Radiofrequency tagging firm Impinj has unveiled a tagging system that can be used on individual, small items such as CDs or medicine bottles.

The firm, one of the first to announce products conforming to the EPCGlobal Generation 2 standard for RFID, said it is using a special antenna to create very small tags.

"Impinj is the first company to bring all the benefits of Gen 2 RFID to item-level tagging with tags as small as 9.0mm," said Dr William Colleran, president and CEO of Impinj.

"Retailers want to implement RFID tags on items, cases and pallets using a single RFID infrastructure at all of their facilities worldwide," he added.

Pharmaceutical companies will be a target for the firm, as the drugs industry tries to reduce conterfeiting of drugs by tagging each bottle or packet of tablets, rather than each crate.

Impinj bases its RFID tags on its 'self-adaptive silicon' technology, first announced in 2001. It allows standard CMOS to be used to manufacture analogue and mixed signal circuitry and the non-volatile memory needed in products such as RFID tags.

www.impinj.com