Optimum Power Distance Clustering for the EPC Class-1 Gen2 Standard in RFID Systems

Abstract

Tag collision is one of the main issues impacting the performance of radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Several research efforts have been done in order to solve such problem. Current RFID standards, such as EPCGen2 and ISO-18000-7, adopt ALOHA-based protocols as the basis to solve collisions. In recent years, there has been a trend on designing schemes that split the interrogation zone into smaller regions with the aim of improving the system's performance. In this paper, we evaluate and optimize the performance of ALOHA-based protocols for this new type of partitioning schemes. We establish the guidelines for adapting ALOHA protocols to this new approach in order to exploit the advantages it offers. Thus, we propose a new version of the EPCGen2 standard adapted to the new partitioning schemes, which overcomes its counterpart for the traditional approach, significantly reducing the identification delay, which is the main parameter to optimize in RFID.