Extending the Read Range of UHF Mobile RFID Readers: Arbitration Methods Based on Interference Estimation

The read range of UHF mobile readers can be extended by a booster for mobile RFID readers (BoMR). But in an environment where multiple BoMRs are installed, the read success rate may be decreased due to signal interference. This paper proposes three arbitration methods based on interference estimation with the purpose of enhancing the read success rate. A central arbitration server manages global information in centralized arbitration method (CAM) without broadcast/multicast communication facility. In fully distributed arbitration method (FDAM), all the arbitration messages are broadcasted from a BoMR to every BoMR, and each BoMR decides with broadcasted global information. Events in FDAM are serialized naturally with broadcasted messages. Cluster Distributed Arbitration Method (CDAM) forms clusters with multicasted BoMRs and a selected BoMR acts as an arbiter in the cluster. Such effects as lengthened read range, improved the read success rates of readers can be obtained by the proposed methods without any hardware modification. In order to evaluate the arbitration methods, the RFID system is modeled by using the DEVS formalism and simulated by using the DEVSim++.