Optimum frame-length configuration in passive RFID systems installations

Anti-collision mechanisms in RFID, including current standards, are variations of Aloha and Frame Slotted Aloha (FSA). The identification process starts when the reader announces the length of a frame (in number of slots). Tags receive the information and randomly choose a slot in that cycle to transmit their identifier number. The best performance of FSA always requires working with the optimum frame-length in each cycle. However, it is not a parameter easy to adjust in real RFID readers. In this work a markovian analysis is proposed to find the optimum value of frame-length for the current readers of the market. Besides, to validate and contrast the analytical results, a real passive RFID system has been used to get experimental results: the development kit Alien 8800. The experimental results match the analysis predictions.