Fine-Scale Phase-Based Ranging through Walls and Obstructions Using Tunneling RFID Tags

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2021

Abstract

Tunneling tags have already shown their long-range capability for communications and localization in line-of-sight (LoS) with a reader operating in the 5.8 GHz band. In this paper, a received signal phase-based positioning method is investigated using semi-passive and tunneling radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in various non-line-of-sight (NLoS) environments. Experimental results show that a tunneling tag achieves gains above 10.2 dB and 19.6 dB when communicating through a cinder block and a plaster wall, respectively. When using the tunneling tag, with proper calibration, an average distance estimation accuracy of 1.33% and 2.37% is achieved in a hallway and classroom environment with clear LoS. An average estimation error of 1.03% and 2.12% is observed in through-obstruction and through-wall NLOS conditions, respectively.

Journal Title

IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification

Volume

5

Issue

4

First Page

397

Last Page

406

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1109/JRFID.2021.3096221

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