RFID-network planning by Particle Swarm Optimization

The design of an ad-hoc network of readers for a complex RFID system in large areas requires the deployment of a large number of readers due to the limited range of reader-tag communication. For passive tags the factors affecting the performance of the reader-tag communication depends on many physical and geometrical parameters. Line of sight is a constraint of the reader-tag link while scattering objects producing electromagnetic interferences affect the shape and the extension of the read-zone i.e. the region where a reader can activate a tag. This region depends not only on the emitted power and reader/tag antennas radiation patterns but also on the propagation environment. When a number of readers are planned in a network, mutual coverage of read-zones and mutual interference among readers are undesired while safety regulation constraints have to be fulfilled in the whole area. Simple and effective models of electromagnetic elements involved in the planning are developed and included in the frame of a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the method.