UHF RFID in smartphones
1. Mr. Brunner, what are the latest developments in UHF RFID and how do you see the integration of this technology into smartphones?
Thomas Brunner started his professional career in 1999 as an electrical engineer in the field of high-frequency development at Kathrein Werke. In 2008, he started the first RFID activities at Kathrein Werke KG and in 2016, he took over the management of the newly founded business line IoT Solutions within the Kathrein Group. Today, he is managing director of Kathrein Solutions GmbH and responsible for the IoT activities of the Kathrein Group.
Thomas Brunner: UHF RFID has traditionally been focused on the retail sector, particularly product labeling. This is also where most of the tags are used. However, the visionary idea has always been to integrate UHF RFID into smartphones so that consumers can interact directly with tagged products. Qualcomm’s announcement closes this gap.
Currently, RFID tags are mainly used in logistics. Decathlon uses them for self-service checkouts, while other apparel companies use them for intralogistics, store logistics and inventory. But the next step is the “last mile” – direct interaction with the customer.
For a long time, this seemed technically challenging, but we are now at a point where advances in energy efficiency, transmission power, and chip technology are making this integration possible. This is especially true for consumer smartphones. The goal is to reliably achieve ranges of up to 120 centimeters.
The long-term goal is to enable interaction with the end user via the air interface. This is not only good news for the industry, but also a catalyst for a massive increase in the number of tagged products. This makes the use of RAIN RFID solutions in intralogistics and logistics in general across the entire transportation segment more and more sensible – an aspect that is already being discussed intensively today.
The driving force behind the use of UHF RFID is the optimization of efficiency in logistics and transportation. The integration of UHF RFID in smartphones has the added benefit of enabling better analysis of consumer behavior, so that products can be developed, offered and positioned that are specifically tailored to their needs.
Thomas Brunner: UHF RFID has traditionally been focused on the retail sector, particularly product labeling. This is also where most of the tags are used. However, the visionary idea has always been to integrate UHF RFID into smartphones so that consumers can interact directly with tagged products. Qualcomm’s announcement closes this gap.
Currently, RFID tags are mainly used in logistics. Decathlon uses them for self-service checkouts, while other apparel companies use them for intralogistics, store logistics and inventory. But the next step is the “last mile” – direct interaction with the customer.
For a long time, this seemed technically challenging, but we are now at a point where advances in energy efficiency, transmission power, and chip technology are making this integration possible. This is especially true for consumer smartphones. The goal is to reliably achieve ranges of up to 120 centimeters.
The long-term goal is to enable interaction with the end user via the air interface. This is not only good news for the industry, but also a catalyst for a massive increase in the number of tagged products. This makes the use of RAIN RFID solutions in intralogistics and logistics in general across the entire transportation segment more and more sensible – an aspect that is already being discussed intensively today.
The driving force behind the use of UHF RFID is the optimization of efficiency in logistics and transportation. The integration of UHF RFID in smartphones has the added benefit of enabling better analysis of consumer behavior, so that products can be developed, offered and positioned that are specifically tailored to their needs.
Thomas Brunner started his professional career in 1999 as an electrical engineer in the field of high-frequency development at Kathrein Werke. In 2008, he started the first RFID activities at Kathrein Werke KG and in 2016, he took over the management of the newly founded business line IoT Solutions within the Kathrein Group. Today, he is managing director of Kathrein Solutions GmbH and responsible for the IoT activities of the Kathrein Group.
“The potential for UHF RFID to reach consumers directly is the next milestone, and we are only at the beginning of this exciting development.”
Thomas Brunner – Managing Director, KATHREIN Solutions
2. What are the current challenges in UHF RFID, especially in terms of readability and standards?
The air interface is the communication link between two electronic devices in mobile or wireless communications. It includes both the physical and data link layers of a connection. In RFID, it is the connection between the RFID transponder and the RFID reader or… smartphone chip!
Thomas Brunner: The RAIN RFID air interface protocol is globally standardized in an ISO standard (ISO 18000-6C), making interoperability easy. This is one of the biggest advantages of RAIN RFID.
The standard is constantly being updated, especially with regard to other useful security features. Enhancements such as Gen2V3 are very important for many security-related solutions. In my opinion, it is very important for the global RFID community, especially with regard to global standards, that there is no diversification or proprietary solutions by chip manufacturers of specific extensions to the standard, which unfortunately has been observed more and more recently.
A key issue is selective reading, the ability to prevent multiple devices from reading the same tag at the same time. This is currently still a challenge, as several smartphones or readers can be in the vicinity of a tag at the same time. Standards work is needed to provide a reliable solution. Enabling interaction with the end user via the air interface will be a significant step forward.
In practice, carriers with products that are not yet individually tagged are tracked. In the future, however, it will become increasingly common for products to be individually tagged, which will significantly advance the technology. Major players such as UPS, DHL and Fedex see RAIN RFID as a key technology for the next decade, particularly for identification and sorting systems.
The ability to use transponders (the technical core of a tag) with an authentication function also means that personal or other security-related data can be protected from unauthorized access. Such security functions are already included in the standard and are in use millions of times over.
Thomas Brunner: The RAIN RFID air interface protocol is globally standardized in an ISO standard (ISO 18000-6C), making interoperability easy. This is one of the biggest advantages of RAIN RFID.
The standard is constantly being updated, especially with regard to other useful security features. Enhancements such as Gen2V3 are very important for many security-related solutions. In my opinion, it is very important for the global RFID community, especially with regard to global standards, that there is no diversification or proprietary solutions by chip manufacturers of specific extensions to the standard, which unfortunately has been observed more and more recently.
A key issue is selective reading, the ability to prevent multiple devices from reading the same tag at the same time. This is currently still a challenge, as several smartphones or readers can be in the vicinity of a tag at the same time. Standards work is needed to provide a reliable solution. Enabling interaction with the end user via the air interface will be a significant step forward.
In practice, carriers with products that are not yet individually tagged are tracked. In the future, however, it will become increasingly common for products to be individually tagged, which will significantly advance the technology. Major players such as UPS, DHL and Fedex see RAIN RFID as a key technology for the next decade, particularly for identification and sorting systems.
The ability to use transponders (the technical core of a tag) with an authentication function also means that personal or other security-related data can be protected from unauthorized access. Such security functions are already included in the standard and are in use millions of times over.
The air interface is the communication link between two electronic devices in mobile or wireless communications. It includes both the physical and data link layers of a connection. In RFID, it is the connection between the RFID transponder and the RFID reader or… smartphone chip!
3. How do you see the future of UHF RFID compared to other technologies such as barcodes, QR codes and NFC?
Thomas Brunner: Currently, UHF RFID still competes with technologies such as barcodes and QR codes. These are easy to produce, inexpensive, and provide fast authentication and serialization.
However, the benefits of UHF RFID are becoming more apparent as more products are tagged – a key driver for our industry. We are therefore very optimistic that this development will make rapid and tangible progress.
We are also seeing a move towards UHF RFID in industrial mobile devices, as many of these devices are now based on Android as standard. The Qualcomm chipsets used in these devices support the integration of UHF RFID and offer great potential for the future.
“I see NFC more as a complement to UHF RFID. In the future, however, we will see more dual-frequency chips that support both NFC and UHF RFID. Many of the products we develop for tolling and vehicle registration are now dual-frequency transponders as standard.”
Thomas Brunner – Managing Director, KATHREIN Solutions
Thomas Brunner: While Qualcomm will be introducing UHF RFID chipsets for smartphones in the near future, we believe it will be several years before this capability is widely deployed. We estimate that it will take about five years to reach 20-30% market penetration for this feature to be widely used.
In the meantime, UHF RFID and NFC will coexist. NFC is already widely used and can be considered a standard in almost every smartphone, with a global penetration of over 50-60%.
4. What developments do you expect for UHF RFID in industry, especially for handheld devices and their integration?
Thomas Brunner: Since its introduction, UHF RFID has pursued the vision of item-level tagging, primarily for use in logistics and industrial manufacturing. Initially, the focus was not on tagging individual products, but rather on tagging load carriers or other larger units. However, the development of passive UHF transponders has paved the way for a broader application.
In the future, it will become increasingly common to tag products directly. This development makes UHF RFID a very relevant technology.
Another important point is the development of handheld devices. In the future, we will see smaller, simpler industrial handheld devices that support not only the existing UHF RFID functionality, but also HF RFID. This will be possible thanks to integrated chipsets that combine these technologies. The transmission power can be lower because consumer applications do not require the same range as industrial devices.
However, this does not mean that rugged devices with large antennas and long ranges will become obsolete. On the contrary, these devices will still be needed in specialized areas and could also benefit from this development. We will also see more devices that look like pistol grips, offer UHF functionality and can connect to mobile devices via Bluetooth.
The idea of integrating UHF RFID into smartphones so that consumers can interact directly with tagged products has always been visionary. An AI guiding you through the current offers in the store – crazy or soon to be realized?
5. What do you think are the most important factors for end users when using UHF RFID technologies?
Thomas Brunner: At present, there are relatively few applications where the customer comes into direct contact with the technology. Some large retailers, such as Decathlon, are automating self-checkout with RFID, and EAS systems are also increasingly using RFID technology. Again, the customer may come into direct contact with RFID.
NFC is already a big step forward; we encounter it every day when we pay with our smartphones or, more recently, when we access our electronic medical records.
The breakthrough in terms of widespread use came with the integration of NFC into cell phones. I expect a similar development with RAIN RFID. The already massive annual production figures for RAIN RFID chips (>45 billion units in 2023) are likely to increase dramatically as a result of the now expected ability to interact with consumers.
The primary goal of consumer interaction is to find out what products they are interested in. Today, we only get this information when the customer actively scans a product using NFC or a QR code. In the future, this will be easier.
“Due to the limited size and battery capacity of smartphones, it is not possible to achieve ranges comparable to industrial readers. However, in my opinion, this is not necessary for the focus on consumer applications, for which an RFID range of 1-2 meters is sufficient.”
Thomas Brunner – Managing Director, KATHREIN Solutions
