Performance analysis of multi-carrier RFID systems

The tag collision problem is a major factor that results in low tag identification rates in a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) system. Most present RFID systems use the time division multiple access (TDMA) technique to overcome this problem. However, the tag read rate is limited due to the nature of the TDMA technique. A multi-carrier RFID system jointly utilizes the frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and TDMA techniques to enhance the tag read rate in the system. In this work, the system performance of a multi-carrier RFID system in terms of tag read rate is analyzed, and the theoretical system performance is verified with computer simulations.