Alien Technology Announces Ultra High Performance Next Generation Global RFID Reader

Alien Technology announced a new and improved, ultra-high performance Gen 2 enterprise category reader platform, the ALR-9900+, a global enterprise category reader platform with significant performance and feature improvements over its popular predecessor, the ALR-9900.

The announcement was revealed at Alien’s 2010 Global User & Partner Conference in Dayton, OH, where Alien is hosting over 130 channel partners and users from around world.

The ALR-9900+ supersedes all previous regional-specific enterprise category readers with an operational frequency band ranging from 866MHz (Europe, Middle East & Africa) to 954MHz (Japan). The ALR-9900+ is the parent model to the recently announced ALR-9900-EMA, which was specifically designed for compliance with the new ETSI EN 302-208-2 regulatory compliance standards, more commonly known as “the four-channel-plan.”

Beyond the advantages of a global hardware platform, the key differentiating attributes of the ALR-9900+ over its ALR-9900 predecessor include a vastly improved receiver circuit design with multiple stages of configurable digital filters and high gain, low distortion amplifiers, resulting in a dramatically more sensitive receiver. This best-in-class design provides more read range margin, most advantageous for applications using ultra-high sensitivity tags in challenging environments at extreme distance or where tag backscatter signals are constrained due to sub-optimum conditions, including use with smaller item level tags which often have limited performance.

In addition, dramatic enhancements have been implemented in the interference rejection filters, further improving upon the reader’s ability to operate in noisy, real-world, dense reader environments and continue to optimize read performance. This, along with improvements in the ability to correct and compensate for reflections due to sub-optimal antennas or antenna cables, helps minimize unwanted reflections to alleviate unwanted noise and enhance the received tag signal.