Development of a Configurable and Enhanced RFID Reader Testbed Based on EPC Generation-2 Standard

Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) wireless technology is becoming progressively more popular and important instrument that is used in logistic chains, tracking and localization items. One principal challenge that researchers in this field face is that commercial RFID readers look like a black box suffering from limited configuration, and thus, innovative modifications to the MAC or the PHY layer are not possible. In this paper, an enhanced Software Defined Radio (SDR) implementation of an RFID Reader based on EPC Generation-2 standard is presented. This implementation is carried out on the new generation of USRP N210 platform by using the software built on GNU Radio framework. In addition, the performance of the implemented reader is evaluated in Ultra-High frequency (UHF) band. It is found that the performance of the implemented reader is as good as the performance of commercial UHF RFID readers.

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