Out in Front: August 1, 1996

Micron Communications has announced a beta-test program that provides opportunities for investigating the emerging technology of remote intelligent communications (RIC). The technology incorporates RF communications, a µP, and memory into tiny "tags." The tags, some as small as or smaller than a credit card, provide wireless communication to distances of 20 ft or more. They're useful for such applications as access control, inventory tracking, and automatic toll collection.

RIC technology is an outgrowth of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, which respond with identifier codes to RF-transmitted requests from an interrogator unit. By adding processing ability and memory to RFID tags, RIC allows wireless exchange of additional, more useful data. A RIC tag's µP can also implement security features, such as encryption.

Micron bases its RIC line on the MicroStamp Engine, a 20-pin SOIC that includes a 2.45-GHz radio, an 8-bit µP, and 256 bytes of user SRAM. A tag product, the credit-card-sized MicroStamp, includes the MicroStamp Engine, an antenna, and a 0.5-mm-thick battery. Both products sell for $35 or less in small quantities and for as little as $5 in high volumes. Samples are available now; production quantities will be available late this year or early next year. An evaluation and development system, the PC-based MicroStamp Standard Simulator, sells for $750.

Micron's RIC devices communicate with direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) techniques. The MicroStamp Engine includes a 2.45-GHz receiver, a clock-recovery system, a spread-spectrum processor, an 8-bit µP, 256 bytes of user SRAM, a modulated back-scatter transmitter, and a digital serial I/O port. The digital port allows direct-connect communication whenever RF communication is unnecessary or undesirable. The IC can also connect, if necessary, to higher performance receivers and transmitters than those the chip itself incorporates. Otherwise, a RIC device's antenna reflects energy from an interrogator back to the interrogator, adding data to the interrogator's unmodulated signal with differential-phase-shift-keying (DPSK) modulation. Two data rates are available: 94.68 and 189.3 kbps. Data words contain 13 bits, eight for data and five for error-correction codes.

—by Gary Legg

Micron Communications Inc, Boise, ID. (888) 678-2671.