A novel paradigm to exchange data in RFID piconets

In this paper a new paradigm is proposed, according to which a group of RFID readers establishes a piconet, called RAN (RFID Area Network), similarly to Bluetooth or Zigbee devices and exchanges data by only using RFID tags as a common “virtual channel”. The proposal represents an interesting enabling factor of pure RFID ecosystems, wherein RFID enabled devices (such as mobile RFID readers, RFID reader cards embedded into cellular/mobile devices, etc.) only rely on the RFID technology for identification, for sensing and, now, for low-bitrate data exchange as well. Suitable algorithms to handle interference and collision problems during the data exchange within a piconet are proposed and the performance of the introduced paradigm is assessed.