Apr 23, 2008RFID Journal has announced that an independent panel of judges, with input from attendees at RFID Journal LIVE! 2008, has selected Mojix's STAR system as the winner of the 2008 RFID Journal Awards' "Best in Show" award, at RFID Journal's sixth annual conference and exhibition, held last week at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
At the show, the Mojix STAR system was able to interrogate passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tags, based on EPCglobal's second-generation air-interface protocol, from across the exhibit hall—a distance of about 300 feet—in a room full of RF noise from exhibitors demonstrating products. According to Mojix, a single STAR interrogator can cover up to 250,000 square feet (see Mojix Takes Passive UHF RFID to a New Level).
Mojix was one of 10 finalists selected by an independent panel of judges from more than 40 submissions. Each finalist was asked to provide a presentation in the exhibit hall, and attendees were invited to rate all of the products presented. Five judges then chose a winner based on the presentations and attendee input.
"Attendees consistently rated Mojix's product as the best of the 10 finalists," says Paul Prince, RFID Journal's executive editor, who served as one of the judges. "And the judges were nearly unanimous in their view that Mojix had the best new product."
Lexmark's RFID UHF Option, an add-on for the Lexmark T640, T642 or T644 monochrome laser printers, was named the first runner-up. The RFID option comes with a ThingMagic M5e RFID interrogator and antenna integrated into the printer drawer assembly, enabling customers to use their existing T64x laser printers to encode the RFID tags embedded in labels, documents, cards and stickers. Prior to the LIVE! launch of the RFID UHF Option, Lexmark introduced the R640rn, a device able to print 8.5-by-11-inch paper and encode RFID tags (see New Office Laser Printer Encodes Tags).
The second runner-up was Omni-ID's Prox passive UHF RFID tag, which is smaller than most tags (35mm by 10mm by 4.0mm when sold as a label) and designed for improved reliability, even in the presence of metals and liquids. The Prox tag features a plasmonic structure—a layer that reflects an interrogator's RF signal and focuses it on the tag's RFID inlay, thereby rendering it immune to interference from outside materials, including water and metal. The 240-bit EPCglobal Gen 2-compliant tag is designed to deliver 99.99 percent accuracy and reliability, and is sold either as a label or in a ruggedized plastic case.
Created in 2007, the RFID Journal Awards highlight the best RFID projects from around the world. The "Best in Show" award was added this year to showcase some of the best new products exhibited at RFID Journal LIVE!
"The quality of the products that were selected as finalists was extremely high, and there were many other excellent products exhibited at the event this year as well," Prince states. "It shows the maturation of the industry as it responds to the real-world needs of end users."
