Experimental evaluation of RFID gate concepts

Abstract

The extended reader ranges in the UHF band enable many new applications of RFID systems in the logistic sector. However, this also introduces false positive reads which can cause severe performance issues in the backend system. The performance of RFID gates as basic building blocks of RFID systems directly determines the overall behavior of the RFID application. Approaches to improve the robustness of gates with respect to false positive reads include the heuristic incorporation of proximity sensors and the use of multiple antennae. In this paper we present a comparison of three gate concepts which differ in complexity of the underlying algorithms and hardware requirements. We experimentally evaluate the performance of these gates in a standard conveyor belt application under real-world conditions.