A new underdetermined NMF based anti-collision algorithm for RFID systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been one of the critical technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT). With the rapid development of the IoT, the RFID systems are required to be more efficient and with high throughput capacity. In the widespread IoT application scenes, the collision problem of the RFID tags has become the increasingly remarkable problem in RFID systems. Traditionally, the anti-collision algorithms of RFID systems are always based on time division multiple access (TDMA). Although the TDMA based anti-collision algorithms are simple and easy to implement, it often misses tags and costs high time. Afterwards, the anti-collision algorithms based on blind source separation (BSS) have been introduced. These BSS based anti-collision algorithms are more efficient and stable, but they are mostly suitable for the determined or overdetermined case, i.e., the number of tags is less than that of the readers in RFID systems. Only a few anti-collision algorithms are taken into account of the underdetermined collision model. Because this underdetermined RFID collision model will give rise to more difficult solution but with very meaningfully practical IoT applications. Therefore, to investigate high quality underdetermined anti-collision algorithm for RFID system plays an important role in improving the efficiency of RFID system, and enable RFID implement more wide applications in future IoT systems. As a motivation, this paper proposes a new anti-collision algorithm for underdetermined RFID mixed system for performance improvement. In this work, the nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) with minimum correlation and minimum volume constrains, i.e., the new MCV_NMF algorithm is proposed for anti-collision application in underdetermined RFID systems. This algorithm combines the independent principle of the tag signals with the NMF mechanism to achieve performance enhancement. The experimental results and analysis corroborate that this new algorithm can implement the underdetermined collision problem well and enhance the throughput capacity of RFID system.