As from the start of the project, exploitation and commercialization were not forgotten. Several business cases were assessed to bring CAPID R&D to CAPID business as fast as possible.
The project aimed for a disruptive change, bringing a basic, NFC-like communication capability to every device that has a touchscreen. And this was without the need for a special reader. This was an opportunity to increase the number of IoT participating devices dramatically.
These tags offer security thanks to the very short communication range; general compatibility thanks to the presence of capacitive touchscreens everywhere; and the potential to be produced at low cost thanks to the monolithically integrated antenna.
Compared to existing RFID technologies such as NFC, the new tag does not require an external antenna. The tiny antenna is part of the chip itself, making the tag much smaller compared to current NFC tags. The small size enables integration into everyday objects. Thus, C-tokens or CAPID tags are an alternative in all those use cases where interaction via touchscreens is feasible, but RFID/NFC tags are either too large or too expensive or where contactless reading is a disadvantage.
The tag is powered by a thin-film battery, capacitive energy harvester or a thin-film photovoltaic cell that converts light from the touchscreen. The 12-bit thin-film capacitive identification tag achieves up to 36bps data transfer rates at 0.6V supply voltage, which is compatible with commercially available touchscreen devices without requiring modifications. The flexible thin-film integrated circuit has a 0.8cm2 on-chip monolithic antenna and dissipates only 38nW of power at 600mV supply voltage.
Right from the start of this RIA project, three exploitation and commercialization cases were investigated; ticketing, payment and board game industries.