III, ITRI and Newport Digital to finalize development of next-gen industrial grade RFID devices

NEWPORT BEACH, USA: The Institute for Information Industry Taiwan and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, both of which are Taiwan quasi-government Research & Development organizations under the Ministry of Economic Affairs office, announced an agreement with Newport Digital Technologies Inc. to distribute a range of advanced industrial grade RFID devices incorporating Hitachi u-Chip secure protocol technologies and AT&T required 3G wireless and battery certifications.

"NDT in collaboration with III and ITRI are ready to start exclusively distributing a range of advanced RFID technologies including an IP67 Industrial grade Handfree Reader, an Industrial Monitor with an embedded reader, the world's smallest EPC Global reader module, Fixed and Handheld Readers are but a few of the products that will be released for distribution this year that contain the Hitachi u-Chip UHF protocol, a first for North America," said Richard Damion, CEO of NDT.

"The devices will all contain this unique security protocol, which can read under the EPC Global Gen 2 layer on the RFID chip, allowing for a manufacturer, distributor, importer, distribution center and retailer to each have their own secure password protected 256K bit layer to place their confidential data within this single chip."

"The chip has a 2K memory, the largest memory in the industry with deactivation, range adjustment and read/write features as well as five password protected secure layers. We anticipate that by increasing the yield on the wafer, we can eventually see a two cent chip, the technical challenges have been great and required multi-national support. These chips and readers will be targeted at the Wal-Mart vendor supply chain, offering them the lowest cost solution in the industry, and assuring a quick ROI," said Elsie Kao RFID Project Manager at III.

This is an International Project and we are collaborating with teams of Hardware, Software, Middleware, Testing and SI Engineers in Taiwan, Japan, Europe along with a major USA Retailer.

"ITRI has significant experience in industrial RFID technologies from asset tracking to global container tracking systems," said Paul Chang, ITRI's Identification and Security Technology Center, (ISTC) Manager. "ITRI has managed the first EPC Global Certified Performance and Conformance Laboratories in Asia and has developed a whole range of RFID tags, devices and solutions. Millions of dollars have been invested in the development, testing and certifying of these range of products and anticipate major sales and distribution announcements to come out from NDT within the next few weeks."