Synchronous Dynamic Adjusting: An Anti-Collision Algorithm for an RF-UCard System

An RF-UCard system is a contactless smartcard system with multiple chip operating systems and multiple applications. A multi-card collision occurs when more than one card within the reader’s read field and thus lowers the efficiency of the system. This paper presents a novel and enhanced algorithm to solve the multi-card collision problems in an RF-UCard system. The algorithm was originally inspired from framed ALOHA-based anti-collision algorithms applied in RFID systems. To maximize the system efficiency, a synchronous dynamic adjusting (SDA) scheme that adjusts both the frame size in the reader and the response probability in cards is developed and evaluated. Based on some mathematical results derived from the Poisson process and the occupancy problem, the algorithm takes the estimated card quantity and the new arriving cards in the current read cycle into consideration to adjust the frame size for the next read cycle. Also it changes the card response probability according to the request commands sent from the reader. Simulation results show that SDA outperforms other ALOHA-based anti-collision algorithms applied in RFID systems.