Reuters: Savi Wins $6.6 Million Order From U.S. Defense Department for RFID Supply Chain Tracking Technologies Standards-based (ISO / DASH7) RFID Devices Facilitate Interoperability Among U.S. and Allied Defense Forces and Federal Agencies

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Savi®, a Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) company and provider of RFID-based supply chain products and solutions, has been awarded orders totaling $6.6 million for standards-based active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking technologies and accompanying services under the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD's) RFID III procurement contract. The RFID tags, which are affixed to cargo containers and other supply chain assets, comply with the ISO 18000-7 standard (also called DASH7), enabling near real-time supply visibility and interoperability with allied defense forces and government organizations.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080123/AQW081LOGO)

The U.S. Army Information Technology, E-Commerce and Commercial Contracting Center (ITEC4) issued the procurement orders utilizing competitive procedures under the RFID-III contracting vehicle, which is a multiple award, indefinite-delivery-indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract with a total value of $429.4 million. RFID III was established for active RFID hardware, software and engineering services, and is open to all U.S. military Services, U.S. Federal Agencies and non-U.S. defense forces.

"This initial order of DASH7 RFID devices marks the DoD's conversion of RFID products to an open global standard that will support multi-national interoperability and innovative solutions that can leverage sensor-rich networks," said David Stephens, chief executive officer of Savi Technology. "We're gratified to be both a long-term supplier of RFID solutions to the DoD, and now a pioneering supporter of its transition to standards-based technologies that will help provide war fighters with the right supplies at the right time to get the job done."

Savi received three orders with staggered delivery dates with the final deliveries due in three months. The contract includes orders for the Savi ST-654, which is an ISO 18000-7 compliant high-performance, data-rich active RFID tag widely used to track shipping containers, vehicles and other large and valuable assets; and, the Savi ST-621, (also ISO 18000-7 compliant), which is a lower-cost, license plate tag designed for quick commissioning that is ideal for tracking shipping containers, rolling stock and other conveyances. For the past dozen years, Savi has helped to build the DoD's In-Transit Visibility network, which is the world's largest active RFID-based cargo tracking system spanning more than 4,000 nodes across more than 40 countries. Savi RFID-based solutions also support other government agencies and international defense forces such as NATO, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Poland, and others. RFID III calls for "state-of-the-art" active RFID products compliant with ISO 18000-7 that provide "logistics tracking, locating, and health monitoring of commodities and assets." Savi actively participated in the development of ISO 18000-7, and offers a reasonable and non discriminatory licensing program for patent-protected protocols included in the international standard. Several commercial companies have licensed Savi's technology, including companies selected for possible awards under the RFID III contract.

Savi is a founding member of the DASH7 Alliance, a broad coalition of technology developers, manufacturers, test laboratories and government organizations committed to proliferating the commercial use of wireless sensor networks based on the ISO 18000-7 standard. For more information visit www.dash7.org

Click here for complete story from Reuters

RFID News: Genesis Health System has implemented AeroScout’s Wi-Fi RTLS for hospital-wide asset tracking and management at Genesis Medical Center in Davenport, Iowa.

The solution uses Genesis Health System’s existing wireless network and consists of AeroScout Wi-Fi Tags, AeroScout Exciters and AeroScout MobileView software to track and manage about 700 items throughout the medical center, including infusion pumps, wheelchairs, stretchers and powered air-purifying respirators.

Using RFID to monitor these items significantly reduces the amount of time the staff spends searching for key equipment and gives the hospital a better idea of how to allocate its resources.

The AeroScout solution also plays an important role in the medical center’s disaster preparedness plan. Knowing the exact location of critical equipment has helped the logistics team demonstrate that it can react quickly and deliver the required equipment to the right places on time.

Click here for complete story from RFID News

Reuters: SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- InSync Software, Inc., provider of the fabric for the world's leading RFID, GPS and sensor-driven line-of-business software applications, announced today that the company has closed $4.7 million in Series B funding. The latest investment round was led by existing investors Intel Capital and Rustic Canyon Ventures, along with participation by strategic individual investors.

The funding comes as InSync experiences increasing momentum and growth in its business. In 2009 alone, InSync has doubled its customer and partner base and completed major deployments of its award-winning iApp platform and Applications by market-leading companies such as Dole Foods, Bayer, SonicWall and others. Additionally, InSync has been rapidly expanding its global presence with customer wins in Asia, the Middle East, Canada and elsewhere.

Much of this activity has been recognized by the marketplace, as InSync's products have increasingly garnered the attention of customers, partners and industry analysts alike in 2008 and 2009 - culminating in numerous product and company awards from organizations including NSF International (for Food Safety), Managing Automation (for Food Safety and Yard Management), Supply and Demand Chain Executive (for Supply Chain), Inbound Logistics (for Logistics)and others.

InSync has developed a strong partner network comprised of industry-leading hardware providers, systems integrators and technology companies such as IBM,IDENTEC Solutions, Intermec, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and Mojix.

Click here for complete story from Reuters

RFID News: Munich International Airport has announced that it will adopt AeroScout`s GPS and Wi-Fi RFID solution to track thousands of cargo and passenger baggage dollies as they move about the airport. AeroScout T6 GPS Wi-Fi Tags will be mounted on the airport`s cargo dollies, used by cargo companies to pick up and drop off packages, and passenger baggage dollies, used for transporting baggage between terminals and airplanes. The active tags use GPS to determine location of the assets and transmit the data over a standard Wi-Fi network, which the airport already has in place.

Knowing where dollies are at all times will help Munich Airport prevent operations delays or interruptions due to missing or lost items, and eliminate lengthy searches for dollies that are due for their annual maintenance inspections. In addition, the airport will also be able to charge cargo companies more accurately based on the location and usage of dollies, according to AeroScout.

Click here for complete story from RFID News

RFID News: The Southeast Alabama Medical Center (SAMC) in Dothan, Ala. has chosen to expand its Ekahau Real Time Location System (RTLS) to include campus-wide monitoring of its refrigerators and freezers.

SAMC deployed Ekahau’s RTLS campuswide earlier this year to track critical clinical assets, such as infusion pumps and patient monitors over its Wi-Fi network.

SAMC expanded the system to monitor the temperature of perishable items contained within its freezers and refrigerators, including food, medicine, organs, and blood and tissue samples. Any significant changes in the temperature could mean drastic losses of these items, and so SAMC looked to implement a monitoring system with alarm capabilities.

The system consists of Wi-Fi based T301t temperature monitoring tags, the Ekahau Positioning Engine and Tag Management platform, as well as Ekahau’s Vision solution that manages all the system’s alarms and escalation paths. The T301t tags are able to measure temperatures from -200C to + 200 C and feature on-board alarming via a flashing indicator and buzzer.

In the future SAMC expects to grow the RTLS system, which works on its existing Wi-Fi network, to track several thousand more assets.

Click here for complete story from RFID News

Information Week: Like Bluetooth, the Wi-Fi Direct standard will enable peer-to-peer device connections without the need for a Wi-Fi hotspot.

By Marin Perez, InformationWeek

The Wi-Fi Alliance announced a new specification Wednesday that will enable smartphones, laptops, and other electronics to connect to each other without the use of a traditional Wi-Fi hotspot.

The Wi-Fi Direct specification will enable devices to create peer-to-peer connections that have similar data transfer speeds and range as typical Wi-Fi. The alliance said the new standard will be faster than existing ad-hoc modes, and it could be used to enable laptops to quickly connect to a printer, as well as for consumer-oriented purposes like peer-to-peer game machine connections. Wi-Fi Direct devices will also be able to connect with existing Wi-Fi certified devices for one-to-one connections, or several devices can connect simultaneously.

The alliance, anticipating that devices with the new specification could find their way into corporations, has built in some security features such WPA2, as well as management options to ensure Wi-Fi direct devices don't become insecure bridges between the corporate infrastructure and other networks. The alliance expects to begin certifying Wi-Fi Direct devices in 2010.

"Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn't available," said Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, in a statement. "The impact is that Wi-Fi will become even more pervasive and useful for consumers and across the enterprise."

The new specification has the potential to displace other peer-to-peer connection standards, but other wireless transfer protocols have been boosting their features. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has shown off the Bluetooth 3.0 standard, which offers faster transfer speeds than previous versions. Near-field communication is also gaining steam as a viable way to implement mobile payment systems, andSony (NYSE: SNE)'s TransferJet protocol offers wireless transfer speeds of up to 560 Mbps between devices.

Please also check another related article http://www.rft.com/images/docs/HIMSSrls_02-08.pdf for Peer to Peer Wi-Fi RTLS.

Click here for complete story from Information Week

Coolest Gadgets: Ekahau might not be familiar to many people, but it boasts the title of being the leading provider of High Performance Wi-Fi-based Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) in the market. Currently, they have just expanded their hardware portfolio with a new device – the T301W, a wristband tag that was specially designed to be used in applications that determine the precise location of people. Being small in size, it fits onto your wrist comfortably, making it the ideal device for use in hospitals. After all, knowing the real-time location of an adult patient, child or a visitor in hospitals is a requirement for ensuring patient safety and satisfaction.
Apart from that, the wristband tag would also be at home when used in other places including amusement parks, cruise ships and other hospitality venues – basically anywhere where there is a potential for children or adults to be separated from their group. This got me thinking as well – it would be great for tour operators to slap their ‘party’ with one of these each just in case the more independent minded tourists chart out their own trail, especially in crowded places. Businesses can also keep track of visitors to make sure they remain off-limits to sensitive areas, hence preventing unwarranted snooping around.

Click here for complete story from Coolest Gadgets

Tech Target: Meru Networks has pioneered a new wireless LAN troubleshooting strategy that enables end-to-end user simulation in what resembles an out-of-band management system, and is the first in the space to offer such depth of monitoring and reporting.

"This new SAM, or Service Assurance Module, introduces this notion of a dial tone into the [wireless LAN]," said Andrew Borg, senior research analyst with Aberdeen Group. "It's a health check with very low bandwidth utilization … every hand-off of the data through all the layers of the network is being monitored for its health 24-by-7."

Meru's SAM platform takes advantage of a core differentiator in Meru's overall wireless LAN infrastructure: Its access points (APs) all operate in the same channel frequency. Most WLAN vendors take a microcell approach, and have their APs operate on different channels to limit interference. With Meru, the APs assign a MAC address to each client on the network, and that client is passed from AP to AP transparently. That way when a laptop is moved about an office, it sees just one giant AP rather than dozens handing it off across the network.

Click here for complete story from Tech Target

Earth Times: CHARLOTTE, NC and NEWPORT BEACH, CA -- 10/14/09 -- Patient Care Technology Systems (PCTS), a subsidiary of Consulier Engineering, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSLR), today announced that Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian has implemented the company's Amelior EDTracker® solution to automatically track patients in its 66,000-census emergency department. The solution integrates an ultrasonic real-time locating system (RTLS) from PCTS business partner, Sonitor Technologies.

Amelior EDTracker is part of the Amelior Enterprise Visibility Suite(TM) which comprises departmental to facility-wide solutions to streamline patient flow through the real-time visualization and documentation of patient care. Hospitals can scale their implementations by the entities they wish to track (movable medical equipment, patients, staff), operational goals (asset management, patient flow, infection control) and by scope of care (acute care, outpatient services, inpatient floors, facility-wide).

The web-based Amelior EDTracker software visualizes patient flow by automatically identifying the location and status of patients and equipment without requiring manual updates by busy caregivers. Location information is generated by integrating with a facility's choice of RTLS. Hoag selected ultrasonic locating from Sonitor Technologies for its room and bay-level locating precision and accuracy. Workflow algorithms within the Amelior EDTracker software interpret the meaning of location, movement and interactions between patients, staff and equipment to automatically communicate patient care milestones as they occur. Interfaces to ADT, lab, and radiology systems integrate additional patient and order status information creating a centralized workflow communication and management portal for the emergency department.

"The implementation of automatic patient tracking is a significant step forward in workflow visibility and automation for our emergency department," said Raymond Ricci MD, FACEP, director of emergency medicine. "We are dedicated to providing our patients with the most efficient and safest care possible. Amelior EDTracker is helping us to transform the efficiency of our department."

Click here for complete story from Earth Times

Steel Guru (via RFIDJournal.com): Through the introduction of a real time location system, South Korean steel manufacturer POSCO is reducing accidents, improving employee and visitor safety and lowering energy consumption.

To ensure the safety of employees and visitors at the plant, POSCO has introduced its u safety management system, which utilizes ultra wideband radio frequency identification tags and interrogators to monitor all areas of the facility. Each person working in or visiting the plant is provided with a helmet fitted with a battery powered RFID tag, allowing managers to quickly locate that individual in the event of a serious accident, such as a fire or gas leak.

Mr Hanku Park, a senior master POSCO certified professional, said that his company previously had no means of tracking employees' locations throughout the factory. He added that "Ensuring worker safety at the plant is vital and we wanted a system that could track workers, visitors and even vehicles to monitor or limit their access to hazardous areas of the plant. We consulted with IBM Korea to find a solution that would best meet our needs. We conducted technical tests on the RTLS system and software that allowed us to determine the distance required between the tag and reader, given the iron and steel present as part of the production process, as well as determines tag and reader accuracy."

POSCO uses Ubisense's RTLS solution, with Series 7000 RFID tags affixed to personnel and equipment. The tags operate on a frequency of 6 to 8 GHz, beaconing once per second. The Series 7000 readers receive the beacons from the tags to determine position, and that information is then transmitted to the LAS middleware over a local area network.

Click here for complete story from Steel Guru (via RFIDJournal.com)