RFID glossary.
The terms that matter for understanding how RFID works in an industrial deployment, and how the Impinj R700 and Titan platform fit together.
- RAIN RFID
- RAIN RFID is a passive UHF (ultra-high frequency) RFID technology standard operating in the 902-928 MHz band in North America and 865-868 MHz in Europe. RAIN tags require no battery and are powered by the radio energy from the reader. The term RAIN is a brand identity for the UHF Gen2 standard ratified as ISO/IEC 18000-63. RAIN tags can be read at distances of several meters and through certain materials, making them suitable for supply chain, warehouse, and asset tracking applications.
- EPC (Electronic Product Code)
- An EPC is a unique identifier encoded onto an RFID tag, typically 96 or 128 bits long. It serves as a serial number for the tagged item. The EPC itself is just a code - the meaning (SKU, product name, price, or any other attribute) is attached in software by associating the EPC with records in a database or spreadsheet. In the Titan platform, you attach your own data to each EPC on the Tag Data screen, and the platform uses that association to turn raw reads into inventory and location by zone.
- Zone
- A zone is a place you name, such as Receiving or Aisle C. In the Titan platform each reader antenna watches one zone, and a tag's location is the zone that last saw it. A tag counts as present in a zone if it was seen there in the last five minutes. Titan shows the zone a tag is in now; it does not keep a history of every zone a tag has passed through, except on the timeline of an asset.
- Reader vs middleware
- An RFID reader is the physical hardware that emits radio energy and detects tags. A reader produces raw tag read events - typically the EPC, timestamp, antenna number, and signal strength. Middleware is software that sits between the reader and business applications. It collects read events from one or more readers, filters and aggregates them, and delivers meaningful data (such as inventory snapshots or movement events) to WMS, ERP, or other systems. Titan is the middleware layer for Impinj R700 deployments, handling read ingestion, normalization, and storage, and making the results available in the hub and through an API that other systems can use.
- Impinj R700 in the Titan platform
- The Impinj R700 is a four-port fixed RFID reader used as the hardware foundation for Titan deployments. In Titan Cloud, R700 readers are bound to your account. They report read events to the Titan platform, where reads are matched with your tag data and made available in the hub, as a CSV export, and through the API.
More questions?
If you need clarification on how any of these concepts apply to your deployment, or if a term is missing from this list, get in touch. We would rather answer a question than leave you guessing.
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