Matrix Pencil for RFID Collision Recovery

Collision recovery is considered one of the main potentials for improving bulk reading speed in the UHF radio identification (RFID) system. The collision occurs when two or more tags reply at the same time. State-of-the-art collision recovery algorithms rely on perfect channel state information (CSI), which is unrealistic. Moreover, these algorithms neglect the rate tolerance, that is, the uncertainty in the bit rate of the tag responses. This paper presents a novel algorithm to estimate all tag parameters, such as tag data rate, number of tags per slot, and CSI, using the Matrix Pencil Method (MPM). The proposed system is compatible with the existing EPCglobal Class-1 Gen-2 RFID standard. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with the different encoding schemes of the tag. The estimated parameters are forwarded to MIMO linear receivers to recover the colliding slots to speed up the identification process. The performance of the three linear receivers; Zero Forcing (ZF), Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE), and Maximum Likelihood (ML) receivers, is evaluated when the CSI is estimated using the proposed algorithm. All receivers perform similarly due to their different sensitivity to the CSI estimation error. The proposed collision recovery system reduces the time for reading a bulk by at least 13% compared to the literature.