RFID Tag Collision Problem in Supply Chain Management

Abstract

The use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has attracted a huge attention from the supply chain business community. This is due to the use of RFID technology wide range of applications in the fields of logistics and supply chain management. This paper presents a brief overview of a simple industrial RFID system and then describe the basic concept of tag collision problem. Despite many useful applications, the RFID tag collision creates a major problem for fast tag identification process. There are different algorithmic solutions available to overcome tag collision problem in industrial supply chains. Based on binary search algorithm (BSA) of dynamic and backtracking, two variations of binary anti-collision search algorithms for tag identification processes are described in this paper. Simulation-based experimental results on the performance of these algorithms are evaluated when handling multiple RFID tags simultaneously. The backtracking binary search algorithm has obvious advantages in terms of tag identification process compared to the other two algorithms.