Testing the 1.8 lb Motorola FX7400 RFID Reader in Retail Apparel

Last Updated on Monday, 13 September 2010 23:22

Weighing in at only 1.8 lbs, the Motorola FX7400 is less than half the size of a typical stationary RFID reader. But does it pack the power to knock-out the heavyweight competitors? In this edition, we’re going to put the Motorola FX7400 to the test.

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Overview of the Motorola FX7400 RFID Reader

The Motorola FX7400 is an EPCglobal UHF Class 1 Gen 2 and ISO 18000-6C compliant reader. It is designed for indoor customer-facing and carpeted environments such as retail stores and offices. It has a small and attractive form factor that is less than half the size of a typical fixed industrial RFID reader. It is approximately 60% smaller than traditional, industrial RFID readers. Motorola has deigned this reader specifically for item-level inventory management, IT asset management, file tracking, health-care, and similar applications. They’ve set out to make the reader easy to use, manage, and deploy. The reader is Plenum rated (see explanation below) which means it passes UL 2043 tests for heat and visible smoke release from products installed in air-handling spaces. It is also a global reader with conformance to FCC and ETSI standards and supports worldwide deployments with single platform having same hardware and software.

Motorola FX7400 RFID Reader

Motorola FX7400 RFID Reader Features

The reader has a number of standard features:

supports either 4 or 2 mono-static antenna ports
has four optically isolated GPIO : 2 input and 2 output, outputs have high current drive of up to 1 Ampere
can be Powered over Ethernet (it’s PoE 802.3af compliant)
supports Web-Services Auto discovery client to easily find and connect to the network
LLRP (low level reader protocol) and Reader Management is supported for integration with back-end systems

Motorola FX7400 RFID Reader Benchmark Performance Testing

Our team tested a variety of apparel items tagged with RFID hang-tags. All tests are designed based on real-world scenarios that a tag will encounter. At least three trials of every test is performed. When possible, different tags are used for each test in order to account for production variances. This also eliminates having a really good tag or a really bad tag that skews the results. After several weeks of extensive testing by our team of experts at RFID Global Solution, Inc., the results were captured and the averages are calculated and published below.

Motorola FX7400 RFID Reader Benchmark Performance Testing

RFID Portal Tests: Item Level Receiving, Retail Apparel

For our portal tests, our team created four different portal configuration scenarios that replicates operations of a retail store. For each scenario, the equipment configuration remained the same, only the distance between the antennas on each side of the portal changed. In RFID-enabled retail environments, tagged inventory is read automatically as it’s received which eliminates the need for staff to scan stock manually with bar code guns. We tested 100 tagged pieces of apparel.

Dock Doors (96 inches wide): 99.73% read accuracy

Entry / Exit doors (72 inches wide): 99.95% read accuracy

Impact Doors (36 inches wide): 100% read accuracy

Fitting room: 100% read accuracy

About Our Testing Protocol

Our tag testing protocol comes straight from the engineering lab of RFID Global Solution, Inc. one of the industry’s leading passive and active RFID deployment experts. RFIDGS has unparalleled passive RFID solution design and field installation experience, and more hands on, “in the trenches” experience making passive tag solutions perform, than anyone in the industry. RFID Global Solution leverages its extensive relationships with engineering teams across the industry to get access to the latest product innovations. These new products are put through their paces in a series of performance tests and application scenarios, allowing RFIDGS to gauge how products will perform in real world situations.

Plenum Rated

UL Safety Standards
Equipment installed in open air-handling spaces above the ceiling or below the floor must meet specific environmental and fire protection regulations, since a fire would spread quickly in an area of high airflow. Plenum-rated cable, for example, complies with NEC - National Electrical Code requirements for the use of wire in areas used for air circulation within a building. To determine whether cable complies with NEC requirements, NFPA 262 (formerly UL910) tests for flame propagation and smoke density values of electrical and optical fiber cables used in spaces transporting environmental air.

Other products obtain the plenum rating when they meet UL 2043. UL 2043 tests for heat and visible smoke release from products installed in air-handling spaces. Products tested are subjected to an open flame ignition source and evaluated using a product calorimeter. The purpose of the test is to measure the rate of heat and smoke release of burning product samples and determine whether they meet the requirements for fire-resistant and low smoke-producing characteristics in accordance with the provisions of the National Electric Code, NFPA 70.

Test Results are acceptable when:

The peak rate of heat release measured during each test is 100 kilowatts or less.
The peak normalized optical density measured during each test is 0.50 or less.
The average normalized optical density is 0.15 or less during a 10-minute test.

About Motorola RFID

If you’re not familiar with Motorola RFID, Motorola established its RFID leadership through active deployments — working with global, industry-leading companies on some of the largest RFID implementations. The company’s history showcases a long list of RFID firsts — including the first commercially available EPC RFID handheld reader, EPC RFID portal system, and mobile RFID reader. No matter what your RFID solution requires, Motorola’s complete RFID portfolio will meet your needs.