Title: A novel software-radio-defined passive RFID reading system with real-time collision resolution

Authors: Yuan Sun; Peter J. Hawrylak; Zhi-Hong Mao; Marlin H. Mickle

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, BEH 348, 3700 O'Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, BEH 348, 3700 O'Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, BEH 348, 3700 O'Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, BEH 348, 3700 O'Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Abstract: The ISO 18000-6C standard defines the air interface of UHF passive RFID tags. According to the timing specification in this standard, a conforming interrogator (or reader) shall complete the inventory round for tags in a soft real time. This research develops a software-defined radio reconfigurable FPGA-based interrogator for the standard to address the stringent time constraints of the tag-reader handshakes. This flexible interrogator is fully customisable and can be utilised for typical applications including standard conformance test automation and large-scale programming for tag groups. Furthermore, on-chip signal processing allows for real-time online collision resolution in a tag-intensive environment and can significantly improve the system reading efficiency.

Keywords: software-defined radio; passive RFID tags; collision resolution; ISO 18000-6C; ICA; independent component analysis; radio frequency evaluation; reconfigurable FPGA interrogator; time constraints; tag-reader handshakes; on-chip signal processing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2011.043586

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2011 Vol.8 No.4, pp.261 - 270

Received: 06 Nov 2009
Accepted: 29 Apr 2010
Published online: 10 Nov 2011 *

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