Piece-wise constant models for RFID traffic

Available security standards for RFID networks (e.g. ISO/IEC 29167) are designed to secure individual tag-reader sessions and do not protect against active attacks that could also compromise the system as a whole (e.g. tag cloning or replay attacks). Proper traffic characterization models of the communication within an RFID network can lead to better understanding of operation under “normal” system state conditions and can consequently help identify security breaches not addressed by current standards. We consider the adaptation of two known piece-wise linear models for the purposes of modeling RFID command arrivals at a reader: Bayesian Blocks and Knuth's rule. Our preliminary results indicate that both methods could potentially be used to detect changes in system state (e.g. changes in the rate of command arrivals at a reader).