Press Releases

Mojix® Inc. Launches Company and Unveils Revolutionary New Class of RFID System
Mojix STAR™ System Delivers Quantum Leap in Passive RFID Range, Reliability, Scale and Security

April 14, 2008, Los Angeles, CA — Breaking through the economic and technical barriers to large-scale, high-volume RFID deployment, Mojix®, Inc. today unveiled the first of a revolutionary new class of RFID systems, the Mojix STAR™ system, enabling unprecedented levels of precision and scalability in supply chain management and asset tracking. The EPCglobal® GEN 2-compliant Mojix STAR system radically redefines the performance parameters of passive RFID, delivering 100,000 times the indoor receiver sensitivity of previous solutions, 20 times the read range (600 feet), and 100 times the coverage area (up to 250,000 square feet) with non line-of-sight capabilities—to dramatically extend the utility, scope and value of RFID applications and use cases.

Mojix, Inc. and the Mojix STAR™ system debut at RFID Journal LIVE! in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 16 to 18. Located in Booth 500, Mojix will demonstrate the Mojix STAR system's ability to read general-use passive UHF Gen2 RFID tags across the entire length of the Venetian Hotel exhibit hall (approximately 300 feet) to illustrate the system's unique advantages and usher in a new era for RFID.

Developed by experts in deep space communications, the Mojix STAR system combines advances in digital signal processing technology perfected in deep space applications with an innovative architecture to economically expand RFID coverage by an order of magnitude in spacetime (3D). Freed from the traditional restraints of conventional passive RFID technology, a single Mojix STAR system can handle numerous concurrent applications across an entire warehouse, retail complex, distribution center, transportation yard or other large contiguous space with a single point of data collection and management. At the same time, the Mojix STAR system enables entirely new functions to be performed in a passive RFID environment-allowing a single passive system to be deployed to cover all of an organization's presence detection, location tracking, and authentication and security needs.

"RFID has long held the promise to revolutionize the supply chain; it now is time to revolutionize RFID itself in order to fully and decisively deliver on that promise," said Dr. Ramin Sadr, Mojix founder and CEO. "Mojix was founded with the vision of applying communications advances of the U.S. Space Program to the commercial wireless industry. Now emerged from successful customer trials, the Mojix STAR system takes RFID a giant step forward and enables organizations to implement RFID in inventive and extraordinarily cost-effective new ways, and make RFID a genuinely pervasive, high-ROI technology."

Re-designing RFID
The Mojix STAR system incorporates innovations across iterative signal processing, smart antennas, digital beam forming, and digital packet radio to detect the faintest signals across large distances in noisy RF environments, thus giving the system its unprecedented receive sensitivity and range. The system combines these innovations with a unique distributed architecture that departs fundamentally from traditional RFID system design to free passive RFID from the technical, economic and regulatory restraints of readers that have to both provide energy to and detect tags. This in turn enables cost-effective wide-area deployments, and allows deployments to be tailored to simultaneously support multiple business processes.

Functioning as a single network element at the enterprise edge, a Mojix STAR system consists of one or more Mojix STAR receivers each managing up to 512 low-cost Mojix eNode™ transmitters, which are oriented to define the system's three dimensional coverage area. Mojix eNode transmitters provide energy to all passive RFID tags within their specified interrogation spaces, while the centralized, high-sensitivity Mojix STAR receiver processes the resulting tag signals from across the system's coverage area, including non line-of-sight tag signals. From a system management standpoint, the Mojix STAR receiver provides a single point of control for all its satellite Mojix eNodes, and a single point of integration with enterprise systems.

Extended Utility for RFID
The Mojix STAR is the first system to offer the ability to read tags, determine location, and secure and authenticate passive tag data in one multi-faceted, multiple purpose system, which greatly extends the utility of an organization's investment in RFID. Previously, this functionality required more costly active or RTLS (Real Time Location System) solutions. The Mojix system taps the performance features of active RFID with the more attractive economics of low cost passive RFID.

As a result of its technical advances and unique architecture, the Mojix STAR system can provide organizations with enormous flexibility and power in defining interrogation spaces, supporting current applications and enabling new applications:

  • Molds and covers multiple business processes—Fixed, wireless or handheld, Mojix eNodes are deployed to shape discrete, overlapping or contiguous business process-specific interrogation spaces, as well as to create virtual fences for securing tagged items.
  • Scalable for item level tracking and more—Mojix STAR deployments can scale massively for coverage area, tag density, number of simultaneous activities, and/or concurrent business processes.
  • Electronic proof-of-delivery—The Mojix STAR system can verify 100% of tags in a pallet (or other 3D area) of RF-challenged materials using breakthrough Mojix eGroup™ technology to eliminate one of the most formidable obstacles to RFID performance and enable electronic proof of delivery and new levels of security.
  • Security and authentication—The Mojix STAR system enables virtual fencing, shrinkage control, brand authentication, product safety and counterfeiting protection.
  • Precision location determination—The Mojix system enables location estimation and tracking across large contiguous spaces using passive RFID tags

Extensive Field Trials
The Mojix STAR system is designed to power supply chain, asset tracking and security applications across multiple industries. The system has been extensively and successfully field trialed for over 12 months by several Fortune 50 innovators in supply chain management. Markets set to benefit from the advances of the Mojix STAR system include retail, consumer packaged goods, DoD supply chain, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, and media and entertainment.

Following extensive testing at Xterprise labs, a leading global RFID systems integrator and solutions provider, Mojix and Xterprise have entered into a strategic partnership agreement. Xterprise is the first independent software vendor offering applications that leverage the power of Mojix STAR™ system.

"RFID technology, in general, has continued to improve in functionality and performance, however, Mojix has built a radically different technology that brings a step function change in performance to the passive RFID marketplace. By integrating this technology with our Clarity™ suite of applications we are able to address an entirely new set of use cases and bring even greater value to the High Definition Enterprise™," said Doug Wallace, chief operating officer of Xterprise. "We are delighted to be chosen by Mojix as the launch partner for the Mojix STAR product line and are looking forward to helping our customers solve their most challenging supply chain and inventory management problems with this new product."

Expanding Markets and Use Cases
The Mojix STAR system addresses all use cases currently addressed by conventional passive RFID systems-but with greatly enhanced functionality, cost-effectiveness and scalability-and enables organizations to leverage RFID for use cases that were previously uneconomical or technically infeasible for passive RFID. Use cases include:

  • Dock door operations—A single Mojix STAR system covers dozens of dock doors with non-line of sight reads, security and precise location determination.
  • Inventory management—Organizations can now economically engage in perpetual real-time inventory tracking and replenishment.
  • Item level tracking—Organizations gain the ability to accurately track individual items on a truly massive scale.
  • Manufacturing and WIP—Low-cost passive RFID can be widely applied to asset tracking and WIP.
  • Yard management—As useful outdoors as indoors, the Mojix STAR systems provides a lower cost, highly scalable solution for large outdoor areas using passive and semi-passive tags.

Availability
The Mojix STAR 1000 system is available now.

About Mojix
Headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif., Mojix, Inc. was founded in 2004 by a team of former JPL/NASA scientists and engineers with the vision of applying breakthroughs in deep space communications to exponentially refine the precision, reach and scope of RFID technology. The first of a game-changing new class of RFID systems, company's Mojix STAR (Space Time Array Reader) system introduces capabilities orders of magnitude beyond conventional passive RFID offerings to enable economical, large-scale and high-volume RFID deployment. Mojix is privately held with funding from Oak Investment Partners, Red Rock Ventures and InnoCal Venture Capital. For more information, please visit www.mojix.com.

Mojix, Mojix STAR, Mojix eNode, Mojix eGroup, are registered trademarks of Mojix Inc. EPCglobal® is a trademark of GS1

Contact:
Linda Prosser, VP Corporate Marketing
Mojix, Inc
408-500-5410
linda@mojix.com