Reducing the deployment cost of RFID readers in retail spaces

Abstract

Detecting and tracking items marked with passive RFID tags are essential in modern retail stores, in which the RFID tags are used for inventory control and checkout-free shopping. The issue addressed in this study is the optimal placement of RFID readers, which minimises the deployment cost of a system that supports checkout-free shopping. State-of-the-art methods that support checkout-free shopping have shown proof of concept demonstration, applied to a relatively small number of items. They are not optimal, not scalable, and their implementation is very expensive. The issue of reducing the system deployment and maintenance cost was not considered by these studies. This study evaluates the theoretical bounds on the number of sensors required by a system that supports checkout-free shopping and suggests an RFID readers placement method that is scalable with the number of items in the store and can reduce the deployment and maintenance cost of such a system.