Real-time RFID localization using RSS

Abstract

New computing paradigms have underscored the need to locate objects in an environment, motivating several object localization approaches targeting competing technologies and specific applications. While RFID technology recently emerged as a viable platform for locating objects, several unresolved key challenges precluded higher performance and wider applicability. We present an RFID-based real-time location system that uses Received Signal Strength (RSS) to better model the distance-decaying behavior of radio signals in an orientation-agnostic manner.We experimentally leverage the proposed robust models to simultaneously locate several stationary and mobile objects tagged with passive tags in a realistically noisy indoor environment, with an average accuracy of 0.6 meters. A more general conclusion of this work is that contrary to common belief, RSS can indeed serve as reliable metric for a variety of select applications, including localization.