In accordance with the present invention, a radio frequency identification (RFID) device comprises a plurality of data fields. The RFID device transmits a data symbol from a data field, receives an acknowledgement symbol, and compares the transmitted data symbol to the received acknowledgement symbol. The RFID device repeats these steps until data transmission is complete as long as each transmitted data symbol is equivalent to a corresponding received acknowledgement symbol; otherwise, the RFID device maintains the data field from which the last data symbol was transmitted, and temporarily suspends data transmission. When the RFID receives a request for RFID devices temporarily suspended in a given data field to resume data transmission, if the given data field in the request is equivalent to the data field that was maintained, the RFID device repeats the steps above starting with the first symbol in the data field that was maintained.