SO. ST. PAUL, Minn. /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Digital Angel Corporation, says its 16-foot by 16-foot RFID antenna, designed to track the salmon population in the Columbia River in Oregon, was installed yesterday near the Bonneville Lock and Dam. The antenna, thought to be the world's largest RFID tower, was developed by Digital Angel in conjunction with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).
The antenna, placed in the Bonneville Corner Collector (a high-flow, multi-million dollar surface bypass route developed by the Army Corps of Engineers and the BPA to move fish safely past the Bonneville Lock and Dam) can detect previously tagged fish in 1/30th of a second. Digital Angel is a leader in developing microchips for tagging fish and large RFID antenna systems that, despite their size, can detect and read the standard fisheries encapsulated tags only 12 millimeters long.
When salmon tagged with the passive integrated transponder (PIT) microchips pass through the antenna, the antenna turns on the PIT tag and the PIT tag in turn sends a unique identifying number to operators of the database where important information such as the species, journey origin and age of each fish is logged. Such information is critical for maintaining healthy ecosystems for the indigenous fish population.
"This project demonstrates that our RFID technology has a wide variety of uses," said Kevin McGrath, President and CEO of Digital Angel. "In this case, our technology provides the most efficient and least invasive monitoring capabilities for sensitive objects such as salmon. This tower will help the local community protect a precious natural resource for generations to come."
Since the early 1990s, Digital Angel has been developing, manufacturing and installing implantable passive integrated transponders and reader systems for the federal Columbia and Snake River hydroelectric projects. For the past two years, the Company has been working on the development of large antenna systems, specifically for the Bonneville Corner Collector.
Digital Angel Corporation develops and deploys sensor and communications technologies that enable rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets. Applications for the Company's products include identification and monitoring of humans, pets, fish and livestock through its patented implantable microchips; location tracking and message monitoring of vehicles and aircraft in remote locations through systems that integrate GPS and geosynchronous satellite communications; and monitoring of asset conditions such as temperature and movement, through advanced miniature sensors.