Broadradio: Going hard to meet the golden age of RFID industry development

In the seventh year since Shenzhen Broadway Intelligent Identification Technology Co., Ltd. was established, the RFID industry has undergone many changes just like the changing world pattern. From the unknown status of "RFID" in 2014, to the RFID that was brought into the public view by new retail in 2017, to the RFID that is now blooming in all walks of life, such changes are obvious to all, but the constant is R This year's expectation for the outbreak of the RFID industry. Recently, a reporter from RFID World.com interviewed Mr. Liu Liangji, a heavyweight who has been engaged in the RFID industry for more than ten years, to see how he can see the future trend in the current RFID trend.

Broadradio General Manager-Mr. Liu Liangji

Broadradio, stepping into the antenna industry

Speaking of Broadway Intelligence, the first reaction in the industry is that the antenna design is excellent, whether it is a narrow beam antenna or a near-far field antenna. At the beginning, Broadwin Smart's starting point was to design special tags, but during the manufacturing process they found that there was no antenna that could meet their requirements. In order to solve the problem, they turned to research RFID antennas.

In fact, some application scenarios do not require such high multi-tag reading capabilities while requiring excellent reading distance. Therefore, in order to obtain the best cost performance, certain antennas need to be developed to meet the requirements. The application requirements specified by the customer. At that time, there was no domestic RFID antenna company specializing in this area.

Under this circumstance, Broadway Smart stepped into the door of RFID antenna design, concentrated on research and development, not only solved many practical problems for customers on the project, and created value; it also enriched the company's products and obtained technological breakthroughs. It also increased the company’s market share in the mid-to-high-end antenna field, and shaped the corporate image of the industry’s antenna benchmark brand. It also competed head-on with Laird and Israel Antenna Corporation in the international market.

From a pioneer with no market and no business to an industry benchmarking enterprise, this is inseparable from Broad Wisdom’s core pursuit of product design. As Mr. Liu Liangji said: "Solve problems, provide the best antenna solutions, and create value for customers is the core purpose, so that they are willing to pay for the value." The increase in customer loyalty and customer stickiness is the brand of Broadwei Smart Antenna Recognition.

Although Broadway Smart has hit the pain points in the RFID segment and used its technical strength to help customers solve the problem, this segment is too small to support the long-term development and continuous growth of an enterprise. Therefore, Broadway Intelligence has also encountered some bottlenecks, and must start to consider corporate strategy issues.

At that time, there was such a problem in the deployment of RFID projects. No matter how good the performance of electronic tags, readers, and antennas is, and the consistency is handled properly, the integrator of the end user should put these into a set of equipment and make it. A complete system will always be slightly different, and the cycle is very long. Therefore, Broadway Smart served as the user's technical supporter and technical maintainer for that small antenna in the early stage.

Following the industry trend, Broadway Intelligence has seen the trend of application scenarios based on RFID devices. Mr. Liu Liangji said: “When a piece of equipment is commissioned or installed on site, there are many uncertain factors and a lot of work. But if it becomes a scene and then connects to the system through the network, such an application can achieve a multiplier effect with half the effort. "For example, RFID smart cabinets, typical application scenarios are high-value medical consumables cabinets, instrument cabinets, filing cabinets, book cabinets, etc.

The master of RFID hardware equipment-smart cabinet

Broadway Smart entered the field of smart cabinets with the initial purpose of expanding the application scenarios of antenna sales. At that time, the application end after the market education stage had a large demand for RFID smart devices that can be deployed simply, plus a complete set of integrated equipment. Speeding up the product landing time has led to the birth of smart cabinet products. Yan Guangwei, deputy general manager of Broadway Intelligent, said: “Downstream customers need to get an antenna in the east, receive a module in the west, buy a feeder in the north, and test a tag in the south. The focus is on the application effect of the core RFID technology in the cabinet. It is too difficult for downstream customers with RFID expertise."

So Broadradio has taken one step further to the downstream links. The extra step provided the industry with RFID smart cabinets in medical, archives, tool management and other aspects. In the medical field, it has seen the high-efficiency management capabilities of RFID used in cardiovascular, medical consumables and other medical devices at a time when people are paying more and more attention to health; in terms of archives, it has planted the efficient experience and cost advantages of RFID book applications Entered the field of file management; in terms of tools, the tool assets in aviation, high-speed rail and other projects are more expensive, not fixed in shape, and have a high reuse rate. This is a trend in RFID asset management, and with the further popularization of RFID in the future , Many devices will be affixed with RFID electronic tags when they leave the factory, which can solve the current pain point of RFID in tool management.

In fact, smart cabinets integrated with RFID hardware devices are still a form of RFID asset management. Although the construction cost of smart cabinets is high, the RFID smart cabinets born out of new retail cabinets and express cabinets have added optimized reader modules and antenna performance, allowing people to truly appreciate the convenience and speed of cabinet device identification. And accuracy.

The smart cabinet contains an idea of ​​integrating readers, antennas and other single products into the terminal. This is also the direction of technological evolution. As long as RFID is mastered, can it be made into an RFID smart cabinet?

The answer is not so. According to Mr. Liu Liangji, smart cabinets include sheet metal, aluminum profiles, antennas, and embedded systems. The structural parts of industrial design such as sheet metal, aluminum profile, surface treatment process, product color matching, etc. are very complicated, and the core embedded software and antenna structure are not too much.

Broad-Wisdom’s embedded software is related to its accumulation of experience in the field of access control, and the antenna part benefits from its more than ten years of refined antenna "skill". It can clearly understand where a cabinet should be shielded, how to improve the recognition rate and solve misreading problems and the signal processing problems of the reader module, and more importantly, a set of RFID-based positioning functions derived from the antenna. It is not limited to the single function of data collection. These have certain technical thresholds.

Smart cabinets require overall planning and integration capabilities to assemble various hardware products into a complete set of hardware integration equipment, so that customers can intuitively experience the core value of the product; smart cabinets also require a high degree of production consistency and batch stability. This directly affects the experience of various end users. Just as Yan Guangwei, deputy general manager of Broadway Intelligence, said, "Let the end customers understand how much economic benefits such a smart product like RFID will bring to them."

This is very important, and it also relies on the joint efforts of RFID smart device manufacturers to "make the cake bigger when the pre-application demand increases", create industry products, develop healthy competition, maintain the market environment, and responsibly A customer’s pilot becomes the final application.

Welcome the golden period of RFID industry development in the next 3~5 years

Most readers in the industry are optimized based on the R2000 chip, but when the optimization reaches a certain level, the homogeneity of the product will become more serious, and the customer's application needs will be differentiated. The focus at this time It falls on the application scheme of antennas and tags.

However, with the progress of RFID tag production technology, tag measurement equipment, and tag chip sensitivity in recent years, tag technology has been sufficient to support the expansion of applications. The difficulty is the decoding and identification of the subsequent readers. And domestic well-known reader companies are further optimizing reader module products, and achieved very close performance.

Nowadays, domestic tags, reader modules, smart cabinets, terminal applications, etc. are sufficient to complete the RFID industry chain, but there are still shortcomings for the chip, which is a card-neck link. Sometimes foreign chips cannot meet the application of customized projects, nor can they meet the localization needs; and the chip design also represents a country’s industrial foundation to a certain extent. In addition, the recent chip supply situation is tight and domestically produced The chip plan has no time to delay. There are also some companies in the industry that are deeply involved in the field of RFID chips, and innovatively add additional value to the chip with the best cost performance, such as combining with sensors to provide temperature, humidity, and vibration data.

In fact, the entire domestic RFID industry chain has become more mature. The completeness of technology, the integration of industries, the integration of industries, and customers' understanding of RFID have changed a lot from the original. Mr. Liu Liangji said: "In the past, the logistics industry basically concluded that RFID was not easy to use and could not solve the problem." But now major logistics companies have used RFID technology. He predicted that the next 3 to 5 years will be a golden period for the development of the RFID industry.

With capital and technology, there is no need to "literate" RFID, and the digital trend of the whole industry is unstoppable. There are also many excellent companies that do continuous output for the RFID industry. They either do a good module and a good antenna, or they have a well integrated solution and a good system architecture. They are deep in a certain field and respect independent intellectual property rights. , Pay attention to product optimization and technological progress, and jointly make a contribution to the future development of the industry.

Broadradio: Going hard to meet the golden age of the development of RFID industry

The emergence of RFID smart cabinets also represents an advancement in the RFID industry. Technological progress will not stop, and more RFID scenarios will be derived in the future. Broadwin Intelligence will rely on its deep accumulation in the antenna field, introduce excellent module products in the industry, and deepen the field of smart cabinets to provide the industry with more excellent products with fast data collection speed, high accuracy rate and positioning function.