Localisation of stationary objects using passive RFID technology

Abstract

Localisation of objects is an innovative application of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The combination of localisation and identification capabilities provides tremendous opportunities for industry. This paper presents a study on localisation using passive RFID technology. By calibrating the propagation of radio frequency (RF) signals, we develop empirical models on readcount as a function of the distance and orientation between the antenna and the tag. Thereafter we conduct experiments to study the applicability of three widely-used localisation algorithms, namely, triangulation, near-neighbour, and Bayesian inference, for passive RFID localisation. Finally, we briefly compare three algorithms in terms of localisation error, computation time, and deployability. It is discovered that all algorithms perform reasonably well, and no algorithms actually outperform others.

Keywords:

• RFID technology
• localisation
• triangulation
• near-neighbour
• Bayesian inference