In this paper we present a novel active radio frequency identification system consisting of transponders with low complexity, low power consumption, and long system reading range. The transponder’s low complexity and small circuit integration area indicate that the production cost is comparable to the one of a passive tag. The hardware keystone is the transponder’s radio wake-up transceiver, which is a single oscillator with very low power consumption. The communication protocol, based on frequency signalling binary tree, contributes to the low complexity of the tag architecture. More than 1500 tags can be read per second. The average transponder ID read-out delay is 319 ms when there are 1000 transponders within reach of the interrogator. The calculated expected life time for a transponder is estimated to be almost three years.