Advanced Radio Frequency Identification Design and Applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a modern wireless data transmission and reception technique for applications including automatic identification, asset tracking and security surveillance. This book focuses on the advances in RFID tag antenna and ASIC design, novel chipless RFID tag design, security protocol enhancements along with some novel applications of RFID

Survey and Systematization of Secure Device Pairing

Secure Device Pairing (SDP) schemes have been developed to facilitate secure communications among smart devices, both personal mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Comparison and assessment of SDP schemes is troublesome, because each scheme makes different assumptions about out-of-band channels and adversary models, and are driven by their particular use-cases. A conceptual model that facilitates meaningful comparison among SDP schemes is missing. We provide such a model. In this article, we survey and analyze a wide range of SDP schemes that are described in the literature, including a number that have been adopted as standards. A system model and consistent terminology for SDP schemes are built on the foundation of this survey, which are then used to classify existing SDP schemes into a taxonomy that, for the first time, enables their meaningful comparison and analysis.The existing SDP schemes are analyzed using this model, revealing common systemic security weaknesses among the surveyed SDP schemes that should become priority areas for future SDP research, such as improving the integration of privacy requirements into the design of SDP schemes. Our results allow SDP scheme designers to create schemes that are more easily comparable with one another, and to assist the prevention of persisting the weaknesses common to the current generation of SDP schemes.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, accepted at IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 2017 (Volume: PP, Issue: 99

Sensors and Systems for Indoor Positioning

This reprint is a reprint of the articles that appeared in Sensors' (MDPI) Special Issue on “Sensors and Systems for Indoor Positioning". The published original contributions focused on systems and technologies to enable indoor applications

Indoor navigation for the visually impaired : enhancements through utilisation of the Internet of Things and deep learning

Wayfinding and navigation are essential aspects of independent living that heavily rely on the sense of vision. Walking in a complex building requires knowing exact location to find a suitable path to the desired destination, avoiding obstacles and monitoring orientation and movement along the route. People who do not have access to sight-dependent information, such as that provided by signage, maps and environmental cues, can encounter challenges in achieving these tasks independently. They can rely on assistance from others or maintain their independence by using assistive technologies and the resources provided by smart environments. Several solutions have adapted technological innovations to combat navigation in an indoor environment over the last few years. However, there remains a significant lack of a complete solution to aid the navigation requirements of visually impaired (VI) people. The use of a single technology cannot provide a solution to fulfil all the navigation difficulties faced. A hybrid solution using Internet of Things (IoT) devices and deep learning techniques to discern the patterns of an indoor environment may help VI people gain confidence to travel independently. This thesis aims to improve the independence and enhance the journey of VI people in an indoor setting with the proposed framework, using a smartphone. The thesis proposes a novel framework, Indoor-Nav, to provide a VI-friendly path to avoid obstacles and predict the user s position. The components include Ortho-PATH, Blue Dot for VI People (BVIP), and a deep learning-based indoor positioning model. The work establishes a novel collision-free pathfinding algorithm, Orth-PATH, to generate a VI-friendly path via sensing a grid-based indoor space. Further, to ensure correct movement, with the use of beacons and a smartphone, BVIP monitors the movements and relative position of the moving user. In dark areas without external devices, the research tests the feasibility of using sensory information from a smartphone with a pre-trained regression-based deep learning model to predict the user s absolute position. The work accomplishes a diverse range of simulations and experiments to confirm the performance and effectiveness of the proposed framework and its components. The results show that Indoor-Nav is the first type of pathfinding algorithm to provide a novel path to reflect the needs of VI people. The approach designs a path alongside walls, avoiding obstacles, and this research benchmarks the approach with other popular pathfinding algorithms. Further, this research develops a smartphone-based application to test the trajectories of a moving user in an indoor environment

Location estimation in a 3D environment using radio frequency identification tags

RFID tag location estimation in a 3D environment is investigated. The location of the tag with unknown coordinates can be estimated with certain accuracy. However, accuracy can be improved using the knowledge based on measurement of additional reference tags with known location. This thesis studies the mathematical formulation and practical realization of location sensing using RFID tags. Deviating from the standard use of RFID technology which employs one tag reader to identify the presence of tag, here multiple tag readers with known location are used to estimate the physical location of an individual tag, with/without the help of few reference tags with known locations. Mathematical model of this concept has been developed based on distance variations in terms of signal strength. Experimental approach with limited range passive tags has been carried out. Since the range of the RFID system was limited only to a few inches, signal strength variations were insignificant. Instead, time domain measurements with the help of an external antenna were conducted. The composite signal width including of the wake up signal of the interrogator, travel time between the interrogator and tag, and the tag\u27s response was measured and quantified. It was observed that the width of the signal was proportional to the distance between the tag reader and the tag. It was noticed that the use of four RFID tag readers yielded fairly accurate results to identify the location the tag based on the mathematical formulation developed here. Additionally, concept of trilateration has also been extended for tracking the tag of unknown location without the use of reference tags. Archival data set corresponding to all tag location due to four different tag readers was compiled. The unknown tag was probed with four tag readers and matching the data to the archival data set yielded unique and accurate results for its unknown location. It was demonstrated that both approaches were proved to be cost-effective techniques and estimation of the location of a specific tag has been achieved with sufficient accuracy

Antennas And Wave Propagation In Wireless Body Area Networks: Design And Evaluation Techniques

Recently, fabrication of miniature electronic devices that can be used for wireless connectivity becomes of great interest in many applications. This has resulted in many small and compact wireless devices that are either implantable or wearable. As these devices are small, the space for the antenna is limited. An antenna is the part of the wireless device that receives and transmits a wireless signal. Implantable and wearable antennas are very susceptible to harmful performance degradation caused by the human body and very difficult to integrate, if not designed properly. A designer need to minimize unwanted radiation absorption by the human body to avoid potential health issues. Moreover, a wearable antenna will be inevitably exposed to user movements and has to deal with influences such as crumpling and bending. These deformations can cause degraded performance or a shifted frequency response, which might render the antenna less effective. The existing wearable and implantable antennas’ topologies and designs under discussion still suffer from many challenges such as unstable antenna behavior, low bandwidth, considerable power generation, less biocompatibility, and comparatively bigger size. The work presented in this thesis focused on two main aspects. Part one of the work presents the design, realization, and performance evaluation of two wearable antennas based on flexible and textile materials. In order to achieve high body-antenna isolation, hence, minimal coupling between human body and antenna and to achieve performance enhancement artificial magnetic conductor is integrated with the antenna. The proposed wearable antennas feature a small footprint and low profile characteristics and achieved a wider -10 dB input impedance bandwidth compared to wearable antennas reported in literature. In addition, using new materials in wearable antenna design such as flexible magneto-dielectric and dielectric/magnetic layered substrates is investigated. Effectiveness of using such materials revealed to achieve further improvements in antenna radiation characteristics and bandwidth and to stabilize antenna performance under bending and on body conditions compared to artificial magnetic conductor based antenna. The design of a wideband biocompatible implantable antenna is presented. The antenna features small size (i.e., the antenna size in planar form is 2.52 mm3), wide -10 dB input impedance bandwidth of 7.31 GHz, and low coupling to human tissues. In part two, an overview of investigations done for two wireless body area network applications is presented. The applications are: (a) respiratory rate measurement using ultra-wide band radar system and (b) an accurate phase-based localization method of radio frequency identification tag. The ultimate goal is to study how the antenna design can affect the overall system performance and define its limitations and capabilities. In the first studied application, results indicate that the proposed sensing system is less affected and shows less error when an antenna with directive radiation pattern, low cross-polarization, and stable phase center is used. In the second studied application, results indicate that effects of mutual coupling between the array elements on the phase values are negligible. Thus, the phase of the reflected waves from the tag is mainly determined by the distance between the tag and each antenna element, and is not affected by the induced currents on the other elements

Recent Advances in Indoor Localization Systems and Technologies

Despite the enormous technical progress seen in the past few years, the maturity of indoor localization technologies has not yet reached the level of GNSS solutions. The 23 selected papers in this book present the recent advances and new developments in indoor localization systems and technologies, propose novel or improved methods with increased performance, provide insight into various aspects of quality control, and also introduce some unorthodox positioning methods

Empowering the blind: contactless activity recognition with commodity software-defined radio and ultra-high-frequency radio frequency identification

his study presents a novel computational radio frequency identification (RFID) system designed specifically for assisting blind individuals, utilising software-defined radio (SDR) with coherent detection. The system employs battery-less ultra-high-frequency (UHF) tag arrays in Gen2 RFID systems, enhancing the transmission of sensed information beyond standard identification bits. Our method uses an SDR reader to efficiently manage multiple tags with Gen2 preambles implemented on a single transceiver card. The results highlight the system’s real-time capability to detect movements and direction of walking within a four-meter range, indicating significant advances in contactless activity monitoring. This system not only handles the complexities of multiple tag scenarios but also delineates the influence of system parameters on RFID operational efficiency. This study contributes to assistive technology, provides a platform for future advancements aimed at addressing contemporary limitations in pseudo-localisation, and offers a practical, affordable assistance system for blind individuals