NASA-Johnson Space Center orders X-Change Corp. sensors

DALLAS, 21 March 2007.X-Change Corporation's wholly owned subsidiary, AirGATE Technologies Inc., has received a purchase order from NASA-Johnson Space Center for development of custom surface acoustic wave (SAW) delay lines and temperature sensors.

"Interest in our SAW systems and their applications as RFID devices and sensors continues to grow," states Matt Ulrich, national director for SAW systems. "We are working with a number of high-profile customers, including NASA and the U.S. Navy, and expect to announce additional orders. Currently, AirGATE is positioned to ship SAW RFID tags and reader systems in volume, in addition to custom SAW designs and applications."

The basic SAW device is a thin metal film structure deposited on top of a piezoelectric crystal substrate with no power supplies. It reflects radio signal based on the pattern etched onto its surface. These reflections can be de-coded into data. In addition to RFID, SAW devices make accurate temperature sensors. The devices work well in harsh environments, as well as in the presence of liquid and metals.