subject: Develops Rfid Reader - Cardteq [print this page] Engineers at NEC have developed a RFID Reader compatible with all three major wireless formats
The reader will be launched around April next year and a prototype was unveiled Tuesday at a company event in Tokyo.
At present a number of different RFID card formats have been commercialized and are battling for dominance in the market but a winner is yet to emerge. That means companies deploying RFID readers and RFID Writer must make a bet on a system that might not make it, said Tomoju Kawakubo, a chief at NEC's ubiquitous solution department. The NEC reader brings some future proofing with compatibility for 13.65MHz, UHF (ultra-high frequency) and 2.45GHz cards.
During a demonstration at the company's iExpo event, the reader was shown working with Mifare, Felica, I-Code, Tag-It, EPC Global, Intellitag and uChip cards and card embosser . For four of the card formats, the unit is completely compatible but for Mifare, Felica and uChip it's restricted to reading only the card ID number.
A non-working model of the commercial version, about a quarter the size of the prototype, was also on display. It will be launched in April along with a reader circuit board that can be embedded into other products. The board is smaller than a credit card .
