NXP G2iL+

RFID is on the cusp of moving beyond automation of manual data entry to collect status about the object itself. In simple terms, RFID is moving beyond the “what or where” of the object into the realm of “how is the object?”.

A good example of this new realm was presented at the IEEE RFID conference, where RFID was being used to collect the status of a beverage glass. (An abstract of the paper by Rahul Rahul Bhattacharyya of MIT Auto ID labs is online.) Conventional RFID can provide the identity and approximate location of a beverage glass, but eventually, RFID will also indicate if the glass is full, empty, or the proverbial half empty or half full.

NXP Semiconductors (formally of Phillips electronics) is entering this realm of providing the status of an object by releasing a new tag IC, dubbed the G2iL+. One of its features is to provide the status of an object using tamper detection. Up to this point, some tag manufacturers have provided status using tamper destruction where the tag is rendered inoperable after tampering. Tamper destruction in tags can work in certain applications, but if you can’t read this type of tag, you never know for certain if the tag has been tampered with or if you can’t read the tag because of some other issue, such as RF interference, antenna failure, or reader failure. Tamper detection lacks this ambiguity because the tag remains operational and conveys the tamper status with data conveyed to the reader.