Confidex Ready and Waiting for Boeing to Tag Silicon

April 6, 2007—The following are news announcements made during the week of April 2.
Finnish RFID tag maker Confidex says its has completed testing its Ironside reusable passive UHF RFID tag for compliance with the Aerospace Standard AS5678, passed by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) late last year. The standard specifies the environmental conditions, such as temperature, shock, vibration, pressure and altitude, that RFID tags attached to aircraft parts will need to withstand, once Boeing and other airplane manufacturers begin selling planes with tagged parts. Confidex conducted the testing at Sun Microsystems' APT/RFID Test Lab in Longmont, Colo., as a proof of its technology. RFID hardware developer Intelleflex is developing a high-memory chip for use in RFID tags to identify parts for the Boeing Dreamliner aircraft family. Once Intelleflex finishes development work, Confidex plans to begin manufacturing Ironside-based tags containing the high-memory chip. The new tags will use the same form factor and rugged molding as those it has tested against the AS5678 standard.