FEATURE

Texas Instruments Continues Legacy
of Leadership in RFID

Texas Instruments has always been an RFID pioneer in the U.S. and overseas. The Texas Instruments Registration and Identification Systems (TIRIS) group was created in 1991 and is now called TI-RFID. From this foundation many new classes of RFID applications spawned.

Today, Texas Instruments is still a leader in the RFID industry. With production of EPC Gen 2 products well underway and new prospects on the horizon, TI doubled its RFID emerging markets business in the past year. RFID Product News recently caught up with Enu Waktola, EPC Strategy Manager for TI, to talk about TI's successful past and promising future.

The EPC Gen 2 standard was born in November, 2003 at the EPCglobal conference. Suppliers collaborated to define a globally applicable standard for the retail supply chain in the UHF frequency band to allow the use of EPC tagging, following the mandates of major retailers. EPCglobal ratified the standard quite quickly. "At the time, TI also indicated that it would have products available compliant to the standard in the third quarter of this year." says Waktola. "We met that commitment and announced on June 27 [2005] the launch of our Gen 2 inlays and straps."

TI was the first company to introduce a flexible smart inlay—a chip applied to a flexible substrate that can be used in the smart label production process. "We've been working with our label converter partners to optimize that production process and when we do our designs —for UHF inlays, for example—we take into consideration the manufacturing process that's used by our customers," says Waktola. "We also take into consideration that the labels delivered from the converter work in the final application. Now end-users have production-ready solutions capable of working in the environment they were intended to work in. The solutions are compliant with the latest global industry standards."

TI also announced on June 27 that it was going into production of Gen 2 inlays with MooreWallace and Lowry. "It signals to the industry the availability of label products from well-established companies that deliver production-ready material," says Waktola. "Hardware solutions are also moving forward. We announced in April that we are working with 12 leading partners—printers and reader manufacturers—to accelerate Gen 2 hardware."

Today, TI is investing in its 130-nanometer manufacturing node. The small size means less silicon needs to be used than a typical 250-nm production node. "This technology puts us ahead of the curve in terms of anticipating what's coming next," says Waktola. "It's a solution we are investing in because of some things we are anticipating from a future perspective."