An effective design of an active RFID reader using a cache of tag memory data

Abstract

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is technology that a reader automatically identifies the data in a tag with a built-in microchip via a radio frequency. The relevant standards for 433 MHz active RFID are ISO/IEC 15961, 15962, and 18000-7. Communication between a reader and a tag in the management of active RFID tag memory data as defined by the standards is not efficient. In this paper, to address efficiency concerns, we present an active RFID reader software design to improve time and transmission rating of the ISO/IEC 18000-7 commands using memory data cached within the reader. We also present a method in which cached memory data are validated before use, to address the cache coherence issue when using multiple readers. For the identification method, we designed two models; one adheres to the RFinterface standard and the other modifies some fields of the RF-interface standard. We designed an active RFID reader and analyzed its efficiency through experiments based on the two models. The experimental results show that the performance on processing time and transmission rating of RF-interface improved by average 60% over the noncache design. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.