EECC is an independent organization based in Nuess, Germany. Once a year, since 2007, they have published UHF Tag Performance Surveys to characterize and evaluate the top inlays in the industry. This year, focus was placed on the inlays with the newest RFID ICs available in the marketplace, as their performance has risen to a whole new plateau.

As such, the evaluation included 30 different inlays comprised of more than 1,000 independent measurements. Tests included performance adjacent to various dielectric materials including free space, glass, water and metal, and characterizations were representative of the different geographical regions around the world.

Explains Victor Vega, Alien Technology Marketing Director: "It's interesting to see the tremendous progress the industry has made with UHF RFID in such a short period of time. For example, in the 2007 EECC report, Alien's Squiggle inlay registered a read range of 5 meters in the European band. By contrast, the next generation Squiggle inlay with Alien's Higgs-2 IC registered over 10 meters of read range.

In the 2008 EECC report, Alien's Higgs-2 based Squiggle and "M" inlays continued to hold the top positions in all geographical regions. And in this year's 2009 EECC report, the peak performing inlay was Alien's latest Higgs-3 based "G" inlay with an astonishing read range of more than 12.8 meters, leading the pack of 30 inlays in this test by more than 2.5 meters. UHF RFID has truly become the ubiquitous solution at the item, case and pallet level as well as for near-field and far-field alike."

Alien Technology is a leading provider of UHF RFID products and services, including RFID ICs, inlays, readers, and RFID education. Founded in 1994, Alien is headquartered in Morgan Hill, California, with its subsidiaries Alien Technology Asia in South Korea and Quatrotec, in Millbrae, California. The RFID Solutions Center is located in the Dayton, Ohio region. Alien maintains sales offices in the US, Europe, and Asia.