Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an enabling wireless technology applicable to a wide range of applications that provide organizations with unprecedented improved visibility and traceability of items. They can be used in various fields for contactless detection and identification purposes. Currently, practicing engineers and researchers use trial-and-error approaches to decide the best conditions of the tag detection and the influence factors which affect tag detectability. The passive RFID tags are powered by a reader and the signals are greatly affected by various intervening mediums. The tags may not be detectable sometimes due to the effect of these mediums. Through experiments, it is realized that the passive tags kept on a metal surface are not detectable at all. A detailed study of these effects is required before design and implementation of RFID systems; otherwise the designed system may not work properly. The reliability of a designed RFID system depends on the chosen frequency of operation of the system and the surrounding medium. This paper presents the experimental results of the effects of different mediums on passive RFID system performance. The detectability and the range of the tags are measured with different intervening mediums also by keeping the tags at detectable range with various angles. The effect of different mediums on the detectability and range of tags has been studied.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based on wireless radio communication technology is used for tagging and identifying stationary or mobile objects with a special antenna device called RFID reader. RFID technology allows the objects to be labeled and tracked as they move from place to place. A typical RFID system consists of tags, reader, middleware, and application program (Gadh, 2004). The application program typically handles a specific task such as keeping track of the inventory in a warehouse, checking vehicles/human beings, or recording the items removed from the shelf in a retail store based on the inventory data. It also takes appropriate action according to the data extracted from the tag of the target items such as retail products, pallets, cartons, shipments, animals, human beings or vehicles. The middleware is a bridge interfacing the hardware components from the lower layer with the higher application program layer. In some literature, the application program and middleware together are called middleware. An RFID tag consists of a microchip and an antenna. Each tag has a unique e-coding which identifies the target object. The RFID reader is a powered RF device that communicates with the tags on the wireless side and one or more computers on the other side of the wired infrastructure. There are two types of RFID—fixed RFID and mobile RFID. The fixed type RFID is for the RFID reader to communicate with stationary tags. On the other hand, the mobile type RFID is either for mobile RFID reader to communicate with stationary tag or for the stationary RFID reader to communicate with the mobile tag (Minho et al., 2009). Information stored in the tag can be read by the interrogator from a distance depending upon the read range of the interrogator. This information is sent to the database for further processing by the control software. A tag may be a passive tag, a semi-passive tag or an active tag. An active tag can be rewritable (McCarthy et al., 2003; Roberts, 2006; and Konstantinos et al., 2007). Figure 1 shows a simple typical RFID system consisting of a tag, a reader and a host computer.

Electrical and Electronics Engineering Journal, Biometric Fingerprint Segmentation, Kernel Fuzzy C-Means Algorithm, Image Segmentation, Data Mining, Gaussian Kernel Function, Reinitialization Process, Medical Images, Medical Imaging Characteristics, Electric Power Systems, Distribution Systems, Reliability Modeling.