An adaptive wakeup methodology may be implemented to allow an radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to stay synchronized with periodic radio frequency (RF) interrogator polling signal while at the same time optimizing power consumption. A receiver (or transceiver) component of a RFID tag may only be operated when an interrogator polling signal is expected, and in a manner that reduces the amount of time between when the receiver or transceiver is turned on and when the interrogator polling signal is received (i.e., the receive buffer time). At other times, the RFID tag may be placed in a low power consumption sleep state. The amount of time that the RFID tag spends in such a low power sleep state before waking and receiving the following interrogator polling signal may also be optionally adjusted, e.g., to fit characteristics of a given situation and/or to re-synchronize a given aRFID tag with first band transmissions from an aRFIDI.