RFID Integrated Circuit

EM Microelectronic introduced the EM4126 EPC Gen2 RFID integrated circuit, intended for use in RFID tags for jewelry, cosmetics and other small and/or high value products. The product has been evaluated for use in small item-level tags for such items as jewelry and watches, where its high sensitivity allows for longer read ranges, even with a significantly smaller antenna/tag. It achieves a typical read sensitivity of -19 dBm at the chip level, which translates into a typical -21 dBm sensitivity at the tag level for a dipole-like antenna with 2 dBi gain (25us TARI, 250 kHz BLF). The device also contains more memory than competitive item-level tags. Its 224 bits of non-volatile memory (16-bit PC Word and 208-bit UII/EPC Code) enable support of ISO or EPC data structures and allow for SGTIN 198 encoding as an enhanced alternative to SGTIN-96. SGTIN-198 encoding uses alphanumeric serialization represented as a string of up to 20 7-bit characters allowing for more flexibility and human-readable codes. The encoded string is left-justified and unused characters are zero filled.