A radio frequency identification (RFID) decoding subsystem includes a pre-decode module and a decode module. The pre-decode module is coupled to process down-converted RFID signals into at least one of pre-decoded baseband data and corresponding decoding information. The decode module is coupled to process the pre-decoded baseband data into decoded RFID data, where the processing of the pre-decoded baseband data is based on the corresponding decoding information when the corresponding decoding information is produced by the pre-decoder module.