Mobile devices adopt RAIN RFID

Device manufacturers including AMobile, Bluebird, Chainway, Unitech, UROVO and Zebra have brought RAIN RFID into enterprise-class mobile devices such as smartphone-sized handhelds and rugged tablets, supported by Impinj Gen2X and chipset providers Qualcomm Technologies and MediaTek, to serve retail, supply chain and healthcare use cases.

The devices combine RAIN RFID read and write capabilities with barcode scanning, cameras, cellular connectivity and business applications, moving enterprises beyond reliance on traditional handheld readers. Gen2X support is designed to give compact mobile devices the speed, accuracy and reliability needed for tasks including locating individual items on shelves, providing continuous real-time inventory visibility, automating and verifying order picking and authenticating products against counterfeiting.

According to Impinj, Gen2X speeds up re-inventorying of tagged items by up to 100 percent, and in tests conducted by Xindeco, small tags placed 3 mm from a large metal surface were readable from more than 1.5 meters, over 50 percent better range than non-Gen2X tags. In the same tests, Gen2X increased the number of items inventoried in 10 seconds at a two-meter read range by more than 70 percent compared with Gen2.

Qualcomm has integrated RAIN RFID capabilities directly into its Dragonwing Q-6690 enterprise mobile processor, which is Gen2X capable, marking a step toward integrating RFID reading directly into mobile chipsets.