0.469 PDFSA protocol for RFID arbitration

To enhance the performance of the Dynamic Frame Aloha protocol for RFID arbitration, the grouping of the tag population has been suggested in past works. However, none of them has formalized the problem of optimizing such grouping, nor has been able to provide an efficiency much higher than 0.367, the classic DF-Aloha maximum performance. In this paper we explain how to set the optimal size of groups, based on results attained decades ago in random access systems. We then present a novel protocol, Partitioned Dynamic Frame Slotted Aloha (PDFSA), based on grouping, that, when adopting the best estimation mechanism, reaches an asymptotical efficiency up to 0.469. With a more practical estimate and a short initial phase, this protocol provides an efficiency above 0.420 for any value of the population size N, reaching 0.455 asymptotically.