EDN's 18th Annual Innovation Awards Finalists

ThingMagic’s M5e-Compact embeddable engine embodies a small, second-generation RFID reader for asset-tracking, inventory-management, and location-awareness applications. Designed for mobile, portable, and handheld RFID applications, the M5e-Compact uses the Intel RFID Transceiver R1000 chip, which integrates multiple components into an integrated RFID circuit and enables digital signal processing and analog data processing on the same chip. With a 56×36×5-mm footprint and a maximum 2.6W power requirement, the M5e-Compact provides a command-adjustable transmit power from 10 to 23 dBm (200 mW) with ±1.0-dBm accuracy.

The M5e-Compact is EPCglobal (Electronic Product Code global) Generation 2 DRM (Dense Reader Mode)-compliant and is optimized for Generation 2 RFID tags. The embedded reader also combines multiregion capability into a single module, enabling immediate, locally compliant deployment of any M5e-Compact in North America, South America, Europe, South Korea, Japan, and China. The M5e-Compact is available with a development kit that allows users to read and write Generation 2 RFID tag data plus real-time PC monitoring of the device control utility. The kit also enables developers to reuse code in the utility to optimize specific applications.