Intelligent Query Tree (IQT) Protocol to Improve RFID Tag Read Efficiency

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is slated to become a standard for tagging various products. As more and more products become RFID enabled, fast tag identification mechanisms will become important. Various tag identifica tion (or anti-collision) algorithms have been proposed for RFID systems. This work focuses on methods to improve tag read efficiency in RFID Systems. In this paper, we propose an Intelligent Query Tree (IQT) Protocol for tag identification that exploits specific prefix patterns in the tags and make the identification process more efficient. IQT is a memoryless protocol that identifies RFID tags more efficiently in scenarios where tag IDs have some common prefix (e.g., common vendor ID or product ID). IQT is suitable for readers deployed in exclusive showrooms, shipment points of big malls, where the products may come from same manufacturer and may have same product IDs. We provide the worst case complexity analysis of IQT and show the performance improve ment of this protocol over traditional Query Tree protocol in different scenarios.