ATLANTA -- The steady stream of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and skills certification programs revealed at the EPCglobal Conference held here this week are signs of continued market maturity that should help customers feel more comfortable buying and deploying the technology, attendees of the industry consortium's flagship U.S. event said. EPCglobal Inc., the organization working to establish global RFID standards, used the conference to disclose a plan to certify that new Class 1, Generation 2 RFID tags and hardware meet established specifications. This is critical, observers said, as numerous RFID vendors begin to roll out long-awaited Generation 2-compliant products (See tomorrow's top news story for details). In fact, EPCglobal used its conference to showcase ten RFID products from seven companies that may now carry the EPCglobal Hardware Certification Mark, indicating that they passed rigorous tests performed by a neutral independent lab, MET Labs. The mark provides assurance that the product will perform according to the EPCglobal ultra-high frequency (UHF) Generation 2 Air Interface Protocol Standard ratified in December 2004, the organization said. Gen 2 is said to carry more data, operate better in dense reader environments and offer memory locking and kill capabilities. "Hardware certification is very important because it gives reasonable promise that the product will deliver," said Greg Gilbert, vice president of RFID Solutions at Manhattan Associates, an RFID systems integrator and supplier of warehouse management software. "However [customers] will still need to do testing on-site due to the unique mix of materials and radio frequency interference found at each location." "Certification is a great milestone," agreed Toby Rush of Rush Tracking, another RFID systems integrator, although he predicted its importance as a product differentiator will fade that as more products gain certification. The first group of certified products includes: Impinj Inc's Monza RFID Chip and Speedway RFID Dense-Mode Reader 1.1; Alien Technology Inc's ALR-9800 reader; Applied Wireless Devices' MPR-1510 UHF Reader Module and MPR-3014 UHF Reader; Intermec Technologies' 865 MHz and 915 MHz IM5 Multi-Antenna RFID Reader Modules; MaxID Group's MaxID RM 100 RFID Reader; Symbol Technologies' XR-400 US RFID Fixed Reader; and ThingMagic's Mercury4 Model TM-M4W-NA-02 Reader. EPCglobal also used the conference to disclose the first four recipients of its EPCglobal Performance Test Center Accreditation Mark. Spanning various regions and organizational types, the four newly accredited test centers rely on a standard set of performance test profiles to simulate real-world conditions to assess the readability of end-user products that are tagged with the Electronic Product Code. Recipients include:

• Pacific RFID Performance Solutions in Hsinchu, Taiwan;


• Kimberly-Clark Corp. Auto-ID Sensing Technologies Performance Test Center in Neenah, WI;
  
• METRO Group AG/GS1 Germany RFID Test Center in Neuss, Germany, and the;
  
• RFID Research Center, a unit of the Information Technology Research Institute in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR.

In related certification news made at the conference:

• ThingMagic Inc. announced its Mercury4 RFID reader has met test criteria established by an independent testing facility for interoperability with the Cisco RFID Solution.
  
• Startup Reva Systems Corp. successfully demonstrated interoperability between SAP's Auto-ID Infrastructure (SAP AII) and a network of RFID readers connected with its standards-based infrastructure.
  
• Zebra Technologies demonstrated the printing and encoding of radio frequency identification (RFID) EPC Gen 2 smart labels.

Meanwhile, certification of entry-level RFID professionals is also moving forward. CompTIA, a Chicago-based industry association that provides training and educational services to IT professionals, detailed a beta exam that will arm RFID practitioners with base-level RFID competency. The first RFID+ certification exam will be given on October 312005 to 300 registrants. Beta test takers pay a discounted fee of $75. Launch of the final version of the test is scheduled for the first quarter of 2006. Also accelerating are efforts by the RFID Consortium to create a patent pool of intellectual property related to Gen 2. According to a letter of intent signed earlier this week, MPEG LA, an independent leader in technology standards patent licensing, will identify the patents considered essential for the UHF RFID standard and pool them under a joint patent portfolio license to provide users with fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to the technology.