A solution for optimizing costs and improving diversity of RFID readers

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an attractive technology for implementing applications such as localization, detection, security, etc. When deploying these systems indoors, several doubts come out about how many readers and antennas are needed in order to minimize costs, but also to avoid tag-to-reader and reader-to-reader interferences. We present a hardware and software solution to overcome this problem. Using an especially designed RF switching box based on state of the art RF switches, we multiply the maximum number of antennas possibly connected to each reader (up to sixteen antennas per reader in our case), increasing diversity. We reduce costs of the RFID infrastructure in two manners: By adding RF switches and antennas instead of buying more expensive readers; and building an autonomous reader-plus-switch solution, which does not require any external power supply, only a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) network connection. Finally, with an implemented software layer we can remotely schedule and control, in a centralized way, all readers and selected antennas to minimize interferences among readers.