Article Excerpt:
TWST: May we start with a brief introduction of your company and a short history?Mr. Bravman: Intelleflex was founded in 2003, around the idea that there was an opportunity to take Radio Frequency Identification ("RFID") technology to the next level - by delivering RFID-based solutions platforms for that did much more than serve as a "wireless bar code". Our specific focus is around a technology called battery-assisted passive RFID, which has a set of important incremental capabilities above and beyond the forms RFID best known today. Our founders believed that those incremental capabilities would be important to solving a set of business problems that could not be addressed using any combination of existing RFID or bar code technologies.
TWST: Can you elaborate on the technology that your RFID product incorporates ?
Mr. Bravman: RFID sits within a family of related technologies called "automatic
data capture" or "automatic identification" technology. The "auto ID" space
includes such technologies as bar coding (both one and two dimensional), voice
recognition, machine vision, and magnetic stripe reading. An important and
relatively recent addition to the field is RFID. There are two parts to an RFID
system: readers and tags. We make both, and position the combination as an
"intelligent RFID platform" because of the powerful features we offer.
There are several types of RFID. The most commonly known is "passive" RFID.
Here, the circuitry in the tag is powered by harvesting the incoming RF energy
from a reader. Further, the return signal from the tag to the reader is in the
form of a reflection or, technically speaking, a backscattering of the inbound
energy from the reader.
At the other end of the spectrum is a collection of technologies collectively
knows as "active" RFID. Here, the tags both receive and transmit an RF signal
during communications with a reader, and have an on-board battery to power their
circuitry.
So passive tags can be thought of as sort of the RF equivalent of a wiggling
mirror reflecting back a signal to the reader using its own energy, while active
RFID tags use their own powered transmitter to send information back to the
reader, and can be thought of as a two way radio.
Our technology combines elements of those two technologies, and is called
"battery-assisted passive". (Others have called it semi-active or semi-passive.)
We believe that our implementation of this technology is a best of both worlds
combination of passive and active technologies.
Like passive, the information transfer from the tag back to the reader is in the
form of reflected energy from the reader. There is no active transmitter in the
tag. However, there is a battery present that allows us to amplify the inbound
RF signal from the reader to the tag, thus rendering the tag much more
sensitive. The battery also provides local power for the tag, independent of
inbound energy from the reader. The result: the tag is able to read at a much
greater distance as compared to passive tags (70 meters or longer vs. 1 to 3
meters for passive systems), and much more reliably under difficult conditions
(such as when tags are placed on metal or around liquids).
Battery-assisted passive tags, especially as embodied in our single-chip design,
are simpler, lower cost, more compact and offer superior battery life as
compared to active tags. You get the capability of an active tag - long-range
reading, the ability to work in difficult RF conditions, and the ability to put
important incremental functions on the chip (like temperature sensing, which
we'll offer in 2007), but at a price point closer to that of passive tags.
To summarize: we offer a very high capability, high performance RFID platform,
comprising tags and readers, at a great value point. We achieve this as a result
of our tags being based on a single chip, battery-assisted passive design,
offering breakthrough features.
Tickers included in this excerpt: PVT
TWST Newsletter
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.