Jos Kunnen, CTO of Times-7, on UHF RFID Technology in Smartphones

UHF RFID in smartphones: Revolutionizing workflows, retail, and everyday life.

Jos Kunnen, CTO of Times-7, on UHF RFID Technology in Smartphones

Technology Article | Interview

Times-7 · January 14, 2025 · 3 min
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What to expect

UHF RFID integration in smartphones could revolutionize industries and consumer applications. While hardware challenges like antenna design and power efficiency are being addressed, standardizing protocols and ensuring data security remain critical. This technology offers significant benefits, from streamlining enterprise workflows to transforming retail, home management, and sustainability efforts.

Its potential parallels the app revolution seen with the iPhone, promising innovative use cases and widespread impact.

Interview with Jos Kunnen

1. What do you think about the potential of UHF in smartphones – is it the next game-changer, or are you more skeptical?

“I believe that having RAIN (UHF RFID) tagging capability in smartphones will be a dramatic game changer, although it will take some time!”
Jos Kunnen, Times-7

Jos Kunnen – CTO/Director, Times-7

While RAIN deployments are now rapidly growing and expanding in many industries, it has taken years to overcome the many challenges along the way. Fully extending the ability to access the benefits of RAIN technology beyond the enterprise to the consumer will, in my opinion, prove to be revolutionary.

2. What technological challenges need to be addressed to successfully integrate UHF into smartphones?

There are hardware challenges to integrating UHF RFID into the smartphone, such as antenna design, interference mitigation and power efficiency. However, I understand that these are well on their way to being solved. I think the more significant challenges are external to the devices, around the RAIN air interface protocols and data standards, etc.

For example, today the protocols are optimized for a single reader talking to many tags. In the future, we will have scenarios where many smartphones will try to interrogate the same tag at the same time, so it is important that we have open and comprehensive standards. Numbering standardization, tag data security and privacy, and global tag data resolution are also critical factors that need to be addressed. The RAIN Alliance is already considering many of these issues.

3. What is the added value of UHF in smartphones and which target groups or markets benefit most?

Initially, I can see substantial benefits to the workforce through the use of enterprise mobile devices, as all employees could have direct access to RAIN capabilities. Many professionals spend a significant amount of time counting, tracking, sorting, locating, verifying, and assigning physical items, and this could be dramatically reduced.

RAIN capabilities in smartphones, combined with the dramatic developments in tag capabilities and environmental sustainability, will help drive ubiquitous item tagging. This can then facilitate an AI-enabled transformation of physical asset management.

4. What end-user applications can you envision?

The obvious first areas are facilities for enhanced shopping experiences, where simply scanning an item can provide all the information you need, not only at the time of purchase, but also for care, maintenance and disposal. Retailing would be a very different experience.

I think there will be huge benefits for specialty retailers, such as small pharmacies, whose staff today spend hours checking for expired stock instead of providing health advice. It will also enable more customization and options, as ingredients and components can be easily updated and time-stamped, as well as new business and service models.

Beyond the enterprise and retail is where I think the biggest impact will be, such as in home management – keeping track of what’s in your fridge, closet and cupboards. RAIN’s smartphone capability will help reduce waste and prevent poor purchasing decisions.

It will be easier to authenticate products, maintain and extend their life, repair them and give them a second life. Imagine how we could integrate our physical objects into virtual reality, personally interact with objects in museums, and create new experiences and useful services.

“Within a few years of the Apple iPhone’s release, there were over a quarter of a million apps available – today there are nearly two million! I believe we will see the same explosion of innovative use cases as RAIN technology becomes ubiquitous on smartphones. ”
Jos Kunnen, Times-7

Jos Kunnen – CTO/Director, Times-7

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