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Waleed Alsalih 1 and Abdallah Alma'aitah 2 and Wadha Alkhater 1
Academic Editor:Christos Verikoukis
1, Department of Computer Science, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, P.O. Box 51178, Riyadh 11543, Saudi Arabia
2, School of Computing, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada
Received 29 November 2013; Accepted 15 January 2014; 20 March 2014
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a wireless technology that has enabled a wide range of identification, monitoring, and tracking applications. This includes using RFID for supply chain management, access control, identification and tracking of patients and children, and smart environments.
An RFID system is composed of tags (or transponders), readers, and a software application. A tag is usually attached to an item for the purpose of identifying and/or tracking it automatically. RFID tags store some identification data and transmit this data to the RFID reader via Radio Frequency (RF) signals. The RFID reader broadcasts a query to all tags within its reading (interrogation) range. Tags that receive the broadcasted query respond by sending their data back to the reader [1, 2].
RFID tags are composed of three main components: an Integrated Circuit (IC), an antenna, and substrate. Based on the power source, tags can be classified into three types: passive tags, semipassive tags, and active tags. Passive tags do not have a power source; they rather get powered by the electromagnetic waves that are emitted from the reader to broadcast the query [1-3]. Semipassive tags have an onboard battery that is used only to power their circuits for processing. However, the battery is not used for communication. As is the case with passive tags, semipassive tags rely on the reader to get the power they need for communication. An active tag has a battery that is used for both powering up the circuit and communicating with the reader. An active tag can handle a two-way communication with the reader independently [4].
RFID has the potential to enable many interesting applications and to play a crucial role in the envisioned Internet of Things (IoT). However, achieving that requires solving...