Impinj Showcases GrandPrix at 11th Annual RFID Journal Live

Impinj, Inc. is showcasing the GrandPrix platform along with several new products at the 11th Annual RFID Journal Live Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, FL, April 30-May 2. Based on the company’s market-leading Monza tag chips, Speedway readers, and Indy reader chips, Impinj’s GrandPrix platform enhances performance of systems based on the Gen 2 protocol, allowing businesses to fully leverage their investments in RFID technology.

At the heart of the GrandPrix platform, Impinj’s Monza 5 tag chip powers over half of all UHF Gen 2 tags produced today and can be found in more than 50 tag designs from every major global inlay manufacturer. Designed from the ground up for item-level tagging, Monza 5 enables low total applied tag cost and exceptional in-store performance for retail applications. Users of the Impinj GrandPrix platform will be able to seamlessly intermix tags based on Monza 5 with tags built from Impinj’s future tag chip models, the first of which will be available in 2014.

“As the world’s leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of RFID transponders and inlays, we support the Impinj GrandPrix platform,” said Wolfgang Schneider, member of the Management Board and head of SMARTRAC’s Electronic Product Identification (ePI) Business Unit. “Our customers benefit from products based on the Monza 5 tag chip and its superior performance and reliability.”

For brand owners and service bureaus using the GrandPrix platform, Impinj is announcing the second generation of its Source Tagging Platform, STP 2.0, which enables and simplifies high-throughput, high-reliability source tagging deployments. With STP 2.0, brand owners enjoy the flexibility to decide when, where and how to serialize tags to achieve the lowest total applied tag cost, and service bureaus can deliver RFID-enabled retail trim with the same turn-around times and quality their customers expected before RFID. When used with Monza tag chips, Impinj STP 2.0 uses pipelining, advanced error correction, extraordinary write sensitivity and other proprietary techniques to sustain printer-encoder speeds of up to 100,000 units per hour and throughput of up to 300,000 units per hour for encode-only systems.

As the foundation of enterprise-class RFID solutions, the Impinj GrandPrix platform leverages all the performance and functionality advantages of Speedway fixed readers and Indy-based RFID mobile or stationary readers. With more than 50,000 units in service today, Speedway accounts for the world’s largest installed base because no other UHF fixed reader can match its proven performance and reliability. For mobile solutions, Impinj’s Indy reader chip family is the de facto standard, with more than 80% of all handheld RFID readers today incorporating an Indy reader chip.

To enable the growing variety of RFID-enabled products and devices, Impinj is introducing the new Indy RS500 System-in-Package (SiP) reader chip. Compatible with the GrandPrix platform and housed in a small, surface mount package, Impinj’s Indy RS500 is a complete UHF Gen 2 reader that simplifies development of products with embedded RFID capability and reduces time-to-market in a wide range of applications.

“Impinj’s broad ecosystem of tag and solution providers made it easy for us to go with GrandPrix from the start of our latest RFID initiatives.” says Stacey Shulman, CTO of American Apparel. “Because of that decision, we are now rolling out new business capabilities that would have been impossible otherwise. GrandPrix will give us a real advantage in the market.”

Future generations of Impinj products will be compatible with the GrandPrix platform, including Speedway xArray, an advanced reader system designed for autonomous wide-area monitoring. When ceiling mounted, xArray can accurately interrogate a 40-foot diameter area, utilizing an array of antenna beams to provide granular location information about tags in its field of view. Optimized to read many thousands of tags very quickly and to distinguish tags of interest from others in the field, xArray’s low profile enclosure easily mounts in a single tile of a standard drop ceiling.

“As results-driven P&L owners replace early adopters, we are moving from a technology-oriented market to a solution-oriented market,” said Larry Arnstein, vice president of business development for Impinj. “By expanding application capabilities well beyond the least common denominator provided by the Gen 2 protocol, our GrandPrix platform provides business leaders with more leverage from the same RFID investment.”