RFID Reading Performance - RFID Arena

RFID Reading Performance - RFID Arena
http://rfidarena.com/2011/12/15/rfid-reading-performance.aspx[4/13/2014 9:49:01 AM]

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15 December 2011
Mirva Saarijrvi
RFID Reading Performance
Testing the reading performance with an RFID mobile
computer. The testing work an RFID engineer faces in his
work. Text written by Viktor Candolin, Project Manager
and SW Designer at Nordic ID.
Author: Viktor Candolin
PART1: SPECIFICATION, MEET REALITY
My daily work routine, consisting mostly of coffee & coding, was put on
hold this autumn when I agreed to partner up as the technical sidekick
of Teemu Ainasoja. This meant visiting customers in the Atlanta,
Washington DC and NYC region of the United States. We were of
course most keen on showing off our entire family of new high-
performance RFID products, but at the same time it was the first real
hands on experience I have had with the new RFID products. During
the last year much of what Nordic ID R&D has been doing can be seen
as RFID and everything else. I have been responsible for 'everything
else' for the Nordic ID Morphic. So I was fairly well acquainted with the
soul life of a 3G modem, but the same could not be said for the Nordic
ID Sampo and NUR-05W RFID module before the road trip.
The road trip was, as always, just what was needed. It is always good
for an R&D person to get out from behind the monitors and see things
from the perspective that matters, that of our customers'. It helps keep
priorities correct when you know what the needs & problems of our
customers and end users are. One particular question that remained
after the trip is what would be the ideal settings for our products in real
use cases and how much of an obstacle is the user to achieving that
performance? Being in R&D we know fairly well the maximum number
of tags per second it is mathematically possible for the RFID module to
handle. But the spec sheet performance feels less convincing when
standing in a room with tens of thousands tagged pieces of underwear
and you are expected to deliver those numbers in person.
The above situation is also interesting because it is fairly close to a real
world worst case scenario. The tags are very densely placed; there are
easily 1000 tags in the reader's field at any one time. There is no cherry
picking with the test setup; they hang as they hang, covering and
interfering with each other. The clothes racks are made of sturdy metal,
placed close to walls full of rebar. With this in mind we wanted to do two
things; find the reader settings that work the best with this situation, and
to find out how much of an impact the person using the reader has on
performance. So, upon returning to Finland and still rather jetlagged we
set up an artificial test that replicates the environment we saw in the
field. In this first part we will look at the best settings for the Nordic ID
Merlin Cross Dipole this kind of environment.

While we do not have tens of thousands of readily tagged clothes in the
Software Center office, we can replicate the tag density and
environment fairly easily. We did this using roughly two thousand UPM
Belt tags laid across three metal frame tables so that the tags crisscross
each other and the density is similar to the real world scenario.
The points of note in the test are:
1.There are lots of tags in a small area, about 2000 in a 1 by 3 meter
area.
2.The tags are not ideally placed. They are on top of each other, turned
every which way and the frames of the tables they are on are made of
metal.
3. It allows us to test the same setup with different people and styles of
scanning.
Then, onto discovering is the best configuration for the Nordic ID Merlin
Cross Dipole with this setup.
A SENSE OF SESSIONS
There are a number of settings that have a major impact on how the
RFID module operates. There are no good or bad settings, just suitable
or unsuitable for the case at hand. I will go through the settings below
with a minimum of technical jargon; you can skip this part if your
dreams are Miller-8 encoded. The next part of this article deals with
how the user impacts performance.
TRANSMISSION POWER
This one is fairly straightforward. The amount of radio power pumped
into the air by the reader. In this specific case, we want all the power
we can get. This is because the tags are really close together and
partially obscure each other, so the more RF power we can get out
there, the more tags have power to respond to our calls. Note that more
is not always better, but in this specific case it is. What matters is
radiated power, i.e. what actually leaves the antenna, not how much the
RFID module puts out.
TX MODULATION
The possible settings here are ASK and PR-ASK. For the interested,
the acronym stands for Amplitude Shift Keying and Phase Reverse
Amplitude Shift Keying. ASK basically means that we convey data by
shifting how strong the sent radio wave is, i.e. we shift the wave's
amplitude.
To understand how phase reverse works, you need to understand that
the radio transmits waves. The radio energy moves like ripples over
water, but with radio waves we can change the phase of the wave
suddenly. This means that the signal goes from being a wave peak to
being a wave bottom without having the downwards slope in between
normally expected. The physicists in the audience are politely asked to
live with this simplification. This way we can for instance send a binary
one by suddenly reversing the phase, and sending a binary zero by
keeping the expected phase.
The advantage of PR-ASK is that it is more energy dense; more RF
energy gets transferred to the tags, meaning they are slightly easier to
read. But not all tags support PR-ASK, if it is supported it should be
used.
SESSION
The session concept is not very well described by its name, yet it is one
of the most important settings. Basically there are four session types
specified in the ISO 18000-6c RFID spec, session 0 through 3. The
session setting is a tool for making inventory events easier to manage,
and make them more likely to succeed. All tags have internal flags that
are set to "I have not been inventoried" or "I have been inventoried". Or
you can think of it like this but the flags are actually said to be set to A
or B. So when you read that the session target is A or B, it means that
only tags with the flag in that position will be inventoried. The flag is
flipped automatically when a tag is inventoried. Depending on which
session setting is used and the capabilities of the tag, the flag always
flips back to A after a time if has been changed to B. It does not return
the other way, A is the tags default state.
The advantage of this system is that it is easier to read lots of tags that
are close to each other. When a tag is inventoried it will then be silent
during further inventory rounds, thus allowing the reader to find more
tags. The more tags that are inventoried, the more can be inventoried
without them transmitting over each other and causing transmission
failures (collisions). How long they stay inventoried is designated by two
things, the session number and the tag manufacturer. The following list
shows how the session number relates to the tags staying inventoried:
Session 0: Does not stay inventoried at all.
Session 1: Stays inventoried for -5 seconds.
Session 2: Stays inventoried for at least 2 seconds.
Session 3: Stays inventoried for at least 2 seconds.
Note that this table describes tag behavior when the tag is out of the
RF field, it is no longer receiving power. While it is being powered, the
specification says that session 0, 2 and 3 stays inventoried for an
indefinite time. I assume that means it's up to the tag manufacturer, and
can for instance be infinite (while powered). For session 1 the behavior
is the same when powered and after leaving the RF field. In the case
we are discussing here, it is fairly easy to understand how Session 2 or
Session 3 will work far better than Session 0 or 1. In practice the tags
we were using in this test keep their session 2 or 3 flag for at least 30
seconds.
Using a high session setting has consequences that must be kept in
mind. First, you cannot use two readers at the same time with the same
session 1/2/3 settings. You can use several readers with different
session settings, or all on Session 0. The session flags are specific to
the session in question, a Session 2 and a Session 3 inventory round
can be done at the same time for the same tags. You cannot do a new
inventory against the same session target before the tags have reverted
back to the default state, or before you have manually reset the tags to
that state. Session 2 and 3 must be used with reliable communication,
because if the tag hears that it has been inventoried when in fact it has
not, we end up with a tag that is not found and cannot be found as long
as its session target lock is still active. So, onto transmission reliability.
RX DECODING
Possible settings are Miller 2, 4, 8 and FM-0. Miller encoding is named
after the person who invented it, and is a way to increase your chances
of being understood but doubling the time it takes to say it. Simplified
it's like repeating yourself when something really important needs to be
said. Like saying "Launch, Launch, Launch" when commanding a rocket
to be launched. If you and whomever you are talking to have agreed
how many times you should say it, the chance of a miscommunication
decreases greatly for every additional time you say it. The same is true
for Miller Encoding. Miller 8 takes eight times longer to send the same
data compared to FM-0, but it is millions of times less likely to arrive
with an undetected error. Increasing the Miller encoding size slows
communication down but increases transmission security. In the test
case we are discussing here, the results were as follows.
FM-0: Not considered suitable for this setup at all, not used.
Miller-2: Consistently missed 20 to 40 of the two thousand tags on
every read. No amount of additional reading would find these tags. This
means the tags consider themselves inventoried, because of
transmission errors.
Miller-4: Found the most tags the fastest. This setting seemed to be
just the right balance of "secure enough" while not impacting
communication speed. It could always find all findable tags if that was
the intent, the likelihood of miscommunicated inventory status seemed
very small.
Miller-8: Could always find all tags, if the time was taken, but not as
fast as with Miller-4. This was probably because as it takes longer to
talk to a tag, it is more likely that it is disturbed by other radio sources.
In this test, therefore, this setting seems to be more security then what
is needed.
Q
The Q value is another setting where the name says absolutely nothing,
and a simple explanation is hard to come by. The easiest way to say it
is that Q tells the reader roughly how many tags we expect to be in the
reading field at the same time. The Q value can be set from one to 15
in Nordic ID products, and there is an AUTO setting. So what does it
actually control?
Imagine that we know we have 5 tags in front of us that we wish to
read, and we know this before starting the read. There is then no sense
in taking the time to listen for hundreds of answers. The Q value says
how long we should listen for answers from tags. An inventory round
goes like this in simplified terms:
1.Reader pumps out RF power and at the same time commands the
Inventory to start. It communicates the number of timeslots available in
which to answer to the tags.2. Reader keeps transmitting power and
starts listening for answers.3. Tags transmit on a random timeslot within
the number of timeslots available.4. If two tags transmit at the same
time a collision occurs, the reader detects this. No other useful info is
communicated when a collision occurs.
So as you can see from this way of operating, in our case with 5 tags
on the table, something like 8 to 16 timeslots may be sensible. The
chance of reading all tags in any single pass is pretty good with 8, while
not listening for that many tags that we know cannot be there. So we
would probably get all tags in two inventory rounds. The corresponding
Q value to 4 timeslots is 2, for 8 timeslots it is 3. Q relates to the
number of timeslots like this: Timeslots equals 2 to the power of Q.
Here are some timeslots and their corresponding Q values:
2 timeslots - Q=1
4 timeslots - Q=2
8 timeslots - Q=3
16 timeslots - Q=4
128 timeslots - Q=7
256 timeslots - Q=8
512 timeslots - Q=9
Nordic ID NUR based RFID readers also have an AUTO Q setting. This
senses the number of collisions during an inventory pass to determine if
the Q value should be raised or lowered. We have so far never found a
real world case where a fixed Q value works better than the AUTO Q
setting. Always use AUTO Q is my recommendation.
ROUNDS
The rounds value sets how many inventory rounds are done before the
results are returned to the host application. While this is controllable, we
have found that rounds 1 and Auto Q are the best settings for
continuous inventory type applications. Keep in mind that even though
rounds are set to one and the RFID module only does one inventory
round, the higher level application issues the command back to back to
achieve continuous inventory. Tags that were found in the last round
remain silent because we use Session 2 or 3. All that can be found will
be found with these settings. Also note that using a high Q value
combined with a high rounds value will take a long time to perform.
There will be lots of timeslots to listen to, and it will be repeated several
times. In these cases regulatory constraints will cut off the reading
session when the maximum on-air time is reached for the region in
question.
THE WINNING LINE
For this test, where we have lots of tags in close proximity, the best
performing reader setup is:
TX Power: 500 mW
TX Modulation: PR-ASK (if supported by the tags)
RX Decoding: Miller-4
Session: 2 or 3, no difference in performance between the
Rounds: 1
Q: Auto
This concludes part one of this article. Hopefully you, like I, now feel
that you now have an idea about what you are asking the RFID module
to do when you tweak these settings. And should you find yourself in a
situation where you are expected to inventory tens of thousands of
pieces of unmentionables, you can at least do so with the confidence
that your Nordic ID Merlin CD is configured optimally. In the next part of
this article we'll take a brief look at how the user impacts performance.
PART2: HIGH PERFORMANCE HUMANS
In part one of this article we had a look at how the Nordic ID Merlin
should be configured when reading tags in a very dense configuration,
such as densely racked individually tagged clothing articles. In this part
we'll look at how much of a difference the user can make in reading
performance. The test setup is the same as in part one.
The evaluation criteria for the "best" reading style are speed and
accuracy. Our initial assumption was that these are conflicting goals;
better accuracy always means slower performance. Typically reading is
done so that the user scans a particular area until the unit stops
beeping, and then you move to a new area. This style of reading is what
we call a precise scan, since that is what the user is aiming for. We
wanted to find out if this is a good way to read for speed, accuracy or
both. Or is there a different way to read that yields better results?
Speed reading was done so that the reading session is stopped when
no new tags are found for about a second. Accuracy reading was done
so that the reading session is stopped when no new tags are found for
about 10 seconds. Speed reading also differs in that it was done in two
passes, first the entire area of interest is scanned at a rate of about
meters per second. Then we do the entire area again to find tags not
found during the first pass. Precise reading attempts to find all tags
during the first pass. All testing was done with the settings mentioned
above.
Comparing reading styles

While the chart shows only four results, they are consistently repeatable.
Surprisingly in this test setup, you are not more accurate when you try
to be. The accuracy is the same when trying to be as fast as possible.
Next we investigated differences in distance. Is it better to read from a
distance and a bit slower, or really close and go faster?
Distance test, reading from 30 cm (1 foot) vs reading from 10 cm (4
inches) and under.
These results are three samples of the two different reading styles. The
curves are consistent over several tests, so the results are a fairly
reliable indicator that close and fast is the way to go in this dense tag
case. There was no need to listen to the scanning sound, the Merlin
read tags pretty much as fast as we were able to move ( to 1 meters
per second).
With this in mind, we performed several logged scans of the roughly two
thousand tags in our test. Over the following week several persons were
conscripted to do a scan for science. When the person had no prior
experience of RFID inventory, we used these logged results as our
"untrained" comparison. Those unfamiliar with this very dense setup, but
familiar with RFID inventory in general are recognizable by the fact that
their scan curve has the correct shape, although they are slower than
our "trained" result (Untrained 1 & 2). The results were:
Trained 1 - 1992 tags in 36 seconds
Untrained 1 - 1880 tags in 36 seconds
5 COMMENTS ON RFID READING PERFORMANCE
This entry was written by Mirva Saarijrvi, posted on 15 December 2011 Bookmark the permalink. You can post a
comment.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
Regardless of what the actual time to scan is, the shape of the "unique
tags found" curve shows if your style of scanning is good or not. A good
scanning style should use 50% of the time to find 90% of the tags, and
the other 50% to find the remaining 10%. A curve shaped like this
means the reader is working close to its maximum capabilities. In the
cases where the curve does not maintain the same slope until 90% is
reached, the user is the limiting factor. This style of scanning takes the
most advantage from the previously mentioned session system.
Which brings us to the second interesting point, which is that taking your
time is not always more accurate. The reason for this is that if you are
too slow then the session system no longer helps you as much as it
can. Tags start reverting back to their initial state and will again respond
to an inventory query, thus blocking more faint tags.
This was a rather specific test, so how do these results apply when the
setup varies? The following variations will have the following impacts:
- LOTS MORE TAGS:
When the amount of tags is large enough so that you cannot feasibly
scan them all before the Session 2 or 3 flag in the tag reverts back to
its initial position, your results will begin to differ. The reader will start
finding tags it has already read, which may prevent finding fainter and
harder to read tags you have not yet found. If possible, try to partition
your tags into 30 second batches. Scan whatever area or partition you
can scan in 30 seconds completely, and then move on to the next
partition. This will give you the most benefit of the session system.
- LESS TAG DENSITY:
If your tags have a separation of centimeters to tens of centimeters the
close and fast reading style is no longer the best one. That style is
needed to get RF power to closely packed tags. The best reading style
will probably be to read further away, a foot or more depending on how
sparsely your tags are situated.
THERE WAS PAIN, FINGERS CROSSED FOR GAIN
This concludes the second part of this article. I hope our experiments
with the settings and reading style will help you should you face a
similar situation. In the beginning of part one I mentioned that I started
out being unfamiliar with Nordic ID's RFID products, as my
responsibilities had been elsewhere. Now I have a fairly good
understanding of what happens under the hood, and I hope I have been
able to communicate some of that understanding to you.
J essica Sil
Posted 15 December 2011 at 16:34:23
I believe the tags used in the test scenario were those used by Wal-Mart in their current
RFID adoption for clothes.
J ussi Nummela
Thanks Viktor, great job and text!
J ust some comments on the sessions chapter, which came into my mind:
I don't remember that I would have never run into a tag which has infinite persistence time
with session 0 when in the RF field. I may be wrong but I would say that it's quite rare?
(and as you mentioned, manufacturers may be able to adjust it)
On the other hand I know that in certain circumstances the off-field persistence time for
S2/S3 may be very long, even close to one hour! (again as you said, around 30-60 s is
probably the most common)
Interesting text, as said!
leonard
Thanks for sharing your experience here.It's really a good teaching text for me.
Viktor Candolin
J ussi:
The persistence of the tags when in the field was something we looked into ourselves as
well. The ISO18000-6c spec actually says it is indefinite, which means undefined, not
infinite. So I have understood it as being completely up to the tag manufacturer.
As you said, S2 & S3 can stay inventoried for a really long time. I think the more tags you
have close together, the longer you would want the session persistence to be.
Perhaps a good topic for a next article is the session persistence of different tags?
Leonard:
You are very welcome!
Best regards,
Viktor
Alvaro J . Ruiz
Posted 20 J anuary 2013 at 04:34:02
Excellent approach and simple explanation of the reading, testing support the channel and
RFID value added resellers could perform in order to test RFID in any environment not only
retail.
Thanks Viktor.
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