Find out about a new RFID tag that operates in harsh environments.
Learn about the plasmonic structure now used for RFID.
Find out how Omni-ID used biomimetics to develop their new tags.

Picture : Omni-ID tag attached to metal and being read through water and a metal mesh

The runner-up for the “best in show” category at the RFID Journal Awards 2008 was Omni-ID. They presented a truly innovative RFID tag that can be read through water and on metal with 99.9% reliability. Here’s an interview we did with their president and CEO, Thomas C. Pavela.

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Interview transcript :

Harold Boeck (1.28) :
This is Harold Boeck from RFID Radio at RFID Journal Live! 2008 in Las Vegas. And I’m here with Thomas Pavela, President and CEO of Omni-ID. First of all Thomas, I’d like to congratulate you on being a finalist for the Best in Show Category.

Thomas Pavela (1:44) :
Thank you very much, we’re very pleased and
honored to be a finalist for our product the Omni-ID Prox. It’s particularly gratifying and pleasing to us because we’re a relatively new stand alone company within the last year being sprung out of QinetiQ, a two billion-dollar security and defence company based in the UK. And it’s only been in the last couple months that we’ve officially launched as a stand alone company as well.

Harold Boeck (2:10) :
About your new product, I understand this is a new passive UHF tag that can actually be read through a metal mesh and in water. Could you tell us a little more about that?

Picture : Thomas C. Pavela holding an Omni-ID Prox tag at RFID Journal Live! 2008

Thomas Pavela (2:22) :
Yes I can. You are right that it can have high performance and reliability in that harsh environment. I think first, it’s important for me to take a step back and say that we are a company of innovators and innovations. Our scientists basically cracked the code on a long standing technical issue that actually has been one of the things that has impeded the widespread adoption of RFID. What that is, is passive UHF tags working reliably in harsh environments that deal with metals and liquids. The fact of the matter is RFID, like other technologies, is subject to the laws of physics. Radio waves and metals don’t work well. If you have metal environment, the radio wave is reflected, if you have liquids such as a water environment, they’re absorbed. What we did with our technology is address that issue head on and solved it with a disruptive technology that allows our products, our tags, including the Omni-ID Prox which is a finalist, to be able to operate reliably in harsh environments.

Harold Boeck (3:36) : 
So with this new product, you’re basically redefining the technological rules in RFID. I’d like to ask you, and I know a little about the answer, but I think this would be really interesting for listeners, how did you get the inspiration for developing such a product?

Thomas Pavela (3:51) :
What we did is we took a fundamentally different approach to this issue. Rather than an engineering, we took an out-of-the-box scientific approach. We started looking at the wing structure of the blue morpho butterfly to understand how that wing structure could reflect light. Rather than just mimicking that structure, we took that concept and applied it to basically a tag structure and said we want to reflect radio waves in the same way that that wing structure reflects light. And what we did in the process is developed our technology, developed products, to be able to work in a harsh environment. Some of the secret actually is in the design structure. We have an intricate arrangement of metal layers that basically allow us to actively take the radio wave coming in, focus, manipulate it, create a sense of energy there that empowers the chip, send back the radio waves in a strengthened fashion, and we have a working tag.

Harold Boeck (5:05) :
Not only are you introducing a new product to the industry, but I believe you’re also introducing a new term to the industry, which is called the plasmonic tag. First of all, I was not familiar myself with this term. Is this something that’s new to the industry and also how does that work?

Thomas Pavela (5:24) :
It’s the “plasmonic structure” that basically actually effectively makes our tag work. It is the intricate different layers of metal that we have and the way that they’re folded. That’s actually our core technology.

Harold Boeck (5:41) :
Could you also tell us how this new plasmonic structure will differ from existing solutions that use standard UHF tags to track metal objects.

Thomas Pavela (5:52) :
Yes. There are a number of conventional UHF solutions out there that operate in some metal environments. But basically what they do is these are workarounds. So if you actually have a standard dipole tag for example, and basically attach it to metal, it’s not going to give you a reliable read. What has been done does is some workarounds. Such as, you put an air gap between the tag and the metal and what that does is it does not allow a coupling of the dipole tag to the metal. And what really does not allow the wave to go back. So that is one workaround. What some people do is also basically do some adjustment for reads on metal. The fact of the matter is a lot of these solutions sometimes involve certain materials, prefab materials, additional costs and they’re not always as reliable. They’re workarounds. Our technology, which is truly disruptive, was designed and developed specifically to work in harsh environments and no workarounds.

Harold Boeck (7:05) : 
Could you give us some examples of exactly what type of harsh environments your tag could be used in or for example, what type of application it would have the most advantage of being used in.

Thomas Pavela (7:18) :
Well our disruptive technology has basically enabled a broad range of actually new applications to be developed that really address real world issues and problems that customers have and add value to them. So let me give you an example. We have been working with IBM in the last year. They have a passive RFID solution that we’ve enabled to track assets in data centers for asset management and visibility.

Picture : Blade servers with the Omni-ID Prox tag as you would see in an IBM data center

If you think about the challenge there. You’ve got thousands of different assets, blade servers, communication cards, disk drives, a lot of metal, some plastic. The other challenge is small real estate, you have fans and other things that you cannot block up. Our tag, the Omni-ID Prox is actually enabling a first of its type solution, end to end solution, that IBM is now testing and piloting in their data centers both in the US and in Europe. That’s not only an innovative technology, innovative product and an innovative solution. I feel that it’s innovation that is really going to drive the widespread adoption of RFID in the industry. We’re talking about technology and technology is interesting and we’ve solved the long standing problem. But the fact of the matter is that if the technology is not really addressing real world business problems and adding value to customers, we’re not going to have the widespread adoption of RFID. I feel that with our technology and with our products what were starting to do, is enable new solutions that are addressing some of these real-world business issues.

Harold Boeck (9:14) :
Thomas Pavela, President and CEO of Omni-ID. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to her listeners.

 

The Omni-ID aquarium

One of the biggest attention grabbers in the exhibitor’s hall at RFID Journal Live! 2008 was Omni-ID’s water filled aquarium. To demonstrate their tag’s ability to be read in water and on metal, the team decided to affix one of their tags on a metal structure, surround it by a wide metal mesh then submerge it in an aquarium filled with fish. We took pictures and posted them for you to see it.

Picture : Omni-ID’s RFID tag in a fish filled aquarium. The tag is affixed on metal surrounded by a wide metal mesh and submerged in water.

Picture : Here’s a close-up of the setup. Notice the fish swimming around the tag. That’s the proof there definitely is water.

Picture : The tag was powered through Alien antennas placed behind the aquarium.

Picture : The Alien Gateway interface showed the tag being read.

 

Links to topics discussed in the podcast :

The second runner-up for the Best in Show Category was Omni-ID’s Prox passive UHF RFID tag.

Animation of how Omni-ID’s RFID tags work

Omni-ID Powerpoint presentation at RFID Journal Live! 2008

Video interview with Thomas C. Pavela by NPS

 

Additional reading

Arora, K., Mallinson, H., Kulkarni, A., Brusey, J. and McFarlane, D. (2007). The Practical Feasibility of Using RFID in a Metal Environment. Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2007.WCNC 2007. IEEE, pp. 1679-1683.

Nordlander, P. and Le, F. (2006). Plasmonic structure and electromagnetic field enhancements in the metallic nanoparticle-film system. Applied Physics B: Lasers and Optics. 84 (1-2), pp. 35-41

Yoseph Bar-Cohen (2006). Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies. CRC Press. 527 pages.

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Tags: Asset tracking, biomimetics, Metal, Omni-ID, plasmonic structure, RFID, RFID Journal Awards, Tom Pavela, UHF, Water

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