Taxonomy and survey of RFID anti-collision protocols

Due to the limitless possibilities and low cost, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are used in a variety of applications to uniquely identify physical objects. The operation of RFID systems often involves a situation in which numerous tags are present in the interrogation zone of a single reader at the same time. The tags can collide and cancel each other out, leading to retransmission of tag IDs that results in wastage of bandwidth and an increase in the total delay. Besides, readers physically located near one another may interfere with one another’s operation. Such reader collision must be minimized to ensure the current operation of the RFID system. The main focus of this paper is to survey the collision resolution protocols for multi-access communication and the algorithms that calculate how to minimize reader-to-reader interference. A comparative view of surveyed protocol was concluded for the collision problem in RFID systems. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.