RAIN Technology

RAIN (UHF RFID) is a wireless technology that connects trillions of everyday items to the internet, enabling businesses and consumers to identify, locate, authenticate, and engage each item.

The RAIN Alliance is a global alliance promoting the universal adoption of RAIN technology in a way similar to other wireless technology organizations including NFC Forum, WiFi Alliance, and Bluetooth SIG. RAIN uses the GS1 UHF Gen2 protocol which ISO/IEC has standardized as 18000-63. RAIN—an acronym derived from RAdio frequency IdentificatioN—is intended as a nod to the link between UHF RFID and the cloud, where RFID-based data can be stored, managed, and shared via the Internet.

In simple terms, RAIN is a passive, battery-free wireless technology that uses a reader to read and write a tagged item, manage the data, and take action. This enables businesses and consumers to identify, locate, authenticate, and engage with every item with a RAIN  tag. RAIN provides rich, real-time data and insights for various applications including inventory management, asset tracking, and supply chain optimization across many industry sectors.

RAIN is the fastest-growing segment of the UHF RFID market and has connected hundreds of billions of items to date providing the ability to:

  • Uniquely identify individual items beyond just their product type
  • Identify and locate items without direct line-of-sight
  • Identify many items quickly (up to 1,000 items per second)
  • Read items within a range of between a few centimeters to several meters

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RAIN Tags

  • Are either attached to or embedded in items
  • Tagged items store and send information
  • Thousands can be identified simultaneously and do not have to be visible

RAIN Readers

  • Have antenna(s) for either short or long-range communication
  • Can be small and portable, or larger and installed, or embedded in other devices

RAIN Software applications

  • Identify – Locate – Authenticate – Engage
  • Use the tags and readers to create, collect, and use the item’s data – locally, on a server, or a cloud
  • Authentication starts with determining whether an item is genuine
  • Engage can involve sensors or other means of interacting with the item

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