Concurrent Acknowledgment Protocol for Low-Latency RFID Tag Recognition

Gatnau-Sarret, Marta; Alfayoumi, Sobhi; Li, Heyi; Villa-Gonzalez, Fatima; Bhattacharyya, Rahul; Sarma, Sanjay E.; Melià-Seguí, Joan

doi:10.1109/LWC.2026.3694471

Published May 18, 2026 | Version v1

Journal article Open

Concurrent Acknowledgment Protocol for Low-Latency RFID Tag Recognition

1. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Contributors

Contact person:

Cano, Cristina¹

Project leader:

Vilajosana, Xavier¹

1. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Rapid and reliable identification of Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags is essential for time-critical applications. In scenarios such as high-speed manufacturing, automated sorting systems, and retail inventory, large tag densities frequently compromise the efficiency of the RFID system. Existing anti-collision protocols suffer from large latency, to avoid simultaneous transmissions and to recover collided data. Given the recent advances on counting algorithms and on readers decoding capabilities, this work proposes a novel mechanism to acknowledge multiple tags simultaneously and accelerate the identification process. Simulation results show a latency reduction of up to 95%, depending on the scenario.

Other

Relevant to WP2 (System functions), Task 2.4 (Design and evaluation of illumination protocols for RF-powered backscatter communication). The results of this research will be included in Deliverable 2.4 (Illumination protocol specifications and performance assessment).

Responsible partner: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Contact person: Joan Melià-Seguí (UOC), melia@uoc.edu.

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