Fully-coherent reader with commodity SDR for Gen2 FM0 and computational RFID

Summarization: There has been a continuously growing interest on radio frequency identification (RFID) and more recently, on computational RFID, i.e. battery-less sensors that piggyback sensed information, rather than a constant ID bit stream, utilizing Gen2, the physical layer of commercial RFID systems. This work offers a complete software-defined radio (SDR) reader with a) coherent detection without rate degradation, by exploiting already present preambles in Gen2, b) full exploitation of FM0 line coding memory in Gen2 tags, c) careful handling of symbol synchronization and departure of commercial tags from nominal bit duration and d) implementation and testing of Gen2 in a commodity SDR, utilizing a single transceiver card. Continuing recent work [1], this contribution offers an updated prototyping tool that could further unlock the potential of computational RFID and relevant batteryless sensor networks.Presented on: IEEE Wireless Communications Letter