Royal Philips Electronics and Texas Instruments don't believe in waiting around. Even if it means joining together they will in the hopes that their interpretations of the Gen 2 standards will be accepted. They will test their RFID tags for interpretability in an effort to assure customers that different RFID tags can work together under Gen 2.
Gen 2, which applies to the ultra-high frequency band centered on 900 MHz, was ratified by RFID industry group EPCglobal last December, with the help of TI, Philips and other RFID companies. Gen 2 has a number of advantages over first-generation EPC Class 0 and Class 1 standards, including a disabling feature, security password and superior performance that allows more RFID tags to be read per second.
This is not the first time TI and Philips have jointly tested their chips --they initially got together in 1996 to test pre-EPCglobal RFID tags.
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