An UHF RFID performance evaluation architecture based on traces from a software defined transceiver

Software Defined Radio (SDR) based approaches are frequently used to study the performance of EPC Global Class 1 Generation 2 compliant ultra-high frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems and their enhancements. To perform credible evaluations, either an anechoic chamber or parallel processing of different reader software at the SDR level are used. Both approaches are challenging as an anechoic chamber does not reflect environmental influences and parallel processing at SDR level lacks reproducibility. In this paper, we present a trace based evaluation architecture. We measure traces in real world scenarios using a software defined RFID transceiver. Based on these traces credible and reproducible evaluations can be performed. We show the value of our architecture by evaluating different clock recoveries approaches.