CHAPTER 5

A DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM FOR SDR-BASED RFID READER

BEHNAM JAMALI

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Adelaide Adelaide Australia

5.1 INTRODUCTION

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems are demanding more data, faster logging, and higher interrogation rates, so they require a powerful system that can manage information from a variety of sources, store the data, and transmit it reliably and continuously for long periods of time to other readers or a host PC. The most common RFID readers in use today operate at ultra-high-frequency (UHF) and high-frequency (HF) industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands [1]. More and more wireless devices are being designed to utilize the ISM band. As the number of these wireless devices proliferates, so does the level of destructive noise in the spectrum that can hamper the effective use of RFID [2].

To address the insatiable desire of the spectrum users for additional wireless bandwidth and burgeoning problem of spectrum scarcity, novel innovation in RFID reader technology and communication protocols are paramount. However, commercial RFID readers are like a black-box. Low-level communication layer parameters and protocol specifics are hardwired, making it difficult, if not impossible, for researchers to experiment and implement new functionality at those levels.

GNU Radio (GR) is an open-source software-defined radio project [3]. It is programmed to run on general-purpose personal computers. The ...

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