Philips and Texas Instruments Join Forces to Accelerate EPC Generation 2 RFID Deployment

Two of the leading radio frequency identification (RFID) semiconductor manufacturers, Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN), today announced an agreement to cooperate on conformance testing for the technical interpretation of the EPCglobal Inc Electronic Product Code (EPC) Generation (Gen) 2 RFID standard. This joint effort is aimed at ensuring interoperability and accelerating market deployment of Gen 2 products, such as labels, hardware and system solutions, to offer multiple sourcing for implementations of RFID throughout the world.

The EPC Gen 2 standard, currently in the process of standardisation by the International Standards Organization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for global adoption, is the newest and most advanced of the RFID specifications for the ultra-high frequency (UHF) band centered around 900 MHz. It is widely supported by end-users and manufacturers within the RFID industry and will facilitate the widespread deployment of RFID technology in the retail supply chain. EPC Gen 2 has several advantages over the first-generation EPC Class 0 and Class 1 standards, including optimised performance in different global regulatory environments, read/write field programmability, faster tag read/write rates, operation in dense reader environments and migration to future EPC classes.

TI and Philips have a successful track record of working together to drive standards adoption, said Michael Cernusca, manager of the RFID Product Management Team, Philips Semiconductors. Ensuring interoperability between the major IC players will help to bring the EPC Gen 2 standard into the marketplace as early as possible, allowing the global business community to benefit from deploying RFID across multinational infrastructures.

The collaboration supports EPCglobals efforts to provide the market with multiple interoperable products. Philips and TI have worked together in the past to enable and accelerate the adoption of international RFID standards. The high-frequency RFID standard ISO/IEC 15693, ratified in 1999, illustrates the effectiveness of the companies collaboration in this area. Today this road to success is continued with the infrastructure enablement and deployment of the globally adopted ultra-high-frequency standard.

Typically, an international standard from work plan to final ratification is a lengthy process spanning several years. In 2004, TI, Philips and other major RFID suppliers worked to define the Gen 2 standard which was successfully ratified by EPCglobal Inc in December, a milestone accomplishment in less than 18 months, said Bill Santini, director of technology development, Texas Instruments RFid Systems. This agreement with Philips further accelerates the global infrastructure readiness to deploy Gen 2 devices for end-users who want a fast track to implementation.

The companies are also extending their collaboration efforts through the ISO process for accelerated ratification of the ISO/IEC 18000-6 Type C standard based on the EPC Gen 2 specification.