Initial Slot-Count Selection Scheme with Tag Number Estimation in Gen-2 RFID System

In Gen-2 RFID system, the initial value of $Q_{fp}$, which is the slot-count parameter of Q-algorithm, is not defined in the standard. In this case, if the number of tags within the reader's identification range is small and we let the initial $Q_{fp}$ be large, the number of empty slot will be large. On the other hand, if we let the initial $Q_{fp}$ be small in spite of many tags, almost all the slots will be collided. As a result, the performance will be declined because the frame size does not converge to the optimal point quickly during the query round. In this paper, we propose a scheme to allocate the optimal initial $Q_{fp}$ through the tag number estimation before the query round begins. Through computer simulations, it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme achieves more stable performance than Gen-2 Q-algorithm.