Around the Net
Company Partners for Beacon Check-Ins
- IoT Journal, Wednesday, June 3, 2015 12:30 PM
Teijin, a Japanese manufacturer of advanced materials, has partnered withTagCast, a maker of Bluetooth beacons, to create a new product called PaperBeacon, which the companies are promoting as an application for digital check-ins, document sharing or electronic payments. PaperBeacon uses a flat, flexible antenna made by Cellcross, a Japanese company that was spun out from the University of Tokyo in 2002. The antenna technology, which Japanese glass manufacturer AGC Asahi Glass uses to track RFID-tagged documents, is constructed in a manner that strictly controls the radio frequency field it generates in order to support applications wherein only wireless devices laid atop the antenna are read. Rather than incorporating an ultrahigh-frequency (UFH) RFID reader, PaperBeacon contains a TagCast Bluetooth radio. The antenna sheet is 1.5 millimeter (0.06 inch) thick (the Bluetooth module embedded in it is roughly the size of a matchbook, and is located in a corner of the PaperBeacon, which is approximately the size of a placemat). The PaperBeacon has a one-year expected battery life.
