Keep cool and safe en route

May 27, 2009 - Ieper, Belgium. Melexis, an early and innovative semiconductor player in the RFID market, demonstrates its new sensor tag IC, the MLX90129, during the Sensor & Test exhibition. This contactless sensing system on a chip targets applications such as cold chain management, industrial data logger or medical monitoring devices. The product will be presented in the Forum of Hall 12 on Tuesday May 26 at 15.30.

The MLX90129 embeds a versatile sensor interface together with an internal temperature sensor to monitor environmental parameters, a 3,2kilobit data storage memory, an ISO/IEC15693 RFID tag front end enabling fast and easy data collection, an SPI port allowing capability extension by connecting external memory or microcontroller and an internal state machine to enable standalone operation.

The MLX90129 has been successfully designed-in at targeted customers. "Since the emergence of RFID in industrial markets, many actors dreamed of the ideal sensor tag IC. Melexis has succeeded in making it." said Joachim Uhl, CEO of Scemtec Sensor Technology GmbH. "The Melexis Sensor Tag IC embeds the majority of the requested features and functions used in Data Logging applications, replacing costly multi-chip solutions. The ultra low power consumption extends battery life and the RFID interface simplifies the data collection. When we decided to develop our ScemTag Data Logger, we naturally chose the MLX90129."

Gilles Cerede, RFID Product Marketing Manager at Melexis comments: “When we started to introduce the MLX90129 on the market, Scemtec was one of our target customers. Their experience and end user knowledge definitely helped guid our development efforts. We are delighted that, after a thorough evaluation process, Scemtec selected the MLX90129 as we believe this product offers a unique combination of Melexis’ expertise in both sensing and wireless systems.”

Patrick Albert, RFID Business Unit Manager at Melexis, said: “As an innovative RFID ICs manufacturer, our aim is to offer differentiated products that will help our customers to simplify the deployment of RFID solutions. In the specific case of MLX90129, we are convinced that it will leapfrog the hurdles which currently limit the deployment of accurate and cost efficient monitoring in cool and cold chain management.”

The design samples of the MLX90129 are available and an evaluation board and a development kit will follow in August and October. Volume production will start in November 2009. The device is offered in a -40 to 85°C version in the industry standard TSSOP20 pin package for surface mount manufacturing.