Tag anti-collision algorithms in RFID systems - a new trend

RFID is a wireless communication technology that provides automatic identification or tracking and data collection from any tagged object. Due to the shared communication channel between the reader and the tags during the identification process in RFID systems, many tags may communicate with the reader at the same time, which causes collisions. The problem of tag collision has to be addressed to have fast multiple tag identification process. There are two main approaches to the tag collision problem: ALOHA based algorithms and tree based algorithms. Although these methods reduce the collision and solve the problem to some extent, they are not fast and efficient enough in real applications. A new trend emerged recently which takes the advantages of both ALOHA and tree based approaches. This paper describes the process and performance of the tag anti-collision algorithms of the tree-ALOHA trend

Frame Size Analysis of Optimum Dynamic Tree in RFID Systems

In RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system, an anti-collision algorithm plays a prominent role in the tag identification process in order to reduce the tag identification delay and enhance the RFID system efficiency. In this work, we present a theoretical analysis of optimal frame size assignment for maximizing the system efficiency of a tree-based anti-collision algorithm, called optimum dynamic tree (ODT) algorithm, for RFID tag identification process. Our analysis indicates that the appropriate frame size for a given number of competing tags should not be set to the same value as the number of tags, which is commonly adopted in the literature. Instead, the frame size should be smaller roughly by a factor of 0.871 to maximize system efficiency. The closed-form for calculating system efficiency is derived and the derived simulation results are in a good agreement with the theoretical one. The exact appropriate frame sizes for the number of tags ranging from 2 to 100 are tabulated and compare the tag-identification time of conventional binary tree and ODT algorithms by using the international standard ISO 18000-6B

Energy efficient anti-collision algorithm for the RFID networks

Energy efficiency is crucial for radio frequency identification (RFID) systems as the readers are often battery operated. The main source of the energy wastage is the collision which happens when tags access the communication medium at the same time. Thus, an efficient anti-collision protocol could minimize the energy wastage and prolong the lifetime of the RFID systems. In this regard, EPCGlobal-Class1-Generation2 (EPC-C1G2) protocol is currently being used in the commercial RFID readers to provide fast tag identification through efficient collision arbitration using the Q algorithm. However, this protocol requires a lot of control message overheads for its operation. Thus, a reinforcement learning based anti-collision protocol (RL-DFSA) is proposed to provide better time system efficiency while being energy efficient through the minimization of control message overheads. The proposed RL-DFSA was evaluated through extensive simulations and compared with the variants of EPC-Class 1 Generation 2 algorithms that are currently being used in the commercial readers. The results show conclusively that the proposed RL-DFSA performs identically to the very efficient EPC-C1G2 protocol in terms of time system efficiency but readily outperforms the compared protocol in the number of control message overhead required for the operation

Analysis of BFSA Based Anti-Collision Protocol in LF, HF, and UHF RFID Environments

Over the years, RFID (radio frequency identification) technology has gained popularity in a number of applications. The decreased cost of hardware components along with the recognition and implementation of international RFID standards have led to the rise of this technology. One of the major factors associated with the implementation of RFID infrastructure is the cost of tags. Low frequency (LF) RFID tags are widely used because they are the least expensive. The drawbacks of LF RFID tags include low data rate and low range. Most studies that have been carried out focus on one frequency band only. This thesis presents an analysis of RFID tags across low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF), and ultra-high frequency (UHF) environments. Analysis was carried out using a simulation model created using OPNET Modeler 17. The simulation model is based on the Basic Frame Slotted ALOHA (BFSA) protocol for non-unique tags. As this is a theoretical study, environmental disturbances have been assumed to be null. The total census delay and the network throughput have been measure for tags ranging from 0 to 1500 for each environment. A statistical analysis has been conducted in order to compare the results obtained for the three different sets

Efficient Detection of Counterfeit Products in Large-scale RFID Systems Using Batch Authentication Protocols

RFID technology facilitates processing of product information, making it a promising technology for anti-counterfeiting. However, in large-scale RFID applications, such as supply chain, retail industry, pharmaceutical industry, total tag estimation and tag authentication are two major research issues. Though there are per-tag authentication protocols and probabilistic approaches for total tag estimation in RFID systems, the RFID authentication protocols are mainly per-tag-based where the reader authenticates one tag at each time. For a batch of tags, current RFID systems have to identify them and then authenticate each tag sequentially, one at a time. This increases the protocol execution time due to the large volume of authentication data. In this paper, we propose to detect counterfeit tags in large-scale system using efficient batch authentication protocol. We propose FSA-based protocol, FTest, to meet the requirements of prompt and reliable batch authentication in large-scale RFID applications. FTest can determine the validity of a batch of tags with minimal execution time which is a major goal of large-scale RFID systems. FTest can reduce protocol execution time by ensuring that the percentage of potential counterfeit products is under the user-defined threshold. The experimental result demonstrates that FTest performs significantly better than the existing counterfeit detection approaches, for example, existing authentication techniques