News Release

Radio Frequency Executives Headline IEEE RFID Conference  

WASHINGTON (22 April 2009) -- Three industry executives from leading RFID companies will be featured speakers at the third-annual IEEE International Conference on RFID next week in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.  

IEEE RFID 2009, co-located with the RFID Journal Live! 2009 executive conference and exhibition, will be at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort on 27-28 April. Authors from 16 countries will present 47 peer-reviewed papers.

Chris Diorio, co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer of Impinj, Inc., will be the keynote speaker on Monday morning, 27 April. His talk, “RFID 2009: Where do we go from here?,” will review key industry advancements of the past five years, highlight technical challenges and opportunities facing the industry, and offer a future vision.

Jens Kungl, who heads RFID Base Technology for MGI Metro Group Information Technology GmbH, will be Monday’s featured luncheon speaker. Recognized as a global expert in RFID supply chain management applications, Kungl initiated the setup of the group’s Innovation Centre and its advanced RFID test laboratory, the only institution of its kind in Europe.

René Martinez, chief technologist at Intermec Technologies, will be Tuesday morning’s featured speaker. Martinez has for more than 10 years managed a team of Intermec engineers that developed a full product portfolio of portable, mobile and fixed RFID readers for Europe, Japan and the United States. A former staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, he holds patents in RFID, wireless communications and radar.

Accepted papers have been grouped into two tracks of 12 technical topic sessions: measurement and simulation methods; tag circuits; protocol (two sessions); sensors; localization and active tags; privacy and security (two sessions); reader design; antenna and propagation (two sessions); and applications and networking.

A third track features special sessions of invited papers and presentations by knowledgeable academic and industry speakers on RFID and health care -- trends, applications and technical aspects; tag and reader testing; open-source RFID software; embedding and de-embedding electromagnetic structures for RFID systems; chipless RFID; and near-field electromagnetic ranging.

RFID, or “Radio Frequency Identification,” is an enabling technology that uses tags and readers to transmit the identity of an object or person through radio waves. The tags store information on a microchip connected to a radio antenna, while the readers emit radio waves that exchange signals with the tags. The information is then digitally transferred to computer.

For more on IEEE RFID 2009 and to register, see www.ieee-rfid.org/2009/). Go to http://www.rfidjournalevents.com/live/ for more on RFID Journal Live! 

IEEE-USA and the IEEE Communications Society are financial co-sponsors for IEEE RFID 2009.

Technical co-sponsors include the IEEE TAB New Technology Directions Committee, the University of Texas at Arlington, the International RFID Business Association and the following IEEE societies: Antennas and Propagation; Circuits and Systems; Consumer Electronics; Electron Devices; Engineering in Medicine and Biology; Instrumentation and Measurement; Intelligent Transportation Systems; Microwave Theory and Techniques; Professional Communication; Social Implications of Technology; Systems, Man, and Cybernetics; and Vehicular Technology.

The IEEE Communications Society promotes the advancement of science, technology and applications in communications and related disciplines. It fosters presentation and exchange of information among its members and the technical community throughout the world. The society maintains the highest standard of professionalism and technical competency. See www.comsoc.org.

IEEE-USA advances the public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of more than 210,000 engineers, scientists and allied professionals who are U.S. members of IEEE. IEEE-USA is part of IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society with 375,000 members in 160 countries. See http://www.ieeeusa.org.

Contact: Chris McManes
IEEE-USA Public Relations Manager
Phone: + 1 202 530 8356
E-mail: c.mcmanes@ieee.org

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