A smart, EMD free UHF ID Tag with multi-read capability & high flexibility supporting food safety

Today many serious companies in the fish farming industry equip fish in their fish cages with a tag for counting & control and also for improved fish health. The method involves injecting a Tag into the fish and monitor the fish population with RFID technology. Each Tag contains an antenna and a chip surrounded by a sealing material -usually glass in oblong shape. The monitoring technology is mostly based on a LF (low frequency) technology from 1984 and in lack of alternatives it is still used. Many tenth of million fish tags are sold every year globally, and the monitoring is also used for control of wild fish in rivers and the ocean. Also pets as cats and dogs are marked for recognition through information kept in the tags. The LF technology is however sensitive to EMD (Electro Magnetic Disturbance) from various equipment that operates on the same frequency (125 kHz) influencing the reading accuracy and this problem also is relevant for reading Tags in pets. LF also has low security due to lack of collision avoidance properties that not guarantee registration of all unique tags. The SmartXTag project aims at developing an innovative UHF based technology that utilize the PC C1G2 UHF standard also for use under water. The project involves developing a new UHF tag and the necessary communicating monitoring system and demonstrate it to the sector. The new tag and system will enable collision avoidance securing registration of all unique tags, give increased read range and flexibility to enable supervising large fish cages with many antennas. The fish farming industry has been restrictive to allow massive use of glass tags in fish for food safety reason (broken glass contaminating the fish meat), so use of another tag encapsulating material is welcomed. The fish tags will be designed for mass production and enable reduction of the tag prices significantly. This will speed up market introduction significantly.