A Feasible and Easy-to-Implement Anticollision Algorithm for the EPCglobal UHF Class-1 Generation-2 RFID Protocol

Abstract

Dynamic frame slotted Aloha (DFSA) has been widely adopted to solve the anticollision problem in a radio frequency identification (RFID) system. In a DFSA procedure, the interrogator needs to continuously estimate tag backlog and select a new frame length for identifying the backlog. Intuitively, the accuracy of the tag estimator will affect the read performance. Hence, a considerable amount of research effort has been invested to improve the accuracy of backlog estimation. The improvement in general comes at the expense of large computation load and may lead to a serious challenge if one needs to implement such a kind of estimators in a real RFID system. This paper analyzes the influence of estimation error on read performance. Based on the analysis, we propose a feasible and easy-to-implement anticollision algorithm. Our proposed algorithm can achieve a normalized throughput of 35% that is very close to the theoretical maximum 36.1% for an EPCglobal UHF Class-1 Generation-2 system. The easy-to-implement advantage of our algorithm comes at the expense of only 1% reduction in normalized throughput as compared with the case where maximum throughput can be obtained. The results obtained are useful in designing fast and efficient interrogators. Note to Practitioners - A fast and efficient anticollision algorithm is required in many applications such as warehouse and supply chain management. Since most RFID interrogators are built with a single-chip microprocessor, whose computation ability or memory is limited. From the implementation point of view, a feasible algorithm should consider the compromise between complexity and performance. In order to easily implement the anticollision algorithm in a real RFID system, the proposed algorithm is based on a simple but sufficiently accurate method rather than complex models. The results obtained can be useful for the industry to develop fast and efficient RFID interrogators.