Penny-wise Smart Labels

Abstract

The article discusses how smart labels, or what engineers call radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, today cost from 30 to 50 cents each, an expense that makes attaching them to most consumer products uneconomical. If that price could be reduced to one cent a tag, however, retailers and many other businesses could implement large-scale, even globe-spanning RFID systems that eventually could save everyone -- consumers and producers alike -- considerable time and money. Penny smart tags would permit manufacturers to track perhaps billions of goods efficiently throughout the entire supply chain, from warehouse to store to purchaser, and maybe even all the way to the dump. Cheaper smart-label technology has become a prime target market for silicon chipmakers. Munich-based Infineon Technologies AG, the world's sixth largest semiconductor manufacturer, revealed recently a potentially much lower -cost approach to engineering smart labels, one that employs integrated circuits that are directly powered by alternating current (AC) instead of the standard direct current (DC). RFID tags have two main components: a silicon chip and a metal coil antenna. When the tag comes within about a meter of an electronic device called a reader, its antenna picks up the reader's weak radio signal. Manufacturers of the current generation of RFID tags spend one third of the fabrication cost to make the chip, a third for the antenna and another third on the packaging, which attaches the chip to the antenna. Eight Infineon engineers began investigating how to make inexpensive RFIDs from silicon about a year ago. They soon focused on a fundamental trick that might open a pathway to their goal: using AC-driven logic circuitry, a technique that precludes the need for conversion of external AC to internal DC power.