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Where’d That Go?

Terry Costlow, Contributing Editor -- Design News, March 17, 2008

In today’s world, one of the things that’s more sought after than portability is a way to find mobile products. Trolley Scan (Pty) Ltd. developed what it calls RFID-radar, which measures a signal’s travel distance to identify and locate many transponders in a large reading zone. The South African developer feels the technology can be used in applications as diverse as tracking shopping carts, called trolleys in many regions, as well as retirement home patients and art in museums. Microchip Technology’s dsPIC digital controller performs 10,000 measurements per sec, letting the system handle 50 targets at once with a measuring accuracy of 0.5m at distances of up to 100m.

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