4234
6, JUNE 2016
An Energy and Identification Time Decreasing
Procedure for Memoryless RFID
Tag Anticollision Protocols
Hugo Landaluce, Asier Perallos, Enrique Onieva,
Laura Arjona, and Lars Bengtsson, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Up to date energy-aware radio frequency identifica-
tion (RFID) anticollision protocols are mainly focused on RFID
systems using active tags. The introduction of RFID in portable
devices, and the increasing popularity of passive tags, demands low
energy-consumption anticollision protocols in environments with
passive tags. Memoryless protocols present the simplest tag hard-
ware that is beneficial for a low energy consumption. However,
the excessive collisions required by these protocols increases the
energy consumption, wasting a large number of tag transmitting
bits. In this paper, a window procedure is presented to manage
the length of the tags’ bit-stream in order to limit the energy
wastage in collisions. The bit window is applied to two memoryless
anticollision protocols, the query tree protocol (QT) and the colli-
sion tree protocol (CT), producing the query window tree protocol
(QwT) and the collision window tree protocol (CwT). Simulations
show that the use of this window yields significant reductions in
energy consumption and identification time. In addition, QwT and
CwT are compared to state of the art memoryless protocols to con-
firm that CwT is an outstanding candidate for reducing energy
consumption. Also, the results obtained show how the bit win-
dow procedure increases energy savings as the length of the tag
ID increases.
Index Terms—RFID, anti-collision, memoryless protocols,
query tree, collision tree, bit-tracking, energy aware.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is
one of the best known auto-identification techniques. It is
used to identify codes stored in tags that backscatter a reader’s
signal [1]. The tags are attached to different objects, provid-
ing them with new functionalities. Location, traceability, and
remote identification of the objects are the most common appli-
cations of RFID. An outstanding characteristic of this technol-
ogy is that it does not need a direct line of sight between the
Manuscript received October 20, 2014; revised September 21, 2015 and
January 7, 2016; accepted February 21, 2016. Date of publication March 3,
2016; date of current version June 7, 2016. This work has been partially funded
by the Spanish “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacin” (TEC2013-45585-C2-2-R)
and the Basque Government (PC2013-71A). The associate editor coordinating
the review of this paper and approving it for publication was M. Manteghi.
H. Landaluce, A. Perallos, E. Onieva, and L. Arjona are with
the Deusto Institute of Technology (DeustoTech), University of Deusto,
Bilbao 48007, Spain (e-mail: hlandaluce@deusto.es; perallos@deusto.es;
enrique.onieva@deusto.es; laura.arjona@deusto.es).
L. Bengtsson is with Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg SE-41296, Sweden
(e-mail: labe@chalmers.se).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2016.2537800
1536-1276 © 2016 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution
requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO.
reader and the tags to establish communication. In addition, it
is a low-intrusive technology, which can be easily adapted to the
Internet of Things and the paradigm of Ubiquitous Computation
[2], [3]. Typically, an RFID system comprises tags and read-
ers [1]. The tags can be active (battery operated) or passive
(obtaining power from the reader’s signal). Passive tags are pre-
ferred when low cost and long lifetime are sought, but provide
less coverage. This paper is focused on passive RFID systems
consisting of a reader and different numbers of passive tags.
The existence of various tags transmitting at the same time
causes the tag collision problem [1], [4], [5]. Since tags share
the same communication channel (the air), their signals can be
garbled and the reader may not be able to decode the waveforms
of the signals. This leads to retransmitting the tag messages
until the reader receives them correctly, causing an increase
in the time needed to identify the tags and in the energy con-
sumed during that process. Due to some restrictions imposed
by RFID [4], general multi-access protocols have had to be
adapted, producing anti-collision protocols. These protocols are
still an interesting research topic, much covered in the current
literature [5]–[7]. The main existing anti-collision protocols can
be classified into Aloha-based and tree-based protocols.
Aloha based protocols are probabilistic, since the tag
responses are organized randomly. These responses are dis-
tributed among various slots, and the more uniformly spaced
are the transmissions, the higher is the probability of success.
Research in Aloha based protocols is focused on the improve-
ment of dynamic framed slotted Aloha protocols (DFSA) [8]–
[10]. The estimators used to define the frame size are increas-
ingly accurate at the expense of an increase in the mathematical
and computational cost [11]. Tree based protocols are, on the
other hand, deterministic: they identify the total number of tags
in the interrogation zone. The total amount of information trans-
mitted between readers and tags is usually higher than in Aloha
based protocols. However, the tags’ cost is usually lower in tree
based protocols. The reader controls every step of the protocol,
using commands or bit-string prefixes (called queries) to split
colliding tags into subsets, and further repeatedly split those
subsets until achieving a successful response from all the tags.
There are two types of tags: those with memory and those with-
out. The main difference between them is that the response of
tags not using memory (memoryless tags) depends only on the
query prefix transmitted by the reader and the identification
code (ID). The query tree protocol (QT) [12] is one of the most
representative memoryless protocols. On the other hand, tags
LANDALUCE et al.: ENERGY AND IDENTIFICATION TIME DECREASING PROCEDURE
with memory usually use an internal counter to determine the
allowance of transmissions [13], [14]. The memoryless tags’
need to transmit queries increases the amount of information
transmitted between the reader and the tags. In compensation,
these tags have the lowest hardware requirements.
The energy consumed in such anti-collision protocols has
been studied in several papers considering active tags exclu-
sively, due to their use of batteries [15]–[17]. Energy consump-
tion in passive RFID systems is not usually studied, due to the
reader’s connection to a general power source. However, bat-
tery powered readers such as smart-phones and hand-readers
are increasingly being used and, therefore, their energy con-
sumption should also be studied. Given the lack of batteries
and the need to obtain power from the reader’s signal, the sim-
plicity of the tags is very important [4]. Tags with a high cost
can cause, however, an increase in the reader’s power consump-
tion because they will need more energy to transmit messages
and to power up their circuitry [18]. Because we aim to pre-
serve the low cost of the tags, we concentrate on protocols
providing low cost tags: the memoryless tree based protocols
[12], [19]. These protocols avoid random number generators or
additional storage memories; basically, a comparison is needed
between the received query at the tag-side and its own ID. Then,
matching tags transmit their full ID, or the remaining part of it.
Collisions, therefore, cause the loss of full tag responses, which
increases the identification time and the energy consumption
of the reader. An excessive number of collisions produced by
QT generates an enormous increase in the information trans-
mitted between the reader and the tags. In [20], a preliminary
version of the query window tree (QwT) is presented. This pro-
tocol manages to decrease the number of bits transmitted by the
tags using a dynamic window procedure defined by a heuristic
exponential function.
In this paper, a bit window is applied to the most simpli-
fied memoryless protocols QT and the collision tree protocol
(CT) in order to produce two low energy-consumption pro-
tocols: a novel version of QwT, and the collision window
tree protocol (CwT). Additionally, an extended analysis of the
application of the window is presented, and three heuristic func-
tions are proposed and compared to define the best dynamic
behaviour for the window. Both proposed protocols are simu-
lated using the heuristic functions and compared to other mem-
oryless protocols in the literature. The results show that the win-
dow procedure saves energy and time. Indeed, CwT is shown to
be a low energy-consumption protocol for passive tags.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents related memoryless anti-collision protocols in the liter-
ature. Section III analyses the bit window procedure, Section IV
presents our proposed QwT protocol, and Section V presents
CwT. The results of the simulations and some identified limi-
tations are given in Section VI. Finally, Section VII concludes
this paper.
II. BACKGROUND
First, some definitions are given to properly understand
selected state-of-the-art protocols:
• Slot. The period of time that separates the tags’ responses.
In memoryless protocols, it comprises a reader command
4235
Fig. 1. Example of a Collision/Idle/Success/Go-On slot in the transmission
model used.
and a tag response to that message. Three types of slot
can occur, depending on the number of tag responses
received by the reader: {collision, idle, success}. A col-
lision occurs when more than one tag responds in the
same slot. The reader is unable to decode the tags’
responses due to the garbled waveforms of the received
signals. An idle slot occurs when there is no response to
the reader’s inquiry. A success occurs when a single tag
reply is correctly received by the reader and, therefore,
identified.
• Query. A bit-string command transmitted by the reader
to the tags that indicates the prefix they must compare
with their ID. If a tag ID matches the query received,
it responds, backscattering the full or the non-compared
part of the ID, depending on the type of protocol.
• Interrogation cycle. The period of time including all
reader queries and tag responses needed to identify the
entire set of tags. A cycle is composed of a certain number
of slots.
Now that the main concepts have been explained, we intro-
duce the RFID system transmission model between the reader
and the tags, employing some assumptions: an ideal channel
is assumed for transmission, with no capture-effect1 or fre-
quency hops, since the impact of these drawbacks would blur
the behaviour of all the compared protocols equally; all tags in
the antenna range remain correctly energized during the inter-
rogation cycle; all tags’ responses are synchronized; and lastly,
a collision occurs only when two different messages or bits
are simultaneously transmitted since error transmissions are not
considered. Note that these assumptions are extensively used
for the analysis of known anti-collision protocols [11], [12],
[19], [21]–[23]. The transmission model is explained below.
A. Transmission Model
The transmission model used is defined in [8], which cor-
responds to the EPC global C1G2 standard. Fig. 1 shows the
link timing of the three types of slots mentioned (collision, idle
and success) and the go-on slot explained below. The reader
starts transmissions using commands during time t R . The bit
strings transmitted by the reader as well as the tags (Command
and Response in Fig. 1), will be specified later in Section VI
1 When the reader decodes only the tag response with the highest power in a
collision slot
4236
for each simulated protocol. The reader holds the RF down-
link carrier, also called Continuous Wave (CW), so that tags
can harvest energy and respond with their ID. After every reader
command there is a time T1 needed for the tags to generate their
responses; and a time T2 needed for the reader to receive all the
transmissions; a slot will be considered idle when the reader
waits for the tags’ responses for a time T3 . Additionally, the
tag’s response is produced during time tT .
With respect to the energy consumption model, E represents
the energy consumed by the reader. It is a function of the time
it spends transmitting and receiving information. An energy
model is proposed where the reader transmits the command and
the C W to power up passive tags with power Pt x . In addition,
the reader will require extra power Pr x when receiving data
from the tags. Therefore, the expression used to calculate the
total energy consumed during the interrogation cycle is shown
in (1).
E = Ec + Ei + Es

c+s
= [Pt x × (t R j + T1 + tT j + T2 ) + Pr x × tT j ]
j=0

i tag responses are wasted on every collision, causing an increase
+ (Pt x × (t R j + T1 + T3 )
j=0
Here, E c , E s , E i represent the energy consumed during colli-
sion, success and idle slots and c, s, i the number of collision,
success, and idle slots, respectively.
B. Related Work
In a memoryless protocol, the tags’ responses are generated
only upon the transmission of a reader query. Thus, the tags’
hardware is simpler than in other protocols, such as Aloha based
protocols. We here present the best known memoryless anti-
collision protocols.
1) QT: In QT, the reader must provide the tags with a query
and the tags must respond with their full ID as a result of a
successful matching of the query with their corresponding ID
part. If a colliding response is received at the reader, two new
queries are generated adding a bit ‘0’ and ‘1’ to the colliding
query. Otherwise, queries are discarded when an idle or a suc-
cessful response is met. The process needs to go through all the
possible queries to detect all the tags.
2) Smart Tree Traversal Protocol (STT): The smart traver-
sal tree protocol (STT) [24] is used to reduce the number of
collisions in QT using a tree traversal path. This protocol gener-
ates successive queries according to the following rules defined
by the type of tags’ responses:
• Collision. The number x of bits to be appended to the col-
liding query is x = r + wc −1, where r denotes a fixed
minimum increase and wc the number of consecutive
collisions.
• Idle. In this case, the protocol decreases the query length
by y = r + we −1, where y is the number of bits by which
to decrease the query, and we is the number of consecutive
idles. Each node in a binary tree has two children: the left
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
Fig. 2. Example of Manchester codification showing a collisions at the 4th and
the 7th bits.
child, identified with 0, and the right child, with 1. To
guarantee a response from all the tags, this calculation is
only applied when the query denotes a right child of the
tree. Indeed, the following query for a left child will be
the corresponding right child.
• Success. The protocol maintains the length of the query
since the continuity of the tag distribution indicates there
will be more successes at the same level of the tree.
In this manner, STT generates traversal queries to identify
the next tag aggressively. The protocol reduces collisions at the
cost of an increase in the number of idle slots. In addition, full
(1) in the energy consumption of the RFID system and the number
of bits transmitted by the tags.
3) CT: The CT [19], [21] is a QT based protocol that imple-
ments bit tracking. This provides the reader with the ability
to track the colliding bits in a collision slot using Manchester
coding [1]. Fig. 2 shows that bits are defined as voltage transi-
tions. The bit ‘0’ is coded by a positive transition and ‘1’ by a
negative transition. Therefore, a collision is located when a non-
transition state occurs. The example shows collisions in the 4th
and 7th bits.
CT tracks the first colliding bit in a slot so as to split the
tags’ responses into two subsets. The reader transmits a query
and the matching tags respond with their remaining ID bits of
length k−L, where L is the length of the query and k the length
of the tag ID. Upon a collision slot, CT tracks the colliding
bit using bit tracking and generates two new queries, attaching
the correctly received part of the tags’ responses to the former
query plus a bit ‘0’ for the first and a bit ‘1’ for the second. CT
manages to identify tags faster, thus decreasing the number of
collisions and avoiding idle slots. However, CT still wastes a
large number of tag bits for every collision, which increases the
energy consumed by the reader during the process.
4) Optimal Query Tracking Tree (OQTT): A QT based pro-
tocol with a bit estimator and bit tracking technology, referred
to as OQTT, is given in [22]. It first employs a bit estima-
tion algorithm to estimate the existing number of tags. Tags
choose to swap one of the bits in an l-bit string. This string
is split into l/k−1 segments of the tag ID length k and each
portion is transmitted separately to the reader. The reader uses
Chebyshev’s inequality [23] to calculate the estimated number
of bits n̂ with the number of selected and non-selected bits
received in the tags’ responses. Once n̂ is obtained, the opti-
mal number of queries m to initalize a query stack is calculated
using m = 0.595824 × n̂. Afterwards, m queries are generated
and pushed onto the stack. The rest of the process is solved
LANDALUCE et al.: ENERGY AND IDENTIFICATION TIME DECREASING PROCEDURE
Fig. 3. Example of a communication slot between the reader and one tag.
using CT. Although the slot efficiency obtained by OQTT is
very high, the preprocessing increases the energy consumption
of the protocol, especially in dense tag environments, where x
is greater than 1.
III. T HE B IT W INDOW
The bit window procedure is here proposed to control the
number of bits per slot transmitted by the tags. The window
is defined as a bit-string of length W bits (0 < W < k) to be
transmitted by a tag as the response to a reader query, and
is computed at the reader-side, where k is the tag ID length.
Thus, the reader transmits a query with length L bits, and the
window size W of log2 W  + 1 bits, where  rounds to the
nearest integer towards −∞ and W N>0 . Fig. 3 shows an
example of the window procedure over a complete slot. The
main idea of this procedure is to adapt W to avoid the wastage
of tags’ transmitting bits on collisions. Moreover, the bit win-
dow procedure can be applied to basic query-based protocols
(QT, CT) so that the energy consumed by passive RFID sys-
tems can be decreased, retaining the memoryless feature and
slightly increasing the cost of the reader and tags.
The implementation of the window allows each tag to
respond using only W bits instead of the rest of its ID (k−L
bits), where W ≤ k−L. This changes the concept of success or
collision of the protocols. Two or more tags’ responses might
not collide if their windows do not include different bits, tak-
ing advantage of common ID parts. Therefore, a readable tag
response, which would lead to a success slot in QT or CT, may
not be a success in this case. If one or more tags responds with
similar window bit-streams and the condition L + W < k is
met, a go-on slot situation is produced. The responding tags
cannot be uniquely identified since the received window might
have come from more than one tag ID: thus, they need to be
re-interrogated until L + W = k, upon which a success slot is
guaranteed. Furthermore, a collision occurs only when different
window responses are received and can not be decoded by the
reader. Lastly, an idle slot occurs when no response is received
after a query.
The main idea of the window is to adapt its size W to low
values when the probability of collision is likely to be high, and
otherwise, adopt high W values when the probability tends to
be low. Since it is difficult to predict a collision and such a pre-
diction can be very costly for the reader and the tags, a heuristic
function is sought to adapt the window size W . Therefore, an
analysis of the influence of constant W values on query-based
protocols is now presented. Three heuristic functions will then
be proposed based on the conclusions obtained from this step.
4237
Fig. 4. Probability of a go-on slot PG (a) and a collision slot PC (b) for
different values of L and W .
A. Analysis Under Constant Values of W
The influence of W on a query-based protocol, such as QT or
CT, is to be analysed. Given a uniformly distributed set of n tags
in the interrogation zone, the probability that X of the n tags
have the same prefix as a query size of L bits, and transmitting
a response of W bits, is described by the binomial distribution,
X ∼ Bin(X, 21L , n) in (2).
 
n
P(X, n, p) = p X (1− p)n−X (2)
X
The probability of an idle slot PI (X = 0) is not affected by the
window, and is given by (3):
PI = P(X = 0) = (1−2−L )n (3)
The probability of a success slot PS when the condition L +
W < k is met is now called the probability of a go-on slot
PG , obtained using (4) (this expression is developed in the
Appendix):
PG = 2W [(1−2−L (1−2−W ))n − (1−2−L )n ] (4)
Using (3) and (4), the probability of collision is given by PC =
1−(PG + PI ) and (5):
PC = 1−2W (1−2−L + 2−(L+W ) )n + (2W −1)(1−2−L )n (5)
The calculation of the energy consumed by a protocol using the
bit window requires a previous calculation of the identification
time and, therefore, the number of bits transmitted by the reader
and the tags, and the number of slots used in the identification.
For this purpose, the number of nodes of the virtual tree that are
going to be visited is needed to observe the influence of W on
the time complexity of the protocol [15]. However, the nodes
visited are greatly influenced by the current ID distribution of
the tags, and so its calculation is outside the scope of this paper.
The application of the window to QT or CT firstly affects
PG and PC . Fig. 4 shows a representation of these probabilities
varying W and L with n = 1000 tags. Low values of W cause a
noticeable increase in PG with respect to the probability of suc-
cess in QT, QTPs , in the vicinity of the height L h of a uniformly
distributed tree L h = log2 (n + 1) = 10, where  rounds to
the nearest integer towards ∞. This implies also a reduction of
4238 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO. 6, JUNE 2016

TABLE I
H EURISTIC F UNCTIONS TO P ROVIDE DYNAMISM TO THE B IT W INDOW

PC with respect to the probability of collision in QT, QT Pc , in

the same range of W and L (see Fig. 4.b) according to (5) since
PI = 0 for low values of L.
The main conclusions that can be obtained from Fig. 4 are:
• Low values of W reduce the number of tag bits transmit-
ted since a collision of tag windows will waste W bits
instead of k−L as in QT. However, a low W increases
PG which presumably will increase the number of go-on
slots needed, increasing the total number of slots and bits
transmitted by the reader.
• Values of W k provide a similar behaviour to the source
protocol (QT in Fig. 4). The number of slots is reduced,
but a higher tag bit waste rate is found in collisions. In
compensation, a non-collided slot is more likely to be a
success slot.
These conclusions were confirmed using simulations in [25].
A balance between the previous two options is to be sought,
so that W can be guessed avoiding the calculation of PC and,
therefore, simplifying the identification procedure. Heuristic
functions will be proposed, to strike a balance between W
and L.
Fig. 5. Pseudo-code of QwT. First the operation of the reader is presented, then
the operation of the tag.

B. Heuristic Functions
Three heuristic functions will be presented (linear, quadratic
and exponential) to dynamically adjust the window size W in
order to maintain a balance by reducing the tag transmitting bits
and limiting the number of go-on slots. These functions yield
three different gradients to increase W , taking into considera-
tion the length of the current query L. This allows the reader
to choose small W when PC is prone to increase, providing a
small colliding tag bit rate; while they offer larger W when L
increases (and, thus PC decreases), contributing to decrease the
number of go-on slots. As will be explained below, the result
of these functions f (L) will only be assigned to W upon a
go-on slot since during a collision or an idle slot, W will be
held unchanged. Table I shows the three heuristic functions and
a limiting function to k−L for the tags’ responses in case the
heuristic function exceeds this value.
Each function’s gradient is adjusted with the parameter β
using graphical simulations to decrease the energy consumed
by the protocol the window is applied to. Two protocols
have been chosen in this paper to be modified by a bit win-
dow procedure: QT, which provides the lowest tag hardware
cost and the highest improvement capacity, yielding the query
window tree protocol (QwT); and CT, which is an evolved
QT using bit tracking, yielding the collision window tree
protocol (CwT).
IV. T HE Q W T P ROTOCOL
The first presented protocol is the QwT, which applies a
dynamic bit window to QT. Whenever the reader transmits a
query [q1 . . . q L ] of length L to indicate to the tags whether
to transmit or not, the parameter value W , which adds
log2 W  + 1 bits to the reader command, is attached. Tags
receive and compare the query with their ID [d1 . . . dk ], and
matching tags respond with the W bits [w1 . . . wW ] = [d L+1 . . .
d L+W ] to the last query bit received, where di , wi {0, 1}, see
Fig. 3. Apart from this, a cyclic redundancy check procedure
(CRC), similar to that demanded on the EPC C1G2 stan-
dard [8], is attached to the tags’ window response so that the
reader can differentiate by checking the consistency of the CRC
between a correct response that can be used, or an erroneous tag
response, caused by a collision.
Pseudo-code for the QwT reader and tags is shown in Fig. 5
to perform one full identification of a set of tags. A recursive
function (QwT see Fig. 5 line 2) is called until all the set of
tags is identified. In the beginning, the reader is initialized with
W = 1 and two starting queries ‘0’ and ‘1.’ A new command is
assembled with the first query and W , and broadcast to the tags.
After a certain period of time or after receiving a response, the
reader identifies the type of slot, generates a new query, and
assigns a new value to W considering the type of slot received.
LANDALUCE et al.: ENERGY AND IDENTIFICATION TIME DECREASING PROCEDURE 4239

There are four different type of slots: idle, collision, go-on, and
success.
• An idle slot (Fig. 5 line 8) is when no response is received.
The reader then discards that query and continues with the
process.
• A collision slot (Fig. 5 lines {10−12}) is when the
reader receives a window which is not CRC consistent.
W remains unchanged, retaining its former value, and
two supplementary queries are generated [q1 . . . q L , 0]
and [q1 . . . q L , 1]; made of the former query [q1 . . . q L ]
appended with either ‘0’ or ‘1.’ Then the reader recur-
sively starts transmitting them to the tags.
• A go-on slot (Fig. 5 lines {15−17}) is when the CRC
validates the received window and the condition L +
W < k is met. A new query is generated by affixing
the immediately received window to the former query
[q1 . . . q L , w1 . . . wW ] and a new W is calculated with
the heuristic function, W = f (L). Then, the reader recur-
sively transmits the new command with the updated query
and W .
• Finally, a success slot (Fig. 5 line 19) is when the CRC
validates the received window and the tag ID is uniquely
defined L + W = k. Then, the ID is stored in a database Fig. 6. Variation in the number of go-on slots and transmitted bits per tag in
and the query is discarded, to continue with the process. QwT for different values of β, for n tags, and three different heuristic functions:
The tag’s operation in Fig. 5 starts with receiving the reader’s (a) linear, (b) quadratic, and (c) exponential.
command. The tag obtains the query and compares it to the
proper portion of its ID. Should its ID match the query, the
tag calculates the CRC (as discussed in the comparison in
Section VI, CRCs of 1 and 5 bits are used). Then, the tag trans-
mits by backscattering the W bits that follow the last query bit
received L and attaches the calculated CRC in the response.

A. Tuning β in QwT
As a result of the expression L + W < k, the response
received from the tags does not uniquely identify a full tag
ID and therefore a go-on slot is considered. The recalculation
of W is done using one of the heuristic functions proposed
in Table I: linear, quadratic, or exponential. These functions
include a parameter β that varies the gradient of the func-
tion differently, and must be tuned in order to minimize the
number of go-on slots and tag transmitting bits. These met-
rics are simulated for different values of β and two sets of tags
n = {500, 1000}. The simulation procedure and the parameters
used are defined in Section VI from scenario S1. The results
obtained are shown on the left and right Y -axes, respectively,
in Fig. 6. For the three heuristic functions proposed, the mag-
nitudes show opposite behaviours and when one is reduced the
other one is increased. A balance between these metrics is there-
fore sought. The simulation results of the energy consumed by
the RFID reader calculated using (1), for different values of β,
are shown in Fig. 7 (more details about the simulation param-
eters are also given in Section VI). The results show that when
the energy consumed by the reader is at its lowest (β = 87 for
Fig. 7.a, β = 105 for Fig. 7.b, β = 0.4 for Fig. 7.c) a proper
balance is achieved between the number of go-on slots and tag
transmitting bits in Fig. 6. A handful of tags n = {500, 1000}
Fig. 7. Selected β for n tags in the interrogation zone using the reader’s energy
consumption in QwT for three heuristic functions: (a) linear, (b) quadratic, and
(c) exponential.
are shown in both Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, but the visible tendency
using different values of n is similar.
V. T HE C OLLISION W INDOW T REE (C W T)
The second proposed protocol is the collision window tree
protocol (CwT), which applies the dynamic bit window to CT.
This causes the challenging coexistence of two techniques: bit
tracking and the bit window. The first one uses Manchester cod-
ification, which allows the reader to identify the exact colliding
bit and therefore avoids the need of affixing a CRC to the tags’
responses in order to identify the type of slot. Additionally, this
codification incorporates a clock signal within the transmitting
data, which eases the synchronization of the tags’ responses.
And last but not least, the combination of both techniques not
only extinguishes idle slots but also decreases the number of tag
transmitting bits compared to the non-windowed protocols.
4240
Fig. 8. Pseudo-code of CwT. First the operation of the reader is presented, then
the operation of the tag.
The pseudo-code for CwT for performing one full identifica-
tion of a set of tags is presented in Fig. 8. A recursive function
(CwT see Fig. 8 line 2) is called until all the set of tags is
identified. The procedure starts by broadcasting a reader query,
[q1 . . . q L ] of length L, affixed to the W parameter of length
log2 W  + 1 bits, which tells the tags the number of bits they
must use in their reply. The value of the parameter W is calcu-
lated for every slot and always transmitted attached to the query
(initially W = 1). Tags matching the query transmit the W bits
following the last query bit received, [d L+1 . . . d L+W ] of their
ID [d1 . . . dk ]. Whether a colliding bit is found or not and to
update the new query and W , the reader classifies the type of
slot as one of three cases: collision, go-on, or success.
• A collision slot (Fig. 8 lines {8−10}) is when at least
one colliding bit is found. Two supplementary queries
are generated, denoted by [q1 . . . q L , w1 . . . wc−1 , 0] and
[q1 . . . q L , w1 . . . wc−1 , 1], using bit tracking; basically
made of the former query [q1 . . . q L ] appended with the
correctly received bits (win Match = w1 . . . wc−1 ) indi-
cating the first colliding bit with the suffix c and attaching
a bit ‘0’ and ‘1.’. Additionally, W remains unchanged.
• A go-on slot (Fig. 8 lines {13−15}) is when both L +
W < k and no collision has occurred. A new query,
[q1 . . . q L , w1 . . . wW ], is then made from the imme-
diately received window (win Match) and the former
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
Fig. 9. Dependence of the number of go-on slots and transmitted bits per tag
in CwT on β for n tags with three different heuristic functions: (a) linear,
(b) quadratic, and (c) exponential.
query. The window size W is recalculated using the
heuristic function W = f (L) and a new command is
recursively transmitted.
• A success slot (Fig. 8 line 17) is when no collision has
occurred and L + W = k. The reader stores the received
ID and continues the process until no more function
instances are left.
The CwT tags’ operation in Fig. 8 is simplified compared
to the operation in QwT, since CRC is not now needed. Thus,
tags start receiving the reader’s command, obtain the query, and
compare it to the proper portion of their ID. Only if they match
the query will they backscatter the W bits that follow the last
query bit received.
A. Tuning β in CwT
The heuristic functions f (L) in Table I are proposed to
modify W with every go-on slot. The parameter β needs to
be readjusted, since the bit tracking technology modifies the
performance of CwT with respect to QwT. The simulation pro-
cedure and the parameters used are again defined in Section VI
from scenario S1. The results of the number of go-on slots
and tag transmitting bits under different values of β are shown
in Fig. 9 for the three proposed heuristic functions: linear,
quadratic and exponential. The results obtained present similar-
ities to those previously presented for QwT, a priori. However,
the number of go-on slots is lower for all values of β and n in
the simulation.
Given the inverse behaviour of the number of go-on slots
and tag transmitting bits, minimizing the amount of energy con-
sumed by the reader requires using a balanced window. Thus,
the energy consumed by the reader using the three mentioned
LANDALUCE et al.: ENERGY AND IDENTIFICATION TIME DECREASING PROCEDURE
Fig. 10. Selected β for n tags in the interrogation zone using the reader’s energy
consumption in CwT for three heuristic functions: (a) linear, (b) quadratic, and
(c) exponential.
heuristic functions is shown in Fig. 10 under varying β. The
values of β producing the minimum energy consumption of the
reader are β = 123 for Fig. 10.a, β = 125 for Fig. 10.b and
β = 0.34 for Fig. 10.c. These values produce steeper gradient
functions than the QwT tuned β values. This is mainly because
the bit tracking functionality is better exploited when large tag
responses are transmitted. Since the likelihood of obtaining bits
previous to a collision is higher with a large value of W , queries
can be aggressively generated, accelerating the identification
process. For this reason, a more frequent use of a large W is
preferred. On the other hand, this is likely to produce a larger
waste of tag transmitting bits in collisions than in QwT: this will
be shown in the next section, Section VI.
VI. S IMULATIONS AND R ESULTS
This section presents the simulation results obtained using
Matlab 2014b for the proposed protocols (Fig. 5 and Fig. 8)
employing different heuristic functions. These results are com-
pared with the behaviour of the main memoryless anti-collision
protocols in the literature. First, the influence of the window
is presented, comparing QwT with QT and CwT with CT for
the three proposed heuristic functions. Then, the best versions
of QwT and CwT are chosen and compared to the memoryless
protocols QT, STT, and to the memoryless bit tracking proto-
cols CT and OQTT in different simulation scenarios. Finally,
some identified limitations of the bit window technique are
presented.
The protocols are compared in five different scenarios S1-
S5 and Table II shows the parameters employed. S1 proposes
a fixed parameter scenario. Tari, which represents the reference
time interval for a data-0 transmission, is set to the standard’s
minimum of 6.25 μs, conditioning DR (data rate for reader
1
and tags, calculated as T ari ), RTCal, TRCal, T1, T2 and T3
in accordance with the EPC standard [8]. Pt x and Pr x were
obtained from [15] and k is fixed to 128 bits. Scenarios S2-S5
use control variables that are modified during the simulation
whilst the rest of the parameters remain constant from S1.
Control variables are marked with a ‘*’ in the table and are:
Tari in S2; the reader transmitting power Pt x in S3; the reader
receiving power Pr x in S4; and the length of the tag ID k in
S5. S2 represents a special case since Tari also influences the
4241
parameters mentioned above, and these are also modified every
time Tari changes during the simulation.
Presented in Fig. 1 is the link timing of the four typical
types of slots to perform identification time calculations and
(1) for energy calculations. Variable slots are considered, which
increases the complexity of the protocols and similar durations
for bits 0 and 1 have been used (Tari), since the simulated
protocols employ Manchester codification, different from the
standard. This, in fact, has been applied to all the protocols,
ensuring fairness in the comparison. The field Command is dif-
ferent depending on the protocol simulated, and is specified in
Table III for all the protocols, where L corresponds to the length
of the query, log2 W  + 1 to the length of the window size W ,
and l and x to the number of bits and slots for the estimation
procedure in OQTT respectively. In addition, the tag response
per slot is specified for every protocol in the comparison. Each
simulation was performed 100 times and averaged for accuracy.
Additionally, the tags’ IDs have been taken to be uniformly dis-
tributed and randomly generated for every simulation iteration
with varying random seed values.
A. Savings and Losses of the Bit Window Technique
The three proposed heuristic functions, linear, quadratic and
exponential, denoted by subscript lin, quad, ex p, have been
simulated separately for each windowed protocol QwT and
CwT in S1 and compared to the non-windowed protocols QT
and CT in Table IV. This table shows therefore the savings
(negative quantities) and losses (positive quantities) that the
window technique produces in the different metrics of QT and
CT. Figures in bold indicate the best function in every metric
compared. In addition, two CRC lengths have been used in the
comparison for the case of QwT: 1 or parity bit, and 5 bits. The
data shown in that table was calculated using the expression
QwTvalue −QTvalue
QTvalue for QwT in this case. The values shown were
averaged over the results for each set of tags n, from 100 to
1000.
As previously mentioned, the main influence of the window
is on the number of bits transmitted per tag. However, Table IV
shows savings not only in that metric, but also in the energy
consumed by the RFID system, the identification time for the
set of tags, and the total number of bits needed to identify them.
On the other hand, there occurs an increase in the required num-
ber of slots and reader bits of the windowed protocols. The
bit window manages to balance the number of tag transmitting
bits and go-on slots, unavoidably increasing the latter, which
produces an increase in the total number of slots and reader
bits. However, the time savings produced by the reduction of
the number of tag transmitting bits is higher than the time lost
due to the number of reader bits, which is reflected in a reduc-
tion in the total identification time and energy consumption.
In conclusion, the savings in the energy consumption are still
substantial, which confirms that the bit window technique is an
energy saving procedure in S1.
The QwT with the quadratic heuristic function QwTquad
shows the highest energy savings. Although the CRC of length
1 bit (C RC−1) or parity bit presents the highest savings, its
reliability can be questioned since it presents a 66% rate of error
4242 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
TABLE II
PARAMETERS U SED IN S IMULATIONS . * I NDICATES THE C ONTROL VARIABLES
TABLE III
N UMBER OF B ITS /S LOT
recognition under a 1 bit response. A CRC of 5 bits (C RC−5),
on the other hand, is a more complex but reliable operation.
Despite the unfavorable simulated results of C RC−5 compared
to C RC−1, the first is used in the following comparisons, and
still shows energy savings over the other anti-collision proto-
cols. Furthermore, CwT with the linear function CwTlin is also
used; CwT with quadratic and exponential functions show sim-
ilar savings and losses as with the linear function. However, the
implementation of the last is less costly than that of the others,
and that is why it has been chosen in the following comparisons.
B. Impact of the Number of Tags
This section compares the most representative memoryless
anti-collision protocols QT, STT with the bit tracking CT and
OQTT, including the best versions of QwT and CwT previously
simulated: QwT with the exponential function and C RC−5,
and CwT with the linear function, now redefined as QwT and
CwT for clarity in the graphs.
The performed simulations have been again parametrized
using data from Table II.S1, and n has been varied from 100 to
1000 tags. The simulation results for the energy consumed by
the protocols are shown in Fig. 11.a and the identification time
required to calculate the former results is shown in Fig. 11.b.
Fig. 11.a shows evidence that CwT outperforms the others in
terms of energy consumption, and a very slight improvement in
the identification time in dense tag environments in Fig. 11.b.
The inclusion of the window in QT and CT produces energy
and time savings in both protocols, QwT and CwT, over the
non-windowed QT and CT, and these savings increase linearly
with the inclusion of more tags in the interrogation zone. STT,
as an evolved QT based protocol, uses the smart traverse path
with a minimum query increase of r = 1, and shows similarities
to QwT in both metrics from Fig. 11. Bit-tracking CT improves
QT and present similarities to STT in energy and identification
time. OQTT improves CT in these metrics, thanks to its esti-
mation process, and shows similar identification time results
to CwT using different strategies: while OQTT is focused on
decreasing the number of slots, the windowed CwT and QwT
focus on tag transmitting bits. This, however, benefits the win-
dowed protocols since the energy consumed by a passive reader
during the response of the tags is lower than in OQTT, as
windowed tags spend less time transmitting.
The calculation of the identification time is based on the
total number of bits transmitted by the reader and the tags,
and therefore these metrics are shown in Fig. 12. As the bit
window technique modifies the number of tag transmitting bits
per slot, Fig. 12.a shows QwT and CwT as the least tag bit
transmitting protocols, quite the opposite from QT and CT,
which present the worst results. The window improves the effi-
ciency of tag transmitting bits (Fig. 12.b), calculated using the
k
expression bits/tag × 100. The tag bit efficiency indicates the
exploitation of the tags’ responses and the influence of a col-
lision on a tag response. Thus, QwT shows efficiencies higher
than 80%, which indicates that tags waste few bits in collisions
and transmit almost the minimum number of bits needed to be
recognized, k. CwT shows also a higher tag bit efficiency than
the non-windowed protocols. Although QwT tags need to use
CRCs, they transmit the lowest number of bits, closely followed
by CwT as shown in Fig. 12.a.
The windowed protocols decrease the tags’ transmitting bits,
at the cost of an increase in go-on slots, which increases the
total number of slots as shown in Fig. 12.c. Notice also that the
bit tracking protocols OQTT, CT and CwT require the lowest
number of slots: here OQTT stands out. STT, which slightly
reduces the number of slots used by QT, cannot improve over
the bit tracking protocols. CT and CwT track collisions to the
individual bit avoiding idle slots, and OQTT saves the initial
collisions produced in CT, thanks to the optimal generation of
the starting queries. The elevated number of slots needed by
the windowed protocols causes the number of reader bits (see
Fig. 12.d) to be the highest in the comparison. Additionally,
the need of a go-on slot to obtain the last few pending ID bits
of a particular tag demands that the reader transmit long L
queries, which increases the number of reader bits, especially
in QwT. CwT increases W more aggressively than QwT, using
a different β tuning, preventing a frequent ocurrence of this sit-
uation. In the end, the tests performed suggest that the window
LANDALUCE et al.: ENERGY AND IDENTIFICATION TIME DECREASING PROCEDURE
TABLE IV
T HE B IT W INDOW S AVINGS (N EGATIVE ) AND L OSSES (P OSITIVE ), U SING THE T HREE H EURISTIC F UNCTIONS IN S1. Q UANTITIES IN B OLD R EPRESENT
THE B EST R ESULTS A MONG THE T HREE H EURISTICS . QwTquad AND CwTlin P RESENT THE H IGHEST E NERGY AND I DENTIFICATION T IME S AVINGS
Fig. 11. Simulation results of the energy consumption (a) and the identifica-
tions time (b) in S1.
procedure and the bit tracking technique are compatible pro-
cedures in CwT, producing a suitable low energy-consumption
protocol for RFID passive tag environments.
C. Impact of Tari and Power Transmission
Different scenarios, S2-S4, are used in this section to com-
pare the selected memoryless protocols. The impact of the
variation of Tari and transmission power in the energy con-
sumed by these protocols is shown in Fig. 13 when n is 100
and 1000.
The simulation results in Fig. 13.a and 13.d show the energy
consumed by the compared protocols as Tari is modified in S2.
4243
As mentioned before, the related values DR, RTCal, TRCal,
T1, T2 and T3 also change when Tari changes. The smallest
Tari used in the simulation represents the fastest RFID system,
with the minimum time between reader and tag transmissions
(T1, T2, T3). In contrast, the highest Tari allowed in the stan-
dard [8], 25 μs, configures a slow system with a long waiting
time between transmissions (see Table II.S2). As presented in
Fig. 13.a and 13.d, the slower the RFID system is, the higher
the window savings are in QwT and CwT. Thanks to the sav-
ings in tag transmitting bits produced by the window, a low tag
DR (caused by a high Tari value) is less harmful in windowed
protocols than in the others, since their tags spend less time
transmitting. On the other hand, go-on slots force the windowed
protocols to go through more time intervals between messages
(T1, T2, T3) than the others, which moderates the impact of the
low DR.
In Fig. 13.b and 13.e, simulation results using the param-
eters from Table II.S3 are shown. In this case, Pt x is varied.
Again, the windowed protocols increase their savings with the
augmentation of Pt x . QwT and CwT balance the loss caused by
the increase in the number of slots and reader bits with the sav-
ings in tag transmitting bits. Notice that Pt x is needed during
reader transmission and reception (CW, see Fig. 1), there-
fore the window, which reduces tag transmitting bits, produces
higher energy savings under higher values of Pt x receiving tag
bits than the non-windowed protocols. Despite the savings pro-
duced by the window, OQTT presents better results in a low
tag density set n = 100 than the rest. This difference is soft-
ened when n increases in Figure 13.e. Finally, Fig. 13.c and
13.f show the results when using the parameters in Table II.S4.
Now, the power Pr x is varied. The windowed protocols QwT
and CwT are less sensitive to an increase in Pr x than are the
others, since they transmit fewer tag bits. Thereby, the higher
the Pr x , the higher the savings produced by the window are
with respect to the non-windowed protocols.
D. Impact of the Tag ID Length
Now the comparison results of the chosen memoryless pro-
tocols are shown with k as the control variable (Table II.S5).
In this case, two heuristic functions, quadratic (QwTquad )
and exponential (QwTex p ), are simulated for QwT since their
results evolve in a different way; and the linear only for CwT
4244 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO. 6, JUNE 2016

Fig. 12. Simulation results of: (a) the average tag transmitting bits, (b) the tag bit efficiency, (c) the total slots, and (d) the reader bits transmitted in S1.

Fig. 13. Simulation results obtained for the energy consumption in S2, S3, S4, when n is 100 and 1000 tags.
LANDALUCE et al.: ENERGY AND IDENTIFICATION TIME DECREASING PROCEDURE
TABLE V
R E -T UNING OF β FOR QwTquad , QwTex p AND CwTlin
Fig. 14. Simulation results of the energy consumption (a), the identification
time (b), the tag bit efficiency (c) and the reader bits transmitted (d) in S5 with
n = 1000 tags.
because it behaves in a similar manner to the rest of the heuristic
functions. The number of tags n is fixed to 1000.
The parameter β used in the former simulations was calcu-
lated for the specific ID length of k = 128 bits. However, in
order to work properly, the window procedure needs a retun-
ing of this parameter for each of the values of k chosen in this
new simulation. Therefore, Table V shows the different tuning
values of β for every simulated ID length k.
The simulation results are shown in Fig. 14. Notice that the
longer is the ID length k, the better are the results of the win-
dowed protocols in energy consumption and identification time
presented in Fig. 14.a and Fig. 14.b, respectively. For low k, the
bit tracking protocols CT and OQTT present the lowest energy
consumption. Since OQTT is the most slot decreasing protocol,
it does not suffer from an excessive waste of tag transmitting
bits compared to the windowed protocols, which produce a
larger number of slots. However, this balance between the num-
ber of tag transmitting bits and slots is slightly inverted as k
increases. In this manner, for the largest values of k of the simu-
lation results, the windowed protocols present the lowest energy
4245
consumption and identification time. Indeed, the differences
from the rest of the protocols are larger (notice the logarithmic
scale of the Y -axes in Fig. 14.a and Fig. 14.b). The evolution of
QwTquad should also be observed: the worst energy consump-
tion results occur for small values of k, and the lowest energy
consumption for k = 1024 bits. As shown in Fig. 14.c, the bit
efficiency of the windowed protocols is the highest obtained in
the simulations. First CwT, followed by QwTquad , obtain the
highest bit efficiencies in the simulations. Finally, the number
of reader bits needed by the protocols is presented in Fig. 14.d,
where QwTquad stands out as using a large number of reader
bits, especially for large k. The rest of the windowed protocols
need a longer bit-stream than the rest but they remain almost
constant as k increases. It can be concluded, therefore, that the
larger the ID length k, the greater the impact of the bit efficiency
on the energy consumption. This can be clearly observed for the
case of QwTquad with large k values, which shows the lowest
energy consumption with the highest bit efficiency.
E. Identified Limitations
This section presents all the limitations encountered during
the design and experimentation process. Some of them have
been already mentioned, but all of them are gathered here. The
main problem caused by the window is the increase in the num-
ber of slots, mainly caused by the increase in the number of
go-on slots. CwT is proposed using bit tracking to decrease the
number of slots. The parameter β used in the three heuristic
functions is chosen to have a higher gradient, thus obtain-
ing better results in terms of identification time and energy
consumption than the QwT. However, the number of tag trans-
mitting bits is increased. This behaviour can be improved and
therefore more research should be carried out to decrease the
number of go-on slots. Another limitation is that the length of
the current query L and the value W transmitted in the reader
command present a dynamic size, and tags would need special
characters to differentiate both variables. Another parameter
should be included in the command indicating the length L.
Besides, another possible option to mitigate this problem is
to standardize the values of W to powers of 2, and attach
the exponent with a fixed size instead of the real value to the
query. This modification could also help the performance of the
protocol since the exponential increase of the window would
be beneficial. Lastly, all the tests have been developed under
homogeneous tag ID distributions. The heuristic functions have
been tuned for this type of distribution, and they would need
to be readjusted according to its variations. Besides, in non-
uniform tag ID distributions, a conversion method [26] could
be used to obtain a virtual homogeneous distribution.
As future work, the estimation of the proper β value upon
different scenarios, and the adaptation of the window to identify
tags with different ID lengths are proposed.
VII. C ONCLUSION
A bit window procedure has been presented and carefully
analysed. Two anti-collision protocols, which we have called
QwT and CwT, have been presented, which apply this bit
4246 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 15, NO. 6, JUNE 2016

window procedure to the memoryless QT and CT protocols. Then, rewriting expression (6) a recursive equation is obtained:
The contributing window has been tested under three differ-
ent heuristic functions retaining their memoryless feature. The ⎡ ⎤n−1
   
procedure provides an important decrease in the number of ⎢ 1 1 ⎥ 1 1
PG = pn = ⎢
⎣ 1 − 1 − ⎥ + 1 − pn−1
tag transmitting bits, but at the expense of an increase in 2L 2W ⎦ 2L 2L
the number of slots and reader transmitting bits. However,  
  

a b
the window achieves significant energy savings over the non-
windowed protocols, thanks to the reduction of the time spent  
1 n−1 1 n−1 1 n−2
by the tags in transmitting. In addition, simulation compar- = a + bp n−1 = a + b a + bp n−2
isons showed that the windowed CwT is a protocol which 2L 2L 2L
outperforms the others in terms of energy savings and thus is 1 n−1
to be considered as a good RFID anti-collision candidate in = (a + ba n−2 + b2 a n−2 + . . . + bn−1 ) + bn p0
2L  

passive RFID systems. In addition, when the ID length is suf- p0 =0
ficiently large, QwT outperforms the others in terms of energy (9)
consumption.

n
According to a n − bn = (a − b) a n−k bk−1 and a − b =
k=1
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 1
2 L+W
the final expression is obtained:
The authors would like to thank Emil Gustavsson and
Magnus Önnheim at Chalmers University of Technology for 1 a n − bn
their valuable help in developing the proof of expression (4). PG = = 2W (a n − bn )
2L a − b
  n   
1 1 1 n
=2 W
1− L 1− W − 1− L (10)
A PPENDIX 2 2 2
Proof of expression (4): Given a set of n tags with n pre-

fixes or queries in S = {s1 , . . . , sn } the following expression is
proposed:
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2015.
Hugo Landaluce received the B.S. degree in indus-
trial control and electronics engineering from the
University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, the M.S.
degree in advanced electronic systems from the
University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain, and
the Ph.D. degree in telecommunications and com-
puter science from the University of Deusto, in
2007, 2012, and 2014, respectively. He is currently
a Research Associate with the Mobility Research
Group, DeustoTech. His research interests include
RFID technology, anticollision protocols, and algo-
rithm analysis and optimization.
4247
Asier Perallos received the B.E., M.S., and Ph.D.
degrees in computer engineering from the University
of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain. Since 1999, he has
been working as a Lecturer with the Faculty of
Engineering, University of Deusto. Currently, he is
an Associate Professor. He is the Head Researcher
of the DeustoTech Mobility Unit, Deusto Institute
of Technology (DeustoTech), where he coordinates
the research activities of around 25 researchers. He
has over a decade of experience in R&D manage-
ment, more than 25 JCR indexed publications and
more than 50 other contributions in the area of ITS and 2 Ph.D. disserta-
tions supervised. His research interests include telematic systems, vehicular
communication middleware, and intelligent transportation systems.
Enrique Onieva was born in Priego de Cordoba,
Spain, in 1983. He received the B.E., M.E., and
Ph.D. degrees in computer science (with specializa-
tion in soft computing and intelligent systems) from
the University of Granada, Granada, Spain, in 2006,
2008, and 2011, respectively. From 2007 to 2012, he
was with AUTOPIA at the Centre for Automation
and Robotics, Madrid, Spain. In 2012, he was with
the Models of Decision and Optimization Group,
University of Granada. Since 2013, he has been with
the Mobility Unit, Deusto Insitute of Technology.
His research interests include soft computing techniques in ITS, including
fuzzy-logic based decision and control, and evolutionary optimization.
Laura Arjona received the B.E. degree in telecom-
munications engineering from the University of
Granada, Granada, Spain, in 2014, and the M.S.
degree in information and communication elec-
tronic systems from the National University of
Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, Spain, in 2015.
She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at the
DeustoTech Mobility Research Team, University of
Deusto, Bilbao, Spain. Her research interests include
RFID technology, anticollision protocols, and wire-
less sensor networks.
Lars Bengtsson (M’93–SM’07) received the M.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree
in computer systems engineering from Chalmers
University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in
1983 and 1997, respectively. He is an Associate
Professor (Docent) with Chalmers University of
Technology. He worked as an Electrical Engineer in
industry for some years. His research interests include
radio frequency identification systems and on circuits
for residue arithmetic.