PRLS-INVES: A General Experimental Investigation Strategy for High Accuracy and Precision in Passive RFID Location Systems

Due to cost-effectiveness and easy-deployment, radio-frequency identification (RFID) location systems are widely utilized into many industrial fields, particularly in the emerging environment of the Internet of Things (IoT). High accuracy and precision are key demands for these location systems. Numerous studies have attempted to improve localization accuracy and precision using either dedicated RFID infrastructures or advanced localization algorithms. But these effects mostly consider utilization of novel RFID localization solutions rather than optimization of this utilization. Practical use of these solutions in industrial applications leads to increased cost and deployment difficulty of RFID system. This paper attempts to investigate how accuracy and precision in passive RFID location systems (PRLS) are impacted by infrastructures and localization algorithms. A general experimental-based investigation strategy, PRLS-INVES, is designed for analyzing and evaluating the factors that impact the performance of a passive RFID location system. Through a case study on passive high frequency (HF) RFID location systems with this strategy, it is discovered that: 1) the RFID infrastructure is the primary factor determining the localization capability of an RFID location system and 2) localization algorithm can improve accuracy and precision, but is limited by the primary factor. A discussion on how to efficiently improve localization accuracy and precision in passive HF RFID location systems is given

A phase-based technique for localization of uhf-rfid tags moving on a conveyor belt: Performance analysis and test-case measurements

A new phase-based technique for localization and tracking of items moving along a conveyor belt and equipped with ultrahigh frequency-radio frequency identification (UHF-RFID) tags is described and validated here. The technique is based on a synthetic-array approach that takes advantage of the fact that the tagged items move along a conveyor belt whose speed and path are known apriori. In this framework, a joint use is done of synthetic-array radar principles, knowledge-based processing, and efficient exploitation of the reader-tag communication signal. The technique can be easily implemented in any conventional reader based on an in-phase and quadrature receiver and it does not require any modification of the reader antenna configurations usually adopted in UHF-RFID portals. Numerical results are used to investigate the performance analysis of such methods, and also to furnish system design guidelines. Finally, the localization capability is also demonstrated through a measurement campaign in a real conveyor belt scenario, showing that a centimeter-order accuracy in the tag position estimation can be achieved even in a rich multipath environment

Smart Pipe System for a Shipyard 4.0

As a result of the progressive implantation of the Industry 4.0 paradigm, many industries are experimenting a revolution that shipyards cannot ignore. Therefore, the application of the principles of Industry 4.0 to shipyards are leading to the creation of Shipyards 4.0. Due to this, Navantia, one of the 10 largest shipbuilders in the world, is updating its whole inner workings to keep up with the near-future challenges that a Shipyard 4.0 will have to face. Such challenges can be divided into three groups: the vertical integration of production systems, the horizontal integration of a new generation of value creation networks, and the re-engineering of the entire production chain, making changes that affect the entire life cycle of each piece of a ship. Pipes, which exist in a huge number and varied typology on a ship, are one of the key pieces, and its monitoring constitutes a prospective cyber-physical system. Their improved identification, traceability, and indoor location, from production and through their life, can enhance shipyard productivity and safety. In order to perform such tasks, this article first conducts a thorough analysis of the shipyard environment. From this analysis, the essential hardware and software technical requirements are determined. Next, the concept of smart pipe is presented and defined as an object able to transmit signals periodically that allows for providing enhanced services in a shipyard. In order to build a smart pipe system, different technologies are selected and evaluated, concluding that passive and active RFID are currently the most appropriate technologies to create it. Furthermore, some promising indoor positioning results obtained in a pipe workshop are presented, showing that multi-antenna algorithms and Kalman filtering can help to stabilize Received Signal Strength (RSS) and improve the overall accuracy of the system.Comment: 43 pages, 25 figures, accepted version of Sensors journal articl

Phase-based variant maximum likelihood positioning for passive UHF-RFID tags

Radio frequency identification (MD) technology brings tremendous advancement in Internet-of-Things, especially in supply chain and smart inventory management. Phase-based passive ultra high frequency RFID tag localization has attracted great interest, due to its insensitivity to the propagation environment and tagged object properties compared with the signal strength based method. In this paper, a phase-based maximum-likelihood tag positioning estimation is proposed. To mitigate the phase uncertainty, the likelihood function is reconstructed through trigonometric transformation. Weights are constructed to reduce the impact of unexpected interference and to augment the positioning performance. The experiment results show that the proposed algorithms realize line-grained tag localization, which achieve centimeter-level lateral accuracy, and less than 15-centimeters vertical accuracy along the altitude of the racks

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

Twins:Device-free Object Tracking using Passive Tags

Without requiring objects to carry any transceiver, device-free based object tracking provides a promising solution for many localization and tracking systems to monitor non-cooperative objects such as intruders. However, existing device-free solutions mainly use sensors and active RFID tags, which are much more expensive compared to passive tags. In this paper, we propose a novel motion detection and tracking method using passive RFID tags, named Twins. The method leverages a newly observed phenomenon called critical state caused by interference among passive tags. We contribute to both theory and practice of such phenomenon by presenting a new interference model that perfectly explains this phenomenon and using extensive experiments to validate it. We design a practical Twins based intrusion detection scheme and implement a real prototype with commercial off-the-shelf reader and tags. The results show that Twins is effective in detecting the moving object, with low location error of 0.75m in average