Passive UHF radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, or RAIN RFID tags, has become a huge business, with estimates of more than four billion to six billion tags being sold this year alone.
 
Chainlink Research has reported that approximately 6.5 billion UHF RFID chips will be sold in 2015, and states that retail RFID tag consumption should grow at about 34% over the next three years. In addition, Chainlink Research estimates that the industry as a whole will exceed 10 billion UHF chips sold annually within two years, and will ship just under 100 billion chips cumulatively from 2011-2020.
 
IDTechEx reported that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of RAIN RFID from 2012-14 was 17.8%, with 3.84 billion RAIN RFID tags being sold in 2014. Moving forward, IDTechEx estimates that the CAGR from 2015-20 will be 26%, with 18.8 billion RAIN RFID tags expected to be sold in 2020. IDTechEx cites tagging apparel as the biggest application in 2015 of RAIN RFID at present.
 
However, the actual use of RFID tags remains an unknown to the general public, and the formation of the RAIN RFID global alliance aims to change that.
   
RAIN RFID was founded in April 2014, when several key players in the industry, including Google, Impinj, Intel and Smartrac, wanted to improve marketing for passive UHF RFID. They approached AIM Inc., the recognized industry association for AIDC, to see if a marketing group could be setup.
   
“AIM was happy to create an alliance that would provide marketing for the technology,” said Steve Halliday, president, RAIN RFID. “The four founding members stepped up to finance the start of the Alliance and provided candidates for the Board of Directors. Working inside of AIM’s procedures, the Board created a dues structure and a set of procedures to govern the Alliance. The formation was announced at the RFID Journal Live meeting in Orlando.
   
Halliday was appointed president of the Alliance, and RAIN RFID began recruiting at the Orlando meeting; today, RAIN RFID has more than 80 members and is growing.
 
The stated mission of RAIN RFID is to enable businesses and consumers to identify, locate, authenticate and engage items in the everyday world, through educating users about RFID.
   
“Overall, the Alliance wants to be the non-partial marketing group for the technology,” Halliday said. “Our goal is to gain more acceptance for the technology, educate the users and the industry about the technology, and grow the market for everyone.” He added that the Alliance is not a standards setting group, and there is no intent to replace the existing air interface standards. 
   
RAIN, the technology, is passive UHF RFID based on the standards defined in ISO/IEC 18000-63 and GS1 EPCglobal UHF Gen 2. These were first created in 2005 as a new air interface for passive UHF RFID by consensus of many companies.
   
“The technology standardized in ISO/IEC 18000-63 and GS1 EPC UHF Gen 2 has been widely accepted since their first publication,” Halliday noted. “Prior to 2015 we estimate that 15 billion tags have been produced and sold into applications that need identification of items. One manufacturer has recently celebrated selling their 10 billionth RAIN tag.”
   
As an independent organization, the Alliance helps the industry educate and grow the market without the imprimatur of an individual company. 
   
“UHF RFID has many benefits in the world of RFID,” Halliday said. “It has the largest range of any of the passive RFID technologies, up to 30 meters or more, but can also be used in close proximity if the application demands it. The low cost of UHF tags makes it an ideal choice for many systems where the tag cost is an important factor.”
   
Because of its cost, passive UHF RFID will be a key element of the Internet of Things (IoT).
   
“The IoT requires us to identify, locate, authenticate and engage with things,” Halliday said. “There are several technologies that can achieve these things, but for many items a low cost means to provide the means of communication is required. RAIN RFID fills this requirement and allows us to add a means of identification and communication to everyday items at a low cost point.
   
“The IoT is being recognized as a major growth area, with numbers like 20 billion devices added to the IoT by the year 2020 being quoted by some analyst organizations,” he added. “These numbers do not address the reality of connections to things by technologies like RAIN RFID.
   
“When you look at these numbers (100 billion tags by 2020), the numbers far exceed all of the IoT industry analysis that has been published,” Halliday concluded. “We strongly believe that RAIN will be at the forefront of the IoT and will make the concept a reality.”