Kris Pister, who developed "smart dust," the self-organizing wireless network of tiny sensors commercialized by Dust Networks, points out in a recent eWeek article that current technology doesn't necessarily tell you where your RFID-tagged object is right now. Instead, it tells you where your object was the last time it was in range of an RFID reader. But RF Time of Flight, the next phase of Pister's sensor network development, would give active RFID tags/motes the ability to discern their location based on triangulation with other RFID motes. So reports Melanie Martella in a recent Today at Sensors commentary on the Sensors homepage (www.sensorsmag.com). "This presents a radical shift in how RFID is implemented," she writes--and then observes that this development continues the trend to combine data from mobile assets with location. (www.sensorsmag.com/1206/SCrfid3)

Other reports corroborate Martella's ...