RFID Tracking System Research Articles

Applications of Chipless RFID Humidity Sensors to Smart Packaging Solutions.

Packaging solutions have recently evolved to become smart and intelligent thanks to technologies such as RFID tracking and communication systems, but the integration of sensing functionality in these systems is still under active development. In this paper, chipless RFID humidity sensors suitable for smart packaging are proposed together with a novel strategy to tune their performances and their operating range. The sensors are flexible, fast, low-cost and easy to fabricate and can be read wirelessly. The sensitivity and the humidity range where they can be used are adjustable by changing one of the sensor's structural parameters. Moreover, these sensors are proposed as double parameter sensors, using both the frequency shift and the intensity variation of the resonance peak for the measure of the relative humidity. The results show that the sensitivity can vary remarkably among the sensors proposed, together with the operative range. The sensor suitability in two specific smart packaging applications is discussed. In the first case, a threshold sensor in the low-humidity range for package integrity verification is analyzed, and in the second case, a more complex measurement of humidity in non-hermetic packages is investigated. The discussion shows that the sensor configuration can easily be adapted to the different application needs.

RF-Pen: Practical Real-Time RFID Tracking in the Air

Wireless tracing technologies have seen great potentials in many applications, including drawing and writing, gesture-based commanding, and gaming. Many state-of-the-art systems have recently been proposed along this line. However, none of them can strike a balance among hardware complexity, time delay, and accuracy in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we propose RF-Pen, a practical and complete RFID tracking system that achieves centimeter-level real-time tracing with 4 antennas. To do so, RF-Pen mainly employs two key designs, namely selective hologram and hybrid voting. Our selective hologram places antennas in large separation, which not only expedites the tracking process by producing a handful of good-quality candidate points but also maximizes tracing resolution. Nevertheless, a big challenge is ambiguity. To address this, we introduce hybrid voting that effectively integrates RSSI and phase measurements to evaluate the likelihood of all candidate points. This way, a precise initial position and fine-resolution tracing beams are located. We implement RF-Pen using off-the-shelf readers and tags and compare it against state-of-the-art systems. Results show that with a single reader of 4 antennas, RF-pen achieves a median trajectory error of 2.15 cm and a median position error of 12.8 cm, which are <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.7\times$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4.1\times$</tex-math></inline-formula> better than RF-IDraw, respectively.

The Value Proposition of RFID Technology in Tall Prefabricated Timber Buildings

The full benefit of prefabricated timber systems in the construction of multi-story buildings depends on integration and efficiency in the upstream logistics and supply chain. The purpose of this research is therefore to determine the potential value that the use of Radio-Frequency Identification technology (RFID) can contribute to the prefabricated construction of timber, and to undertake the basic development of a RFID tracking model for this purpose. The methods used in this study not only build on the knowledge gained from previous literature, but also include interviews with industry experts, field trial design and field trials. The research showed that the RFID tracking system's value proposition tends to be strongest where there are large scale and vertically integrated supply chains, logistics complexity between a limited number of discrete but partnered supply chain links and/or internal logistical complexity problems. Therefore, five distinct added value stages of RFID applications have been found in incoming delivery logistics, factory panel production, outgoing delivery logistics, on-site installation and third parties who can inspect the finished construction work. Application of RFID technology in prefabrication factory environments, where fixed readers can be used in predefined processes, was found promising. However, due to the temporary nature of the sites and the associated investment, the capacity for high automation levels is thought to be more limited on site.

Improving the lean logistic operations management in transportation by introducing the RFID system

Abstract Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) gained a lot of attention lately, due to the technology revolution, namely the IoT of things, which allowed a wide range of applications in the manufacturing and service sectors. The research reflects the importance of using the RFID tracking system in the supplier’s distributions operations, by reducing the level of inventories’ movement, increasing accuracy in depicting in a timely manner the shipping freight, with no paperwork inaccuracies. In this regard, the methodology is based on a semi-structured interview with managers of transportation companies who have provided information of the transportation performance in both cases of use or not use of the RFID technology. The paperwork mistakes and shipping delay were the indicators registered. In this matter, SPSS quantitative methods, Pearson correlation and linear regressions have been applied. The tables reveal the strong bivariate correlation between the RFID systems, paperwork mistakes and shipment delays. The regression analysis underlines the positive strong correlation between paperwork inaccuracies and shipment delays which means that an increase in document mistakes will lead to a certain amount of time increase in shipping processes.

Parallel Irregular Fusion Estimation Based on Nonlinear Filter for Indoor RFID Tracking System

In practical RFID tracking systems, usually it is impossible that the readers are placed right with a “grid” structure, so effective estimation method is required to obtain the accurate trajectory. Due to the data-driven mechanism, measurement of RFID system is sampled irregularly; therefore the traditional recursive estimation may fail from K to [Formula: see text] sampling point. Moreover, because the distribution density of the readers is nonuniform and multiple measurements might be implemented simultaneously, fusion of estimations also needs to be considered. In this paper, an irregular estimation strategy with parallel structure was developed, where the dynamic model update and states fusion estimation were processed synchronously to achieve real-time indoor RFID tracking. Two nonlinear estimation methods were proposed based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF), respectively. The tracking performances were compared, and the simulation results show that the developed UKF method got lower covariance in indoor RFID tracking while the EKF one cost less calculating time.

Video Enhanced RFID Tracking System

Generally speaking, crimes in which vehicles are used are generally highly organized criminal activities affecting all regions of the world and with clear links to illegal activities and terrorism [3]. Therefore, catching illegal vehicles on the roads is an important preventive measure in security. In this paper, we propose a Video Enhanced RFID Tracking System to monitor the activities of vehicles through the use of readers, tags, and video together. The proposed system retrieves the registered visual properties of vehicles in the environment by querying their RFID tags on the database in the Command Control Center. It processes the video frames simultaneously, and extracts the visual features of detected vehicles. The information collected both from video and RFID database query is then combined in such a way that they validate each other. If an inconsistency is detected in this process an existence of illegal vehicle is found in the environment.

Regression Analysis for Gesture Recognition Using Passive RFID Technology in Smart Home Environments

Gesture recognition is a field of research that consists in recognizing patterns of movement performed by a human using his body parts with or without the help of a comprehensive device (a mouse, a laser, etc.). This particular area as attracted a number of researchers over the years that applied such algorithms in a broad range of disciplines. In particular, it was exploited on early research initiatives with pervasive environments to enable simple communication with automation systems. Nowadays, those environments are used for more than automation. Many researchers, in fact, believe it is one of the most promising solutions to the problems related to ageing of the population. Smart homes are seen as an alternative to the full-time support of a semi-autonomous person by healthcare professional and thus also a potentially economically viable solution to the rising cost of such support. However, researchers are still facing many challenges in that regards, such as the comprehension of the context and of the ongoing activity of daily living. In that equation, gesture recognition could help extract more information from the collected data and thus reinforce the context modeling. The knowledge extracted could even help with monitoring of more fine-grained activities and with the understanding of normal or abnormal behaviors. Gesture recognition is often considered as a solved problem since the techniques to perform it work well as soon as we can track accurately. However, in smart environment, tracking is very imprecise and hard to achieve with limited technology (i.e. noninvasive sensors). In this paper, we present a novel gesture recognition algorithm that works under uncertainty, and that is scalable to the precision of the tracking system. The algorithm is based on the tracking of passive RFID tags installed on all everyday life objects in a smart environment. A set of experimentation in simulation and in a real smart home environment is presented. The results are very encouraging despite the very low accuracy of the passive RFID tracking system.

An Active Low Cost Mesh Networking Indoor Tracking System

Indoor radio frequency tracking systems are generally quite expensive and can vary in accuracy due to interference, equipment quality or other environmental factors. Due to these limiting factors of the technology, many businesses today find it hard to justify investing in RFID tracking technologies to improve the safety, efficiency and security of their working environments. The aim of this project was to provide a budget RFID tracking system that was capable of tracking a person or object through an indoor environment. To minimize the cost of the RFID tracking system, the components of the system were built from existing electronic equipment and hardware. The software was also written to minimize licensing and support fees allowing a cost effective budget RFID tracking system to be developed. The tracking system consists of a tag, reader nodes and a PC reader which utilize synapse RF 100 engines with python scripts embedded on to the chips. The tracking system software operates through a web portal utilizing web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and PHP to allow the tags location to be represented on a two dimensional map using scalable vector graphics. During development of the system a new trilateration algorithm was developed and used convert the signals received from the tag to a virtual position on the map correlating to the actual physical position of the tag. A unique contribution of this system is the low cost of building which we estimate as less than £200 UK sterling for a five node system.

Directed by Directionality: Benefiting from the Gain Pattern of Active RFID Badges

Tracking of people via active badges is important for location-aware computing and for security applications. However, the human body has a major effect on the antenna gain pattern of the device that the person is wearing. In this paper, the gain pattern due to the effect of the human body is experimentally measured and represented by a first-order directional gain pattern model. A method is presented to estimate the model parameters from multiple received signal strength (RSS) measurements. An alternating gain and position estimation (AGAPE) algorithm is proposed to jointly estimate the orientation and the position of the badge using RSS measurements at known-position anchor nodes. Lower bounds on mean squared error (MSE) and experimental results are presented that both show that the accuracy of position estimates can be greatly improved by including orientation estimates in the localization system. Next, we propose a new tracking filter that accepts orientation estimates as input, which we call the orientation-enhanced extended Kalman filter (OE-EKF), which improves tracking accuracy in active RFID tracking systems.

Challenges for building RFID tracking systems across the whole supply chain

Abstract. Eventhoughnumerousarticlesandreallifecaseshavehighlightedthebenefitsofradiofrequencyidentification(RFID)trackingforsupplychainmanagementforalmostadecade,companiesareratherslowto implement the technology. This paper concentrates on researching the reasons for the slow adoptionof RFID tracking in the supply chain management using literature review and multiple case studies asthe research methodology. The literature review of the articles classifies different challenges for RFIDtracking implementation and elicits the academic explanations for the slow acceptance of the technology.The conclusion of the literature review is that most of the published articles have been concentrating onpresenting technological obstacles to RFID tracking implementation, while the problems nowadays areincreasingly organizational or inter-organizational. Also companies usually settle for using RFID trackingto improve their operational processes instead of exploiting the full potential in the technology and theincreased visibility for improving managerial processes of the company, or upgrading the efficiency of thewhole supply chain. In addition to the literature review, five RFID tracking case surveys are presented toprovide experience and insights into managerial decisions concerning supply chain-wide RFID trackingsolutions. Followed by the literature review and case studies, this paper presents a framework, whichsuggests three levels, where different potential challenges to supply chain-wide RFID tracking systemimplementations should be handled: the supply chain, inside a company or inside a certain function.Keywords: RFID, supply chain management, tracking, multiple case study, literature review