884
2, APRIL 2018
Redundant Reader Elimination in Large-Scale
Distributed RFID Networks
Meng Ma , Member, IEEE, Ping Wang, Senior Member, IEEE, and Chao-Hsien Chu
Abstract—Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a key
enabling technology for large-scale Internet of Things (IoT). Its
deployment and management impact significantly on the oper-
ational effectiveness and scalability of IoT. Redundant reader
elimination is of great importance to reduce the system’s over-
head and prolong the lifetime of RFID networks. It helps
to reduce unnecessary reader-tag interactions and the cost of
collision avoidance algorithm in distributed data collection of
RFID network. In large-scale distributed RFID networks, one
of the most challenging tasks for redundant reader elimina-
tion is to improve the performance of distributed algorithms.
This paper proposes a novel distributed redundant reader elim-
ination algorithm based on the threshold selection process,
named threshold selection algorithm (TSA), for RFID networks.
TSA algorithm selects effective reader iteratively based on the
threshold sequence determined by expected tag coverage. This
paper also introduces an optimization mechanism into TSA based
on detected movement, named TSA with movement detection
algorithm. By preliminary simulation, we determine the sug-
gested parameter of linear multiplier for TSA. Our experiments
show that TSA algorithm can provide 30%–60% better per-
formance than other major distributed algorithms and also
multiphase schemes in both dense and sparse environments.
The overhead of TSA algorithm is 30%–50% lower than other
selected algorithms, especially in tag-write operations.
Index Terms—Internet of Things (IoT), optimal tag cover-
age, radio frequency identification (RFID), reader redundancy,
redundant reader elimination, threshold selection.
I. I NTRODUCTION
ADIO frequency identification (RFID), an emerging
R technology for automatic object identification and track-
ing through radio frequency [1], [2], is a key enabling
technology for the Internet of Things (IoT) [3]. Due to its cost-
effectiveness and easy-deployment, RFID has been widely
Manuscript received October 18, 2016; revised December 29, 2017;
accepted February 4, 2018. Date of publication February 13, 2018; date of
current version April 10, 2018. This work was supported in part by the
National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant
2017YFB1200700, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China under Grant 61701007, and in part by the China Post-Doctoral Science
Foundation under Grant 2016M600865. (Corresponding author: Ping Wang.)
M. Ma is with the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science,
Peking University, Beijing 100871, China (e-mail: mameng@pku.edu.cn).
P. Wang is with the National Engineering Research Center for Software
Engineering, the School of Software and Microelectronics, Peking University,
and the Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies
(Peking University), Ministry of Education, Beijing 100871, China (e-mail:
pwang@pku.edu.cn).
C.-H. Chu is with the College of Information Sciences and Technology,
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 USA (e-mail:
chu@ist.psu.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2018.2805710
2327-4662 c 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 5, NO.
used in industry [4], healthcare [5], transportation [6], etc.
An RFID system usually includes three components: 1) tags;
2) readers; and 3) software [7]. Typically, a tag is composed of
an integrated circuit for data storage and an antenna for signal
communications [8]. Reader emits signals to read and write
information onto the tag within its interrogation range [9]. For
instance, in supply chain management, each item is attached
with a unique identifier RFID tag to be traced. When receiv-
ing the RFID reader’s signal, tag transmits its existence and
embedded information to the querying reader. Through this
interrogation, the system can track the location and move-
ment of a tagged item [10]. With the widespread deployment
of large-scale RFID networks, computational and energy effi-
ciency have become important issues. Owing to the limited
interrogation range of RFID reader, it usually requires read-
ers and tags deployed in higher density in order to obtain an
acceptable overall tag coverage rate. Inevitably, in large-scale
RFID networks, multiple overlapping readers and tags, which
sharing the same working environment, cause the collision
problems [11].
There are two kinds of collision: 1) tag collision and
2) reader collision [12]. Tag collision happens when multi-
ple tags located in the interrogation range of the same reader.
See Fig. 1(a). Without any coordination among the reader
and these tags, the responses from the tags can collide, in
which case the responses will become illegible to the reader.
Protocols, such as framed Aloha [13] or tree-splitting [14] are
designed to schedule the activities of tags to avoid such colli-
sion. Another kind of problem, reader collision, happens when
a reader locates in the interference region of another reader, or
multiple readers attempt to communicate with the same tags
simultaneously. For example, in Fig. 1(b), a reader transmits
a signal that interferes with the operation of another reader,
thus preventing the latter from communicating with tags in its
interrogation zone. In this case, we need to carefully sched-
ule the activation of different readers. As Fig. 1(c) shows,
reader collision also occurs when one tag is located in the
interrogation zones of two or more readers and more than
one reader attempts to communicate with that tag simultane-
ously. There are many reader collision avoidance protocols
proposed, e.g., Colorwave [15] and RASPberry [16], to man-
age communications between the RFID readers and tags to
avoid such collisions.
In large-scale RFID networks, some readers can be redun-
dant. Take Fig. 1(c) as an example, the central reader in
this environment is the best choice to cover all the tags
with minimal readers. Therefore, the rest of the readers
MA et al.: REDUNDANT READER ELIMINATION IN LARGE-SCALE DISTRIBUTED RFID NETWORKS
(a)
Fig. 1. Example of collisions in an RFID system. (a) Tag collision: three tags respond to the same reader simultaneously. (b) Reader collision: response
from tag to reader is interfered by another reader. (c) Reader collision in more complex environment: multiple readers attempt to communicate with the same
tags [16].
are considered redundant. The existence of redundant read-
ers leads to unnecessary power consumption and tag/reader
collisions [17]. Moreover, they will produce redundant data,
which consumes more computational resources for data clean-
ing or aggregation in data management procedures. To address
this issue, the concept of redundant reader elimination [18] is
proposed, aiming to detect and deactivate redundant readers in
RFID systems. In this manner, it helps to reduce unnecessary
reader-tag interactions, power consumption, and the cost of
collision avoidance algorithms [18]. Therefore, efficient algo-
rithms for detecting and minimizing redundant readers are of
great importance to develop an efficient RFID network.
In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm, named thresh-
old selection algorithm (TSA), based on the threshold selection
process, to eliminate redundant readers in large-scale dis-
tributed RFID networks. It selects effective reader iteratively
based on the threshold sequence determined by the expected
tag coverage. The main contributions of this paper are twofold:
first, TSA algorithm outperforms other distributed algorithms
as its performance achieves 90% of the GREEDY benchmark
algorithm, with much lower overhead. Second, we propose an
optimization approach based on movement detection (MD),
exploit the mobility nature of RFID networks, which further
improves the efficiency of TSA.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: related
works are summarized in Section II. Section III elaborates the
algorithmic details and Section IV presents our optimization
mechanism. In Sections V and VI, we conduct preliminary
experiments to determine the suggested parameters of TSA
and then evaluate the algorithm’s performance and cost. This
paper is concluded and the future works are discussed in
Section VII.
II. R ELATED W ORKS
The redundant reader elimination problem, also known
as optimal tag coverage problem [19], was first introduced
in [18]. The problem aims to find the minimum cardinality
subset of readers which covering all the tags in a given RFID
network [18]. Proposed solutions can be classified into three
categories: 1) centralized; 2) distributed; and 3) hybrid [20].
Centralized algorithms utilize a central controller that holds
all the readers’ information in the system. GREEDY [19] is
885
(b) (c)
the first proposed centralized algorithm, in which the algo-
rithm utilizes central controller to select reader with the highest
tag coverage, deactivates it and repeats until all the read-
ers’ coverage are zero or no active reader remained in the
network. Another centralized algorithm, NTE [21], defined
a new reader weighting approach by taking advantage of inter-
reader communications. Although the number of read-tag and
write-tag operations can be greatly reduced when inter-reader
communication is possible, this network topology requires
special hardware features and the central controller that is
usually impractical for real applications. In addition, in NTE
algorithm, the neighboring relation defined based on reader
communication is inaccurate, because two adjacent readers
may not cover the same tag simultaneously.
Distributed algorithms provide a greedy heuristic approxi-
mation solution for redundant reader elimination problem [18].
It is decentralized without the needs of iterations, thus having
the advantages of simplified implementation and low algo-
rithm overhead. The first proposed distributed algorithm is
RRE [18], in which each tag is marked with a data record indi-
cating the reader with highest tag-coverage in its vicinity and
the reader which issues the highest count for a tag will hold
it locally. A reader holding no tag will be processed as redun-
dant. LEO algorithm [22] attempted to improve RRE in its
cost and efficiency by making the first reader to query the tag
as its holder. A two-phase scheme was introduced to achieve
a better algorithmic performance in [23] and [24]. Another
improved algorithm, named DRRE [25], exploited the con-
cept of neighboring reader density to evaluate reader’s priority.
Hsu et al. [26] proposed a method based on overlap-aware
technique for eliminating redundant readers. A middleware-
based system topology and corresponding algorithm, named
MRRE, was proposed in [27]. To improve the performance of
distributed algorithms with more accurate weighting approach,
NCD algorithm was designed [20], which accurately defined
the concept of neighboring reader and introduced a new
weighting approach based on neighboring coverage density.
Like GREEDY algorithm, CBA algorithm used a decentral-
ized strategy to repeatedly select reader if its tag coverage
equals to 1 [28]. However, like centralized algorithms, a clear
deficiency of CBA is its high overhead because it requires
coverage update after each iteration. There are other studies
on distributed algorithms in [29]–[31].
886
The hybrid algorithm takes advantages of both centralized
and distributed algorithms. For example, a hybrid redundant
reader elimination technique based on the weighting approach
associated with reader’s neighbor and coverage was presented
in [32], which designs a load factor to its cost function.
LE [11] is another hybrid algorithm which combines LEO and
the work in [17] based on a central controller.
The main advantage of centralized algorithms is its detec-
tion capability because it detects redundant readers based on
global information. However, centralized algorithms are usu-
ally impractical to implement because it requires a centralized
topology for RFID networks. Furthermore, its greedy iter-
ation consumes high overheads; that is, excessive coverage
computations between readers and tags. Nonetheless, cen-
tralized algorithm is stable and of good performance which
makes it suitable as a simulation benchmark. In contrast, the
main advantage of distributed algorithms roots in its greatly
reduced algorithm complexity. However, according to the pre-
vious studies, they can only achieve 60% to 70% of detection
capability as compared to GREEDY algorithm, even though
the weighting approaches for readers are being continuously
improving [20]. Therefore, one of the most important chal-
lenges for redundant reader elimination is to improve the
performance of distributed algorithms so as to obtain an
approximate capability of centralized algorithms. This paper
proposes a novel distributed redundant reader elimination
algorithm to achieve this goal.
III. P ROPOSED A LGORITHM
In this section, we start with preliminary definitions and
assumptions in redundant reader elimination problem and
then elaborate the details of our proposed algorithmic. An
example is shown to demonstrate the algorithm process and
intermediate results of the proposed TSA algorithm.
A. Threshold Selection Algorithm
Let S = {P, R, T} denote an RFID system, where P is
the coverage space, R represents the set of readers, and T
is the set of tags. We use Coverage(R, T) to denote the tag
coverage of this system. Hence, a redundant reader set R
is a subset of the original reader set R, where R ⊆ R and
Coverage(R, T) = Coverage(R − R , T). Therefore, the redun-
dant reader elimination problem for S = {P, R, T} is to find
a redundant reader set R ⊆ R of S, for any other redundant
reader set R , |R | ≥ |R | is satisfied.
Our discussion is under the following assumptions: first,
the tags are passive with limited memory. Second, they
are writable to store few types and amount of data. We
assume that initial tag collision and reader collision avoidance
algorithms [19] has been previously introduced and executed
in reader-tag interactions. We also assume that the amount
of readers and tags in the RFID system are already known.
These assumptions are common and reasonable for real RFID
systems.
As the centralized algorithms search the reader with the
largest tag coverage iteratively. Inevitably, we need to update
all the readers’ weights in each iteration. For instance,
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 5, NO. 2, APRIL 2018
although the CBA algorithm selects reader with the lowest
tag coverage so that it can get rid of a central controller,
it still requires massive computations to update the read-
ers’ weight because the number of iterations are not limited.
Therefore, redundant iteration overhead is the most critical
problem for similar algorithms. To address this issue, we
propose a novel distributed redundant reader elimination algo-
rithm, named TSA. TSA is based on the motivation that it
can have a similar effect of centralized algorithm and signif-
icantly reduces the iteration overhead if we limit the holder
selection process in a limited number of times. In view of
the fact that this selection criterion should be proportional
to every reader’s tag coverage, we select readers as holder
based on their expected coverage rate. If we assume that read-
ers and tags are evenly distributed in the system space, each
reader’s tag coverage is expected to be the ratio of tag number
and reader number accordingly. Thus, we define the selection
threshold sequence as follows.
Definition 1 (Selection Threshold): Given an RFID sys-
tem, S = {P, R, T}, the system’s selection threshold is an
arithmetic descending sequence ST = (τ (|T|/|R|), ([n −
1]/n)τ (|T|/|R|), . . . , (1/n)τ (|T|/|R|), 0) where n is the num-
ber of algorithm iterations and τ is a linear multiplier.
TSA is a distributed approximation algorithm based on
the selection threshold derived from the average probability
reader and tag distributions in an RFID system. It selects the
reader which exceeds the threshold in sequence as the holder
of its covered tags until the last threshold. The process of
TSA algorithm can be described in four steps.
Step 1: Calculate the selection threshold ST =
(τ (|T|/|R|), ([n − 1]/n)τ (|T|/|R|), . . . , (1/n)τ (|T|/|R|), 0)
according to the system parameters |R| and |T|.
Step 2: Query the covered vicinity for each reader Ri ∈ R
to calculate its tag coverage Coverage(Ri ).
Step 3: If Coverage(Ri ) exceeds the corresponding threshold
STi , Ri is selected as the holder of its covered tags if the tag
has no holder. If this is not the last iteration, repeats steps 2
and 3.
Step 4: Each reader contacts its covered tags and queries
their holder. A reader that has not been selected as holder by
any tag is marked as redundant and deactivated.
Fig. 2 compares the interaction flow of TSA and GREEDY
algorithms. Note that the GREEDY algorithm is centralized
with three parties including controller, reader, and tag. con-
troller selects reader with the highest tag coverage, deactivates
it and repeats the same procedure until all the readers’ cover-
age is zero or there is no active reader remains in the network.
Given an RFID system S = {P, R, T}, the number of iterations
of centralized algorithm increases with the increase of |R |. In
each round of iteration, the algorithm requires read and write
interactions with RFID tags. Obviously, centralized algorithms
are of high algorithmic complexity. Distributed algorithm is
decentralized without the needs of iterations. As we can see,
TSA algorithm limits the iteration and processing procedures
within limited rounds, thus having the advantages of sim-
ple implementation and low algorithmic overhead. Meanwhile,
a central controller is not necessary for distributed algorithms,
making the algorithm suitable for more hardware and network
MA et al.: REDUNDANT READER ELIMINATION IN LARGE-SCALE DISTRIBUTED RFID NETWORKS 887

TABLE I
C OMPLEXITY OF M AJOR R EDUNDANT R EADER
E LIMINATION A LGORITHMS

(a)
from the tags, so that the number of tag-read operation is not
limited.
Theorem 2: TSA algorithm is equivalent to the LEO
algorithm when τ = 0 or n = 0.
Proof: When the linear multiplier τ = 0, the selection
threshold of TSA algorithm satisfies STi = 0, 0 < i < n.
Consequently, a tag will be selected by the first reader’s query.
According to the details of LEO algorithm [22], it directly
selects the first reader which queries the tag as its holder.
Therefore, TSA algorithm is equivalent to LEO. Similarly,
when the step of TSA is 0, the selection threshold sequence
(b) ST = (0). The TSA algorithm is also equivalent to LEO.
Theorem 3: TSA algorithm is safe as it does not affect the
Fig. 2. Interaction flow of (a) TSA and (b) GREEDY algorithms.
original system tag coverage rate.
Proof: Every selection threshold sequence of TSA algo-
Algorithm 1 TSA Algorithm rithm satisfies STn = 0. Thus, every originally covered tag
01: TSA(S, τ, n) will be selected by at least one reader in the last step of
02: ST = (τ |T| n−1 |T| 1 |T|
|R| , n τ |R| , . . . , n τ |R| , 0)
TSA. Consequently, TSA algorithm is safe.
03: for i = 0 to n − 1 Theorem 4: If the number of time frames per epoch is set
04: for each Ri ∈ R to the number of readers, ψ, and the number of tags is θ ,
05: Coverage(Ri ) = number of covered tags without holder
then the complexity of the total number of epochs in a n-steps
06: if Coverage(Ri ) > ST i
07: Write Ri as holder for covered tags without holder TSA algorithm is Tn−TSA = O(nθ ).
08: end Proof: Because estimating the number of tags covered by
09: end a reader can be done in a constant time [33], every iteration
10: for each Ri ∈ R of TSA has the same complexity as the LEO algorithm, which
11: for each tag covered by Ri
is O(θ ) [20]. Therefore, the complexity of TSA algorithm is
12: if holder == IDi then Ri is not redundant
13: end Tn−TSA = O(nθ ).
14: end Based on our previous work in [20], we compare the com-
15: return S plexity of major redundant reader elimination algorithms with
TSA in Table I. As the centralized algorithm requires a large
amount of iteration computations, GREEDY and NTE have the
conditions. For the sake of clarity, we summarize the pseudo highest algorithmic complexity. Compared to other distributed
code for TSA in Algorithm 1. algorithms, LEO has the minimal algorithmic complexity as
In order to conduct complexity analysis on TSA algorithm, it uses a simplified holder selection approach. Owing to its
we first prove that it has the following properties. holder selection approach, CBA has the highest algorithmic
Theorem 1: The maximum number of tag-write operations complexity in distributed algorithms. According to Theorem 4,
of TSA algorithm equals the number of covered tags in the TSA algorithm has an algorithmic complexity of constant
system. level. The complexity of TSA algorithm is obviously lower
Proof: In TSA algorithm, if a tag is not covered by any than the other distributed algorithms, so that TSA can reduce
reader, it will not be written by any reader in the holder selec- the reader-tag interactions, especially the number of tag-write
tion. If the tag is covered by a reader, it will not be written operations as much higher signal power level is required when
for holder selection when the tag already has a holder accord- writing.
ing to the algorithm (see Algorithm 1, line 7). Thus, each
tag will only be written once in holder selection. Accordingly, B. Running Example
the maximum number of tag-write operations in TSA algo- In this section, we show an example to demonstrate the
rithm is the number of covered tags in the system. However, in algorithmic process of TSA. We set TSA algorithm parame-
each iteration readers need to query for the holder information ters τ and n as τ = 2.00 and n = 3, choose the environment
888 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 5, NO. 2, APRIL 2018

TABLE II
R ESULTS OF S TEP 1

TABLE III
R ESULTS OF S TEP 3

Fig. 3. Step 1 of running example.

TABLE IV
R ESULTS OF S TEP 4

parameter |T| = 5 and |R| = 5. The deployment of readers and

tags in this RFID system is depicted in Fig. 3. According to
Definition 1, the selection threshold sequence is threshold =
(2.00, 1.33, 0.67, 0.00). In the first step, each reader queries its
covered vicinity to calculate the number of tags without holder
in its coverage range. Details of the reader coverage are sum-
marized in Table II. Because of the threshold = 2.00, R2 is
selected to write it as the holder of its covered tags, as the cov-
erage of R2 exceeds the step threshold. Therefore, in this step,
R2 is the holder of T1, T2, and T4. In the second step, the
coverage condition of tags is updated but none of their cover-
age exceeds the threshold of 1.33, thus, no reader is selected
in this step. In the third step, the threshold is 0.67. As we
can see in Table III and Fig. 4, the coverage of R3, R4, and
R5 exceeds the threshold so that they will write themselves
as holder to their covered tags. However, during this process,
different reader collision avoidance schemes result in different
writing sequences. Because we have already assumed that ini-
tial reader collision avoidance algorithm has been previously
executed, we assume that the results of RCA algorithm is the
writing order R3 → R4 → R5. Therefore, R3 and R4 write
themselves as the holder into T3 and T5, respectively. When
R5 tries to write holder into T3, the tag has been written by
R3 previously so that R5 will not be selected in this step.
In the last step, the coverage details of remained R1 and R5
are given in Table IV. Because there is no tag without holder
remained in the system (See Fig. 5), R1 and R5 will not be
chosen as holder by any available tag. Consequently, R1 and
R5 are redundant readers and can be safely deactivated.
IV. O PTIMIZATION W ITH M OVEMENT D ETECTION
In large-scale RFID applications, such as supply chain,
tagged items usually change their location or status in group,
which is called bulky movement. This feature results in the
environmental change occurs mainly by a partially, bulky tag
movement in an RFID system. When conducting redundant
Fig. 4. Step 3 of running example.
Fig. 5. Step 4 of running example.
reader elimination in this situation, duplicate calculation and
holder-choose will be made for only part of the unchanged
tags, because the weight of readers does not change as
comparing with the last time of redundant reader elimi-
nation. Therefore, it is important to consider the partially
bulky movements and design an optimization mechanism for
TSA algorithm to ignore the unchanged tags and readers. As
such, this section first defines the concept of tag movement
and proves related theorem as follows.
Definition 2 (Tag Movement): Given an RFID system,
S = {P, R, T}, if a tag’s position in P is unchanged in time
t compared to time t, the tag is denoted as unchanged in t
to t, if not, then the tag is changed in t to t. For a reader
Ri ∈ R, if all the tags covered by Ri are unchanged, the reader
is denoted as unchanged, otherwise the reader is changed.
Theorem 5: If a reader subset R ⊆ R and its covered tag
set T  ⊆ T are unchanged in t to t, the solution of distributed
redundant reader algorithm is unchanged in the corresponding
system space P ⊆ P.
Proof: Because R and its covered tag set T  are
unchanged, there exists S = {P , R , T  } as a subsystem of
S. According to Definition 2, S has no change in t to t.
MA et al.: REDUNDANT READER ELIMINATION IN LARGE-SCALE DISTRIBUTED RFID NETWORKS
Algorithm 2 TSAMD Algorithm
01: TSAMD(S, τ, n)
02: ST = (τ |T| n−1 |T| 1 |T|
|R| , n τ |R| , . . . , n τ |R| , 0)
03: for i = 0 to n − 1
04: for each Ri ∈ R, detect and mark the change condition of Ri
05: if changed
06: Coverage(Ri ) = number of covered tags without holder
07: if Coverage(Ri ) > ST i
08: Write Ri as the holder for covered tags without holder
09: end
10: end
11: for each Ri ∈ R
12: for each tag covered by Ri
13: if holder == IDi then Ri is not redundant reader
14: end
15: end
16: return S
Therefore, the solution of the distributed redundant reader
algorithm for S is the same as in t and t.
According to Theorem 5, we propose an optimization algo-
rithm based on the MD for TSA algorithm, namely TSA with
MD (TSAMD). This optimized algorithm is an extension of
TSA, which can be described in the following steps.
Step 1: Calculate the selection threshold ST =
(τ (|T|/|R|), ([n − 1]/n)τ (|T|/|R|), . . . , (1/n)τ (|T|/|R|), 0)
according to the system parameters |R| and |T|.
Step 2: Query the covered vicinity for each reader Ri ∈ R to
calculate Coverage(Ri ). Compare the current tag coverage of
each reader’s last detection. If changed, the reader updates the
recorded value, clear its covered tag’s holder and proceed to
the following steps. If the coverage has not been changed, the
reader marks itself as unchanged and its covered tag’s holder
is kept as recorded in the last detection.
Step 3: If Coverage(Ri ) exceeds the corresponding threshold
STi , it is selected as the holder of the covered tags if the tag
has no holder. If this is not the last step, repeats steps 2 and 3.
Step 4: Each reader contacts its covered tags and queries
their holder. A reader that has not been selected by any tag as
holder is redundant.
Differing from TSA algorithm, TSAMD detects the move-
ment of covered tags to determine whether a recalculation of
weight is needed. If there is no movement happen, write-to-
tag operation will be conserved which is essential for overhead
reduction. The pseudo code for TSAMD algorithm is shown
in Algorithm 2.
Note that TSAMD is an approximate algorithm. It estimates
the change of reader’s characteristics according to its tag cov-
erage. This is a tradeoff between accuracy and algorithmic
complexity. We prove the following theorem for TSAMD.
Theorem 6: TSAMD algorithm is safe.
Proof: For each tag Ti ∈ T in the system S = {P, R, T},
R denotes the set of reader which covers Ti . If R = ∅ and
∃Ri ∈ R that Ri is changed, Ri will recalculate its coverage and
compare it with the threshold. According to Theorem 2, when
the step of TSA is 0, the selection threshold of TSA algorithm
satisfies STn = 0. Consequently, a tag will be selected by the
first reader’s query and Ti will certainly select one reader from
R as its holder. If ∀Ri ∈ R satisfies that Ri is unchanged, then
889
Ti will not change its holder recorded in the last detection.
Otherwise, if R = ∅, that means Ti is not covered by any
reader. Apparently, Ti will not affect the system tag coverage
rate.
V. E XPERIMENTAL D ESIGN
In this section, we present our simulation environment and
discuss the experiments designed to evaluate the proposed
algorithm.
A. Simulation Environment
We implement an RFID system simulator for experiments
and evaluation. This simulator uses area size, number of
reader, number of tag, and reader radius as parameters to
generate randomly distributed RFID networks. In our simu-
lation, we assume that the number of readers and tags in the
RFID systems are known. We also assume that collision avoid-
ance algorithms have been previously executed in reader-tag
interactions to avoid collisions. Two system environment den-
sities, dense and sparse, are deployed for random evaluations.
In the dense environment, we randomly place 100 readers into
a testing domain of 50 × 50 and the number of tags increases
from 500 to 4000. The interrogation radius is set to 5. In the
sparse network, we randomly place 2000 readers in the testing
domain of 250 × 250 and the number of tags increases from
5000 to 20000. The interrogation radius is also set to 5.
Three types of distribution: 1) uniform distribution (UD);
2) Gaussian distribution (GD); and 3) partition distribu-
tion (PD), are used to reflect different system characteristics.
In UD, the location for each reader and tag is randomly
generated subject to the UD. Likewise, GD means the ran-
domly generated location follows the GD. In PD, the testing
domain is first divided into several independent subdomain
and each of them is subject to independent GD. Furthermore,
we implement two additional simulation environments from
real applications—RFID-enabled warehouse and hospital. In
warehouse scenario, each product is tagged with an RFID tag
and RFID reader is used to monitor the inventory. In hospi-
tal scenario, RFID technology is used to manage patients and
medical equipment. These two simulation environments are
implemented according to how readers and tags are deployed
in real applications.
B. Benchmarks and Metrics
The experiment aims to compare the relative performance
of TSA algorithm with selected algorithms. GREEDY [19]
algorithm is implemented as the benchmark and RRE [18],
LEO [22], DRRE [25], NCD [20] algorithms are implemented
for comparison. These algorithms are selected for the fol-
lowing reasons: GREEDY algorithm has the best and most
stable performance. Therefore, we use GREEDY as the basis
for measurement and comparison of algorithmic performance.
RRE algorithm is known for its relative stable performance
and low overhead. LEO algorithm has the simplest imple-
mentation and lowest overhead among the selected algorithms.
DRRE is selected to examine the effect of multiphase scheme.
890 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 5, NO. 2, APRIL 2018

A new reader weighting approach is proposed in NCD algo-

rithm and it improves the performance of NCD algorithm.
It is proved that NCD has better performance than RRE
and LEO algorithms [20]. Note that the CBA [28], NTE [21],
and LE [11] algorithms are not selected for comparison.
Although CBA is a distributed algorithm, it has excessively
high algorithmic complexity, which makes it impractical for
implementation. The NTE and LE algorithms are centralized
and hybrid so that they both require a central controller, which
is also impractical in distributed RFID application scenarios.
The relative performance of these algorithms are evaluated Fig. 6. Performance of different values of τ in dense environment.
according to two metrics: 1) detection accuracy and 2) relative
detection accuracy (RDA) as defined below.
Definition 3 (Detection Accuracy): The detection accuracy
of a redundant reader elimination algorithm is defined as the
ratio of the number of detected redundant reader divided by
the number of actually existing redundant readers.
Definition 4 (RDA): The RDA of a redundant reader elimi-
nation algorithm A to algorithm B is the ratio of the detected
redundant reader number by algorithm A to algorithm B.
As previously proved, the redundant reader elimination
problem is NP-hard [18]. In other words, it is hard to obtain
the ground truth of the actually existing redundant readers,
Fig. 7. Performance of different values of τ in sparse environment.
especially in the large-scale RFID system. As a result, it is
impractical to measure the performance of selected algorithms
using Definition 3. According to [20], in most scenarios, the The third experiment is designed to verify the effectiveness
GREEDY algorithm has the best performance and stability of TSAMD algorithm and compare it to NCDMD algorithm
among the selected algorithms. Alternatively, in this paper, we proposed in [20]. We compare the number of tag-read and tag-
use the RDA to GREEDY algorithm as the basis for measure- write operations with six rounds of test using real application
ment and comparison of algorithmic performance. Besides, the environment of RFID warehouse (500 tags in use). In this pro-
use of different redundant reader elimination algorithms does cess, we randomly choose a range of tagged products moving
not affect the time cost and energy cost for the same reader-tag to another location. The algorithm is implemented with TSA in
operations. Hence, for the sake of clarity, we use the number the first round and then TSAMD for the remaining rounds of
of tag-read and tag-write operations to evaluate the cost of test.
algorithms. In the last experiment, we examine the performance of
different multiphase schemes and compare them to TSA algo-
rithm. We choose RRE, LEO+RRE, LEO+RRE+DRRE,
C. Experimental Design and LEO+RRE+DRRE+NCD for one, two, three, and four-
phase algorithms, respectively. The experiment is conducted
In the first experiment, we devote to find the suggested in sparse testing environment (using UD).
parameters of TSA algorithm. We choose 3-step, 5-step, All experimental results are averaged over twenty different
7-step, and 9-step of TSA (denoted as 3-TSA, 5-TSA, 7-TSA, tests generated using distinct random seeds. The simulator was
and 9-TSA, respectively) to examine their RDA to GREEDY coded in C programming language and ran in a workstation
in uniform distributed environments, with the parameter τ with an Intel Xeon CPU 2.4 GHz, 16 GB RAM running 64 bit
increasing from 0.0 to 4.0. This simulation also evaluates how Windows Server 2008.
the iteration steps (the value of n) of TSA algorithm affects its
performance. We conduct TSA algorithm from 0 to 11 steps
VI. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
and examine its RDA to GREEDY.
The second experiment is designed to evaluate the relative A. Algorithm Parameters
performances and cost of TSA and selected algorithms. We As can be seen from the experimental results (Figs. 6
compare TSA with RRE, LEO, and NCD for their RDA in and 7), the performance of 3-TSA, 5-TSA, 7-TSA, and
dense and sparse environments (using three different distri- 9-TSA improves when τ increases from 0.0 to 2.2, and reaches
butions) and two real application environments. In the dense their highest value when τ = 2.2. However, when the value
environment, the number of tags increases from 500 to 4000. of τ is larger than 2.2, the performance of TSA algorithm
In the sparse environment, it increases from 5000 to 20000. deteriorates with the increase of τ . Therefore, in both dense
We compare the relative overhead (number of tag-read and and sparse environment, the best empirical value of τ is around
tag-write operations) of TSA with other algorithms in both 2.2 for 3-TSA, 5-TSA, 7-TSA, and 9-TSA. In short, this result
dense and sparse environment (using UD). proves our preliminary assumption that the selection thresholds
MA et al.: REDUNDANT READER ELIMINATION IN LARGE-SCALE DISTRIBUTED RFID NETWORKS 891

Fig. 8. Performance of different TSA steps.

Fig. 10. RDA in real application environments.

TABLE V
AVERAGE RDA IN D IFFERENT E NVIRONMENTS

Fig. 9. RDA in random generated environments.

should be proportional to reader’s expected tag coverage. We

also conclude from Fig. 8 that TSA has better performance
when it iterates more steps in both two random generated
environments. Furthermore, the performance of TSA algo-
rithm is more stable when it iterates more steps. However, in
dense environment, the performance of TSA is not as stable as
compared to the performance in sparse environment. The per-
formance of TSA occasionally exceeds GREEDY algorithm
(RDA > 1) in dense environment. In contrast, in sparse envi-
ronment, the RDA to GREEDY of TSA algorithm steadily
approaches to 1 with the increase of n. The results prove that,
Fig. 11. Tag-read operations in dense environment.
with the increase of the iteration steps, TSA algorithm can
obtain an approximate performance of GREEDY algorithm.
The result also reflects that TSA is more robust in a sparse
by LEO and RRE. Although NCD improved the reader weight-
environment. In summary, we recommend parameters τ = 2.2
ing approach, it can only detect 66.9% results compared to
and n between 7 and 9 to obtain the best performance-cost ratio
GREEDY in dense uniform environment and 72.4% in sparse
because more algorithmic iterations cost higher overhead. In
environment.
the following experiments, we set the parameters τ = 2.2 and
Second, compared with UD, the results in other distribu-
n = 9.
tions (Gaussian and PD) does not deteriorates dramatically
(from 88.9% in UD to 72.4% in GD and 81.6% in PD),
B. Algorithmic Performance which is still significantly better than other distributed algo-
Figs. 9, 10, and Table V present the RDA of the selected rithms. As TSA is a distributed algorithm, as long as the local
distributed algorithms to the centralized GREEDY algorithm. relative uniformity can be achieved, the overall distribution
Several results can be observed. of RFID systems will not significantly affect the algorithmic
First, we conclude that TSA has significantly better per- performance.
formance than the other selected algorithms (RRE, LEO, and Third, in real application environments, warehouse and hos-
NCD). As Table V summarized, 9-TSA obtains an average of pital, TSA algorithm also outperforms other algorithms. In
88.9% performance of GREEDY in dense uniform distributed RFID warehouse, the mass storage of product is more similar
environment and 95.2% in sparse environment. Among the to GD, while in the hospital, the patients and equipment are
other three algorithms, NCD has better performance, followed more evenly distributed in the testing domain.
892
Fig. 12. Tag-read operations in sparse environment.
Fig. 13. Tag-write operations in dense environment.
Fig. 14. Tag-write operations in sparse environment.
C. Algorithmic Cost
Figs. 11 and 12 show the tag-read operations of differ-
ent algorithms. Because 9-TSA has relatively higher iteration
steps, the number of tag-read operation of 9-TSA is higher
than other algorithms, especially when there are more tags
in the system (see Fig. 11). However, the number of tag-
write operations of TSA is significant less than the RRE and
NCD algorithms, regardless of the increase in tag number
(see Figs. 13 and 14). As indicated by Theorem 1, the max-
imum number of tag-write operations of TSA equals to the
number of covered tags in system. Moreover, the tag-write
operations overhead is independent of TSA algorithm itera-
tion steps. Considering the tag-write operations consume more
power than read operation, it is clear that TSA algorithmic
has advantages in its overhead as comparing with the other
distributed algorithms. We may consider a tradeoff of using
a lower number of steps in TSA (e.g., 5-TSA or 7-TSA) to
reduce the number of tag-read operations.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 5, NO. 2, APRIL 2018
Fig. 15. Number of read operation with MD.
Fig. 16. Number of write operation with MD.
D. Effectiveness of Movement Detection Optimization
Figs. 15 and 16 show the experimental results of the third
experiment. We can see from Fig. 15 that the number tag-
read operation cannot be reduced by TSAMD. Because the
MD is based on the change of coverage, which requires the
use of tag-reader operation to determine the latest reader cov-
erage. However, TSAMD algorithm takes advantage of the
previous results of TSA and detects the movement of the test-
ing domain to reduce the number of tag operations. The results
in Fig. 16 reflect that TSAMD can significantly reduce the
tag-write operations in multiple round of tests if we randomly
choose a range of tagged products moving to another location
in RFID warehouse. The accumulated tag-write operations of
RRE and LEO algorithms increase linearly from rounds 1 to 6.
Because LEO has a lower algorithmic complexity, the num-
ber of tag-write operations for LEO is lower than RRE. As
optimized, the tag-write operations for NCDMD and TSAMD
algorithms is obviously lower than LEO and RRE algorithms.
Comparing to the results of LEO algorithm (according to
Fig. 13, the number of tag-write operations of TSA algo-
rithm is the same as LEO), TSAMD reduces around 40%
tag-write operations over TSA algorithm in this experiment.
Furthermore, the number of tag-write operations for TSAMD
is lower than NCDMD, because TSAMD has a lower algorith-
mic complexity. According to this experiment, the optimiza-
tion based on MD can further reduce the number of tag-write
operations for TSA algorithm. This optimization on tag-write
operations will greatly reduce the power consumption and
extend the battery life of the system.
MA et al.: REDUNDANT READER ELIMINATION IN LARGE-SCALE DISTRIBUTED RFID NETWORKS
TABLE VI
AVERAGE I MPROVEMENT OF TSA A LGORITHM
Fig. 17. Redundant reader detected with multiphase scheme.
E. Comparison to Multiphase Scheme
In [20], the principles of combining multiphase redundant
reader elimination algorithms are preliminarily explored and
proved effective. Fig. 17 depicts the number of redundant read-
ers detected with different multiphase schemes as compared
to TSA and GREEDY algorithms. As the results show, the
amount of detected redundant reader of multiphase scheme
is higher than single-phase. Moreover, the four-phase scheme
LEO +RRE+DRRE+NCD can achieve around 80% RDA over
the GREEDY algorithm.
However, the results show that TSA algorithm outper-
forms the combination of four different distributed algorithms.
Apparently, the multiphase combination consumes high algo-
rithmic cost than a single-phase algorithm. Table VI summa-
rizes the average improvement of TSA algorithm comparing
with other major algorithms and the multiphase schemes
in terms of RDA to GREEDY, tag-read operation and tag-
write operations in both dense and sparse environments. As
indicated, the performance of TSA is 30%–60% better than
other algorithms and 10% better than four-phase scheme. The
improvement of TSA algorithm over other algorithms are more
obvious in dense environment. In terms of algorithmic cost,
TSA’s overhead is lower than the other algorithms, especially
in the measure of tag-write operations. TSA has 35% to 60%
less tag-write operations over RRE and NCD algorithms. It
also has 80% less write operations than selected four-phase
schemes. Therefore, TSA algorithm has a significant lower
algorithmic consumption than the multiphase schemes with
893
better performance. Moreover, TSA algorithm can also be
safely combined with other distributed algorithms, the com-
bination strategy can further improve the effectiveness of
TSA algorithm.
VII. C ONCLUSION
The problem of redundant reader elimination in large-scale
distributed RFID network is a critical design issue which
impacts significantly on the operational effectiveness and scal-
ability of the IoT. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed
redundant reader elimination algorithm, called TSA, to address
the deficiencies known in early studies. TSA selects effective
reader based on the threshold sequence defined by the expected
tag coverage. We also propose an optimization based on MD,
named TSAMD, to explore the mobility of the RFID networks.
By preliminary simulation, we determine the suggested lin-
ear multiplier for TSA is around 2.2 and the recommended
iteration steps of TSA is 7 to 9. According to the experimen-
tal results, the performance of TSA is 30%–60% better than
other selected algorithms and the multiphase schemes in both
dense and sparse environments. The overhead of TSA’s algo-
rithm is 30%–50% lower than most algorithms especially in
terms of tag-write operations. Meanwhile, TSAMD algorithm
is proved effective in reducing the overall tag-write operations
when partially, bulky tag movement happens in RFID systems.
Although this paper has preliminarily elaborated the details
and properties of TSA algorithm, there are important issues
still need further exploration. For example, the suggested linear
multiplier value of TSA algorithm is empirically evaluated by
simulation. Moreover, the relationship between τ and the per-
formance of TSA still needs in-depth explorations. Therefore,
real-world experiments instead of simulations are expected in
our future work because there are other factors which are
unknown but may affect the performance of redundant reader
elimination algorithms. In real large-scale RFID networks,
missing or unregistered tags are common and may affect the
performance of TSA. It is important in our future work to
explore the approach for handling the cases, where number of
tags and readers are unknown in RFID systems.
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