Decentralized RFID Coverage Algorithms With Applications for the Reader Collisions Avoidance Problem

Abstract

We aim in this paper at eliminating data and reader redundancies in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader networks. These redundancies have negative impact on the performance of an RFID reader network and in analyzing the readings of the network. We meet our objectives by introducing decentralized RFID coverage [reader collision avoidance (RCA)] algorithm. The RFID coverage problem consists of two subproblems: 1) the tag reporting problem, which aims at assigning to each tag in the network a reader responsible for reporting its data and 2) the redundant readers elimination problem, which aims at minimizing the number of readers in the network while preserving the tags coverage. We introduce two deterministic decentralized RFID coverage algorithms called orientation-based coverage and iterated orientation-based coverage ( IOB–COVERAGE ). The first algorithm runs in one communication round, whereas the latter runs in $O(n)$ rounds, where $n$ is the number of readers in the network. These algorithms are the first decentralized RFID coverage algorithms that use reader-to-reader communications only. We later introduce an algorithm that solves the RCA algorithm, called IOB–(RCA+COV ). The algorithm is a minor modification of IOB–COVERAGE . We formally prove the correctness of our algorithms, and we use detailed simulation experiments to study their performance.