The area of passive UHF RFID is mostly a niche application for tracking of small goods. Accurate localization of tagged objects could be beneficial in numerous applications, such as warehouse and point-of-sale portals, salesrooms, or archives. Although there has been considerable research on this issue since 2005, accurate positioning remains elusive. There are two major reasons for this: Severe multipath propagation due to the backscatter nature (degenerate channels) and the portal setup (resembling industrial environments) is the dominant source of errors. In combination with limitations enforced by the design of passive UHF RFID (low-power, low-complexity tags; high throughput of tags in portals), this makes ranging in passive UHF RFID a very challenging task.

The question treated and answered by this project is: “Is it possible to determine the position of a passive UHF RFID tag given a set of readers at known positions and within the limitations of passive UHF RFID? If so, how?”

Related publications

• (Old data) Lecture or Presentation Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2011) Tag Localization in Passive UHF RFID.. [more info]
• Anthology Arnitz D. (2011) Workshop: "Tag Localization in Passive UHF RFID" at IEEE RFID 2011.. [more info]
• Conference paper Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2011) Wideband Characterization of Backscatter Channels. (pp. 205-211). [more info]
• Conference paper Li G., Arnitz D., Ebelt R., Mühlmann U., Witrisal K. & Vossiek M. (2011) Bandwidth dependence of CW ranging to UHF RFID tags in severe multipath environments. in IEEE International Conference on RFID (pp. 19-25). [more info]
• Doctoral Thesis Arnitz D. (2011) Tag Localization in Passive UHF RFID.. [more info]
• Website / Web publication Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2010) The PARIS Simulation Framework.. [more info]
• (Old data) Lecture or Presentation Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2010) Ultra-Wideband Characterization of UHF RFID Channels for Ranging and Positioning.. [more info]
• Conference paper Arnitz D., Adamiuk G., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2010) UWB channel sounding for ranging and positioning in passive UHF RFID. in COST 2100 Management Committee Meeting (pp. -). [more info]
• Conference paper Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2010) Tag-Based Sensing and Positioning in Passive UHF RFID: Tag Reflection. (pp. 51-56). [more info]
• Journal article Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2010) UWB Ranging in Passive UHF RFID: Proof of Concept. in Electronics Letters, 46(20), p. 1401-1402. [more info] [doi]
• Poster Arnitz D., Mühlmann U. & Witrisal K. (2010) Wideband Characterization of UHF RFID Channels for Ranging and Positioning.. [more info]
• Conference paper Arnitz D., Mühlmann U., Gigl T. & Witrisal K. (2009) Wideband System-Level Simulator for Passive UHF RFID. in IEEE International Conference on RFID (pp. 28-33). [more info]
• Journal article Arnitz D., Witrisal K. & Mühlmann U. (2009) Multi-Frequency Continuous-Wave Radar Approach to Ranging in Passive UHF RFID. in IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 57(5), p. 1398-1405. [more info] [doi]