Infineon announced the further expansion of its RFID product portfolio. Infineon’s new RFID chip “PJM Light” provides a memory capacity of 1 kbit and privacy features designed to prevent unauthorized access to the protected data.

Unlike current RFID solutions, PJM (Phase Jitter Modulation) chips are suitable for simultaneous contactless electronic identification of several hundred objects – even if they are tightly packed or very fast-moving. In addition to document management, the “PJM Light” chip allows the cost-effective inventory of objects and efficient supply chain management in healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical applications such as medical implants.

Infineon and Magellan Technology Pty of Australia announced they have also expanded their license agreement and ongoing collaboration in order to further develop the growing PJM global reader infrastructure. In addition to the existing license for PJM chips, Infineon has taken a license from Magellan for its patented PJM reader technology. Infineon is now in the position to grant sub-licenses for PJM reader technology to other reader manufacturers and RFID system integrators worldwide.

“Contactless object identification is a key solution to save time and money in logistic processes for healthcare, pharmaceuticals and document management applications. PJM Light will bring previously unmatched performance with costs comparable with ISO 15693 chips,” said Dr. Tilo Pannenbaecker, Head of Business Line Personal & Object Identification at Infineon Technologies. “Importantly, Infineon is now in the position to support its hardware partners to further build and expand the global reader and infrastructure base for PJM RFID technology.”

“Magellan’s PJM technology has over the past few years and in actual implementations proven its unique benefits of reliably reading multiple tightly stacked objects. The implementations include high value dedicated medical and gaming applications worldwide,” said Tim Frost, CEO of Magellan Technologies Pty.

PJM technology uses the high frequency range of 13.56 MHz and is fully compliant with the international standard ISO/IEC 18000-3 Mode 2. It is today’s most advanced high speed stackable RFID technology. PJM chips are suitable for the simultaneous contactless electronic identification of up to 1500 objects per second. Objects may be closely stacked (so-called “zero-separation”) or on very fast-moving conveyor belts with speeds of 4 meters per second (15 kilometers per hour). Compared with other RFID chips, where identification performance is limited by speed and reliability considerations, PJM chips are in the order of 25 times faster.

In addition to its new 1 kbit “PJM Light” chip (SRF 66V01ST), Infineon will continue to provide PJM chips with a storage capacity of 10 kbit, which is equivalent to about two DIN A4 pages of simple text. All PJM chips can be read and rewritten 100,000 times and offer retention time of 10 years minimum. Depending on the system configuration, the ICs are programmable up to a distance of 100 cm.

The “PJM Light” starts sampling beginning of 2009 with volume production scheduled to start in Q2 2009. The ICs will be shipped as unsawn, sawn or NiAu bumped wafers.