Alternatives to current RFID chip set market offerings

Abstract

There are a large number of RFID chip sets on the market. These chip sets cover the most widely deployed RFID technologies. These chip sets enable the rapid development of RFID readers as well as the inclusion of RFID into other devices. These market offerings frequently require an ancillary microprocessor to undertake the anti-collision algorithm in conjunction with the RFID chip set. These chip sets largely act simply to provide an RF front end with some encoding, decoding, protocol framing and CRC checking to support the overall activity. This paper presents the current state of the RFID chip set market and argues that these offerings fall short of what is required from a genuine RFID solution-on-chip (SoC). Alternatives, including a genuine RFID SoC and dedicated RFID ASIC implementing anticollision algorithms are proposed.