Relay MAC: A Collision Free And Power Efficient Reading Protocol For Active RFID Tags

A promising application for RFID tags is to trace valuable assets in an inventory. In such systems, the key challenge is to achieve reliable and energy-efficient tag reads. This paper proposes a novel tag reading protocol, Relay-MAC, which aims at reducing the information sent over the network and the energy spent in collision detection and handling by introducing deliberate sequencing at runtime. This paper provides an in-depth study of the design issues one may face in implementing such a protocol on RFID tags, and validates its feasibility using simulation studies. These studies clearly demonstrate that Relay- MAC can yield much better throughput and energy conservation when compared to a conventional select-and-read protocol.