Last month, Impinj introduced new endpoint IC technology innovations that enable connectivity to everyday items in the retail, grocery, consumer packaged goods, and logistics markets.

Retail has for years been one of the most active vertical industries experimenting with sensors of all kinds to drive greater efficiency and creativity in physical retail stores, delivering a digital experience to customers and valuable data to retailers and their suppliers. The journey hasn’t always been easy, but the journey has been necessary, driven by challengers like Amazon and other online retailers who have been attracting consumers to “clicks” vs. “bricks” shopping.

Last month, Impinj, a publicly-traded company and a pioneer of RAIN RFID solutions, introduced new endpoint IC technology innovations that enable connectivity to everyday items in the retail, grocery, consumer packaged goods, and logistics markets. According to Impinj, their new technologies use an advanced semiconductor process node and “paint the future of RAIN RFID by endowing Impinj endpoint ICs with differentiated features and enhanced performance, enabling these and other emerging markets in the coming months and years.”

RAIN RFID is a wireless communication technology that uses radio waves to connect everyday items to the Internet, enabling businesses and consumers to identify, locate, authenticate, and engage each item. The word RAIN, an acronym derived from “RAdio frequency IdentificatioN”, leverages links between UHF (Ultra-High Frequency) RFID and the cloud, where RFID-based data can be stored, managed and shared via the Internet.

A RAIN RFID system uses a reader to read and write a tagged item, manage the data and take action.

As the IoT and IIoT worlds move closer to the edge, with more compute at the edge, Impinj innovations will improve readability and add new features and functionality that  increases the distance, reliability, and speed at which a RAIN RFID system can inventory, locate, and engage items, enabling use cases like item authentication, loss prevention, frictionless point-of-sale, and shipment verification, while importantly allowing Impinj’s inlay partners to design smaller, high-performing, truly global RAIN RFID tags.

More…

Source: Retail IoT: Impinj Technology Drives the Economics and Systems for Connected Retail