Effect of Slot Type Identification on Frame Length Optimization

In dense radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, reducing reading times is crucial. For tag anti-collision management, most RFID systems rely on frame slotted ALOHA (FSA). The most common method to reduce the reading time for large tag populations is optimization of the number of slots per frame. The slot duration in real RFID systems is determined by the slot type (idle, successful, or colliding). Furthermore, by detecting the strongest transponder, colliding slots can be transformed to successful slots, a phenomenon known as the capture effect. Additionally, RFID readers might be capable of identifying slot types using the physical layer which reduces the colliding slot time because at this moment the reader can immediately terminate the connection as there is no need to reply with invalid acknowledge and wait for the time-out. In this paper, we provide a novel approach for analytical estimation of the optimal frame length. Our approach yields a novel closed form equation for the frame length that takes into account durations of different slot types, the capture effect, and the probability of slot type identification. Experimental results for FM0 encoding show that our technique achieves a total reading time reduction between 5.5% and 11.3% over methods that do not take into account slot type identification. However, the reduction in reading time is maximally 9%, 6%, and 1% for Miller encoding scheme with M = 2, 4, and 8, respectively.