Peter Harrop IDTechEx

By Dr. Peter Harrop IDTechEx Solar cells are needed on everything from clothing to packaging, toys, spaceships, consumer goods, medical testers, skin patches and tools. Mostly, they must be thin and flexible, lightweight, environmental and low in cost - even disposable in many cases. Optical transparency would prevent them defacing items and higher efficiency and working from heat as well as light are sought. Working well in real world conditions of reflected or low level light would help. In other words, a multi-faceted $100 billion market is emerging that will consist of very different requirements but most of them can never be met by

By Dr. Peter Harrop IDTechEx The ultimate supply chain and the ideal control of parts, materials, work in progress and finished goods in manufacturing will be provided by Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS), ultimately with sensing as well. These are a form of active RFID and there are various types available from Ultra Wide Band (UWB) which uses a broad range of frequencies in the microwave region, to systems in the megahertz region, though 2.45 GHz is now very popular for RTLS. One form radio fingerprints existing WiFi emissions and another measures Time Delay of Arrival (TDOA) of several emitted beams. The WiFi approach

By Dr. Peter Harrop IDTechEx The printed electronics industry is a fast-growth sector with global activity and exciting new developments occurring in printed, partially-printed, organic, and thin-film electronics markets. IDTechEx will highlight the developments in this field and recognize the efforts of the companies involved at the IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA Awards taking place in San Francisco on Nov. 13, 2008. The IDTechEx Printed Electronics Awards recognize company innovation, success and development. The award ceremony will be held at the industry’s largest gathering - Printed Electronics USA in San Francisco, Nov. 13-14, bringing together companies from around the world. The Awards are hosted by

By Dr. Peter Harrop IDTechEx The retail and consumer goods industry is now overcoming concerns about the cost and performance of RFID and making big commitments. This is reflected in the speaker lineup for Europe’s leading RFID conference, IDTechEx RFID Europe in Cambridge UK, Sept. 18-19. Ahold, Sony, Marks & Spencer, Schiutima/C1000, Logica CMG, Toppan Printing and others will describe retail and consumer goods successes in Europe and Japan. Major plans from the factory to the retail shelf will be covered including Marks & Spencer’s commitment to 350 million tags yearly on items, ahead of any other retailer in the world. Reduced costs and

By Dr Peter Harrop IDTechEx At IDTechEx, when we teach Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), we talk of it being a ubiquitous enabling technology like the wheel or paper. Some people consider that to be rather far fetched. After all, wheels extend from prayer wheels, steering wheels, and wheels of fortune to aircraft wheels and microscopic wheels in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems MEMS. They are everywhere, as is paper because that appears as anything from art to toilet paper, packaging, books, and origami. The IDTechEx RFID Knowledgebase has captured more than 2,400 cases of RFID in action involving more than 2,500 organizations in 85 countries.

By Dr Peter Harrop IDTechEx In an analysis of 75 Active RFID case studies from 18 countries by IDTechEx, the largest number of projects was in logistics which had around twice the number of each of the nearest contenders - air industry, automotive/transportation and healthcare. In the case studies, the main items that were tagged were containers, followed by vehicles, conveyances and people, and this probably reflects the market as a whole. Car remote locking devices are products in their own right of course and do not tag anything. Tagging people is nonetheless a significant and growing sector. The choice of frequencies narrows towards the higher frequencies

More Blogs