I'm looking for an RFID reader chipset that will be added to an existing product and needs to perform well in a fairly noisy environment (diesel and/or gas powered trucks). The reader is powered from the vehicle, the antenna should be as small as possible (10 X 10 cm would be great) and the range should be 70 cm or 150 cm. I know there are several proprietary RFID systems out there but in order to get a cheap and plentiful supply of tags I'd like to stick with ISO14443 or ISO15693. However I've read that the range on ISO14443 is limited to 10cm whereas ISO15693 can do 70cm or 100cm. One article also mentioned that the usable distance will be roughly equal to the size of the antenna so in order to get 70cm distance I would need a 70cm antenna! Hopefully this isn't true.
As for chips, here's what I've found so far: Texas Instruments - RI-R6C-001A - looks OK and does both ISO standards in addition to TI's own standard Philips - SL RC400 - looks OK but says it's limited to 10cm for some reason Philips - SL RC632 - does both standards plus encryption so it's probably overkill for this application ST - CR14 - not compatible with ISO15693 Anadigm - Rangemaster - looks nice but the price is way too high Inside Contactless - PicoRead - also limited to 10cm even though it does ISO15693 Are there any others?
Has anybody built a reader with any of these chips? What kind of range can you get with a small antenna in a noisy environment?
Are there any alternatives to RFID that provide cheap tags and good range?
--Tom.