Weighing up ambient IoT and RAIN RFID: experts share their thoughts

Sometimes, the emergence of new technology is assumed to take the place of the pre-existing technology because it offers new benefits and features that trump the previous. This is not necessarily the case in ambient IoT, an emerging technology that is offering an alternative to applications like asset tracking alongside RAIN RFID. 

To gauge the similarities, differences and use cases of these technologies, rather than pit them against one another, I spoke to Steve Statler, Chief Marketing Officer of Wiliot and Aileen Ryan, President and CEO and Josef Preishuber-Pflügl, Head of Regulatory Affairs, both from the RAIN Alliance.

RAIN RFID has laid the foundations

“There’s more in common between RFID and ambient IoT than there are differences,” explained Statler. “That said, the differences are really important when you’re trying to figure out what [technology] is the best.” 

Ambient IoT operates using commodity radios to read battery-free tags, whereas RAIN RFID operates using specialist readers. Another important difference between the two is that ambient IoT is classified as an active radio by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and RAIN RFID is classified as a passive technology.

“We have to be FCC certified because our tags are constantly harvesting and constantly broadcasting,” Statler added. “Whereas an RFID tag only talks when it’s interrogated.” 

“The first RAIN tags became available more than 20 years ago,” explained Preishuber-Pflügl. “There was a different standard at the time – part of ISO/IEC 18000-6 – since 2002 it has operated as GS1 EPC UHF Gen 2 and also has been adopted in ISO in ISO/IEC 18000-63.” 

Thanks to all manufacturers now operating as part of the same standard, Preishuber-Pflügl said, the technology has been able to advance significantly.

“Today we look at a range of 25 metres, still as a passive technology and with no battery,” he added. “This makes a significant increase over the years … From a technical side, you can say that it has improved one dB per year in that time.” Another improvement has been the size of the tags, which are approximately 10% the size they were 20 years ago. 

Statler made the point that ambient IoT uses the same radios around us to read the same tags RAIN RFID has “pioneered”. “We’ve realised that radios are everywhere,” he said. “The principle of ambient IoT, is let’s do what they were doing with these specialist RAIN RFID readers, but let’s commoditise it and use the radios that are already there. 

“We see ambient IoT as a huge opportunity for the RAIN RFID ecosystem,” he explained. “My message to the RAIN Alliance is that this is just another tool [to use].”

Use cases 

Wiliot, which operates in ambient IoT, deploys its technology in the retail, grocery and post and parcel sectors. Grocery is one such sector that Statler said he saw having “massive opportunity” to be transformed, to reduce food waste in our supply chain, estimated at around 30% prior to reaching our tables. 

“We’ve started to apply our product to food supply chains … there are a litany of handling errors that can be fixed.”   

For RAIN RFID meanwhile, Ryan attributed retail as “the first mass market adopter of RAIN RFID. That was the initial market and remains a strong market. Our latest research shows about 50% of the tags shipped last year ended up in retail one way or another.” 

There are other use cases that benefit from the deployment of RAIN RFID technology. One such use case Ryan mentioned was using RAIN to “prevent the diversion of drugs”, showing that the technology can have wide-ranging benefits, from allowing a retailer to check if a yellow shirt in size medium is in stock, to preventing drugs from ending up on the black market. “Local pharmacies are interested in this, hospitals are interested, local government, of course, because they all have a responsibility for pharmacological practice,” Ryan detailed.

“We know that towards the end of 2023 the retail market softened, but RAIN deployments continued to rise,” she continued. “That’s because we were diversified enough to be impacted by one particular market being stronger or weaker.” These markets include logistics, sportswear, electronics, homeware and beauty.

Weighing up ambient IoT versus RAIN RFID

RAIN RFID tags are more cost-effective, because they have the benefit of having been optimised over several years. Statler, however, said that “RAIN RFID tags are cheaper [than ambient IoT], but the infrastructure is more expensive.” 

“Take the time to do your homework,” he stressed. “It comes down to, do you need continuous visibility, do you have a higher value item? If so, ambient IoT is the way to go. Do you have a very low cost commodity item, and do you need to see it in a few places? Then you should pick RAIN RFID.”

“I think it depends strongly on the use case,” noted Preishuber-Pflügl, echoing Statler’s thoughts on using the final application to determine the technology of choice. “RAIN RFID can store measured sensor data whenever there’s ongoing communication … Ambient IoT usually has some power available to do data logging, but it makes these devices more complex.”

Because of this complexity, Preishuber-Pflügl said that this was reflected in the volume of deployment: “Last year we deployed 80 billion RAIN RFID tags, this is a volume that so far is not achievable by ambient IoT.” 

In summary: do your research and work out what will work best for you, whether your purpose is shipping fruit or tracking apparel, both technologies have the capabilities to improve the supply chain.

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