Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 11:21 GMT
Gel battery boost for radio
tags
By Lakshmi Sandhana
Japanese company NEC has developed a lightweight, flexible battery
that is less than a millimetre thick and can be recharged in half a
minute.
It is called the Organic Radical Battery (ORB) and is based on a
type of plastic that exists in a gel state.
The gel allows the battery to be extremely pliant, with a thickness
of 300 microns.
ORBs could eventually be embedded into devices such as smart cards,
wearable computers and intelligent paper.
Currently the battery, when in card form, can be recharged with a
card reader device in 30 seconds.
The absence of harmful chemicals typically used in rechargeable
batteries also makes it quite environmentally friendly, according
to NEC.
Radio tags
The ORB has huge potential when combined with Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) tags - tiny microchips that hold unique
identifier information attached to a small antenna.
RFID tags are now finding wide use to keep track of items in the
business supply chain - from the manufacturing floor to the retail
outlet.
"If you can create a 'smart active label' - a thin label that
broadcasts a signal as opposed to passively reflecting back energy
from the reader - you could solve many of the readability problems
people are struggling with now"
Mark Roberti, RFID Journal
RFID tags fall into two categories - the more commonly found
"passive" devices only respond to signals sent to it by a tag
reader and have a shorter range.
"Active" tags on the other hand can transmit signals and can be
read at greater distances but are larger and more expensive since
they need a power source.
"If you can create a 'smart active label' - a thin label that
broadcasts a signal as opposed to passively reflecting back energy
from the reader - you could solve many of the readability problems
people are struggling with now," said Mark Roberti, editor of RFID
Journal.
"You could potentially put one of these labels on a case of coke in
the middle of a pallet of coke and read it. That is not possible
with passive tags because the energy from the reader is blocked by
the metal."
Public acceptance
While active tags do offer the benefit of being read over greater
distances, there are health concerns arising from questions about
transmission frequency.
"With a passive tag, the transmissions are limited as the only
signal comes from a transmitter/receiver and tend to be spasmodic,"
said Roger Lewis, editor of RFID Today.
"The public perception for passive tags is bad enough but with an
active tag, it would most likely be felt that the transmission
could be potentially more continual. Plus with a power source close
to the person, opinion could be against the tags.
"Most of these perceptions are erroneous but they are real public
perceptions that can undermine a product.
"As an example, the Department of Trade and Industry was asked by a
man in Devon that if he bought products from Tesco, if Tesco could
know in which room of his house he used them? Of course this is
totally wrong and few tags are used to product level, but these are
just the sort of problems facing RFID.
"Active tags could be more appropriate when affixed to permanent
fixtures, like shipping containers, taxis, etc; that are read
frequently."
Distant track
Mr Roberti added: "There are many other potential applications,
such as tracking assets over a longer read range.
"With a battery, a credit-card-sized tag might be read from 300ft.
Without a battery, a tag might be read from 15ft.
"So, you could use these inexpensive battery powered labels to
track wheel chairs in hospitals or tools in factories or many other
assets that need to be read from farther than 15ft away."
NEC has not talked about costs at this point, but says they will
continue to work on the stability and the expansion of battery life
towards possible commercialisation in the future.