As a key component of the Internet of Things, RFID technology is driving the intelligent transformation of all industries at an unprecedented speed. In this vibrant and innovative August, many RFID industry expert representatives and industry insiders gathered at the Shenzhen World Convention and Exhibition Center to discuss the latest progress and future trends of RFID passive Internet of Things. At 10 am on August 28, the host announced the official start of the "IOTE 2024 Shenzhen RFID Passive Internet of Things Ecological Seminar". The host first expressed his warmest welcome and most sincere thanks to the guests who came from afar. After that, he briefly introduced the process of the meeting and announced the official start of the meeting.
The first person to share was Xu Haiping, a senior expert in wireless standards and industry development at Huawei. He introduced the progress and application scenarios of the 5G-A passive IoT industry. He said that compared with traditional passive IoT, 5G-A passive IoT has advantages such as high power, controllable interference, long coverage, and global standard protocol unification. In recent years, 5G-A passive IoT technology and tag chips have gradually matured. It is expected that the wireless side standards will be frozen in Q2 2025, and all standards will be frozen in Q4 for commercial use. In terms of practical applications, 5G-A passive IoT is particularly suitable for digital production and large-scale warehousing. Global operators are also actively conducting 5G-A passive IoT technology testing. 5G-A passive IoT has been commercially verified in some complex commercial scenarios such as full transparency of factory production logistics, metal stacked flat warehouses, and three-dimensional warehouses. Mr. Xu said: "It was not certain last year, but this year we finally dare to say that passive IoT is about to enter the era of hundreds of billions of connections."
The second speaker was Yang Linli, deputy general manager of Shanghai Kunrui Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. She introduced Kunrui Electronics' innovative solutions for item positioning and tracking and tracing at different levels, including near-field RFID positioning, local passive Bluetooth positioning, and wide-field 5G NR tag positioning. Near-field RFID positioning technology is suitable for some asset management scenarios with its high efficiency and speed, and can achieve real-time monitoring and precise positioning. Passive Bluetooth positioning is aimed at local application needs, and wide-area 5G NR tags provide strong support for item tracking in fields such as intelligent industrial manufacturing. By combining the characteristics of different technologies, Kunrui Electronics' solutions can be flexibly applied to a variety of fields, thereby meeting the diverse needs of customers in different application scenarios.
Next, Song Hailong, product director of Pingtou Ge, shared his experience. Mr. Song said that although the performance of RFID chips has been continuously improved in recent years, there are still pain points such as low reliability, insufficient extreme performance, and low recognition rate in complex scenarios. As the wholly-owned semiconductor chip business entity of Alibaba Group, Pingtouge Semiconductor Co., Ltd. has continuously innovated RFID technology and promoted the passive Internet of Things to enable more scenarios of the Internet of Everything through the Yuzhen RFID series of products, helping RFID to play a role in the application fields of various complex scenarios such as footwear, fast-moving consumer goods retail, smart logistics, supply chain management, and dynamic asset management.
Cai Haian, general manager of Zhejiang Zhongchan Technology Co., Ltd., introduced the original millimeter-level RFID positioning system of Zhejiang Zhongchan Technology. The core technology is MLSIM positioning technology. The working principle is to lay multiple tags along the track or ground X-axis (two-dimensional detection Y-axis) at a certain interval. The RFID antenna and position collector (commonly known as reader-writer) are installed on the moving object. The position collector collects the EPCID, RSSI value and phase value of multiple tags through the RFID antenna, and performs noise reduction and filtering on the collected data, and then generates multiple reading models. By comparing the reading models, an effective reading model is selected, and the reading model is matched with the multiple annotation models set inside the device, and the standard model with the highest matching degree is selected. The millimeter-level RFID positioning system can be applied to the positioning of various rail vehicles, such as overhead cranes, belt conveyors, AGV trolleys, material carts in factories, stackers and reclaimers, gantry cranes, and robots in port terminals.
The next speaker was David Moore, CEO of Pragmatic Semiconductor. He said that the vision of "Internet of Everything" has been proposed for a long time, but its progress has been hindered by concerns about semiconductor costs, availability, and sustainability. Pragmatic is revolutionizing semiconductor manufacturing through flexible integrated circuit (FlexIC) technology. FlexIC provides low-cost, low-carbon smart solutions with ultra-thin, flexible forms and fast production cycles of less than 48 hours. Pragmatic's innovative technology will power AI models with large-scale connectivity, perception, and computing power, and ultimately unlock the potential of the Internet of Everything.
Afterwards, an offline release ceremony of the "2024 China RFID Passive Internet of Things Industry White Paper" was held. This RFID white paper received strong support from several participating units, including Baodian Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., Deshi Group, Sichuan Kailuwei Technology Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Xinshi Technology Co., Ltd., Guangdong Zhongshifa Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. and Pragmatic Semiconductor. We specially invited them to witness and presented plaques to express our gratitude.
The last speaker in the morning was Zhang Zhongliang, head of the AIoT Star Chart Research Institute, who shared the RFID report that had just been released. He said that the shipment volume of UHF RFID tags reached 44.8 billion in 2023 and is expected to exceed 100 billion in 2030. It has achieved high growth despite the high base, and domestic applications have gradually increased under the leadership of retail. At the same time, domestic chip manufacturers have risen and competed with foreign chips. In the reader/writer market, global shipments of UHF RFID readers and writers have also grown rapidly, and domestic manufacturers dominate. He then discussed the market situation of the other two frequency bands. In general, the HF RFID market is expected to grow slightly after a decline, while the LF RFID market is stable. After that, he briefly introduced the AIoT Star Chart Research Institute and said that it will continue to provide in-depth market analysis and reports to help companies grasp industry trends.
So far, the morning sharing has ended. We will bring a review of the afternoon meeting tomorrow, so stay tuned.
