Smartrac Introduces Midas FlagTag with NXP’s UCODE 7xm IC

Building on the success of its innovative Midas FlagTag for items with metallic, plastic and cardboard surfaces, Smartrac announced a Midas FlagTag, now also featuring NXP’s UCODE 7xm IC.

Leveraging the IC’s specific capabilities, Midas FlagTag UCODE 7xm is particularly suitable for applications like asset tracking, inventory management or process optimization in the automotive industry as well as other industrial environments.

Introduced roughly one year ago, Smartrac’s unique Midas FlagTag design uses the metallic surface as part of the antenna structure, ensuring superior performance in demanding physical environments, while providing cost advantages over foam-based inlays and hard tags typically used in tougher industrial environments. These superior features are now combined with the advantages offered by NXP’s UCODE 7xm IC, which comprise an extended user memory of up to 2 kbit to store data specific to customers or products, brand protection features using digital signature technology, long read/write ranges and reliable operation in signal-dense or noisy environments.

Until the introduction of Midas FlagTag, tagging metallic packaging and liquids had presented a challenge in many applications. The technically sophisticated yet simplified, innovative RFID tag solved this issue for the authentication of retail, pharma, healthcare or industrial items in high-performance and cost-effective ways. Now, Midas FlagTag UCODE 7xm expands the existing on-metal solution to automotive and industrial items within supply chain & asset management applications.

Smartrac Midas FlagTag utilizes RAIN RFID technology, based on the UHF protocol standard developed by GS1 and ISO. Both tag and IC are fully compliant with VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry) recommendations for RFID implementations used in the tracking of parts and components in the automotive industry.

Like its Impinj Monza R6 equipped sibling, Midas FlagTag UCODE 7xm has a small form factor with a total size of 72 x 21 mm when used as a standard flat paper tag. As a special feature, a flag can be created at the end of tag with a final paper tag size of 50 x 21 mm after folding, and with an exposed area of 22 x 21 mm. The folded part of the tag sticks out of the metal resembling a flag, and the attached antenna part uses the metal surface as part of the antenna structure to increase the performance of the tag. Read distances of up to 6 meters can be achieved, depending on the geometry and size of the metal object. The tags are compatible with RFID printers for easy printing and encoding.
 
Like all applicable transponder products manufactured by Smartrac, Midas FlagTag UCODE 7xm also benefits from the capabilities of Smart Cosmos: Smartrac’s Internet of Things platform records and manages a complete set of unique transponder data (e.g. UID no., order no., batch no. or yield) at production level in a controlled and secure way. As the backbone of Smartrac’s product digitization solutions, Smart Cosmos enables full traceability of delivered RFID products and provides a fully reliable quality assurance.
 
“Right from the start, Midas FlagTag provided a superior – and highly successful – solution for tagging consumer goods and industrial components with metallic, plastic and cardboard surfaces. With Midas FlagTag UCODE 7xm, we are now taking that success story to the automotive industry and other industrial environments,” said Matti Tavilampi, global product management director at Smartrac.