Localization and Tracking Based on RFID Technologies

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering


PhD Thesis Defence


Title: "Localization and Tracking Based on RFID Technologies"

By

Mr. Yiyang Zhao


Abstract

RFID is an emerging technology, which is widely used in many areas, especially 
in tracking and localization for ubiquitous computing. Since the principles are 
quite different, the applications of localization of active and passive RFID 
tags make a great difference. In my research, both types are considered. To 
enable the pervasive usage of RFID systems in practice, a lot of challenges 
should be solved, including uncertain characteristics of RF signal in an indoor 
environment, blocking effects by moving objects and stochastically suitable 
reading performance of passive tags for different power levels. For dealing 
with above issues, I develop theoretical principles and de-sign practical 
algorithms. Especially, I focus on the localization issue of the passive RFID 
system. Since passive tags are widely used in many applications, for example, 
supply chain, food industry, warehouse management, and transportation and 
logistics. In such applications, the location information of tags is extremely 
critical. However, the uncertain properties of Received Signal Strength 
Indicators (RSSI), various backscattering on different power levels and 
directional reading of readers make traditional ranging-based approaches not 
work well in passive RFID system scenarios. Although absolute positions are 
difficult to obtain, we can estimate locations by building a relative 
relationship between tags. To reduce the effect of above limitations, I propose 
a range-free approach named LPT to establish a relative graph. Through 
implementations in real RFID systems, I evaluate my approaches and compare them 
with previous works. The results show the effectiveness and accuracy of my 
methods. The proposed approaches can be further applied to other application 
scenarios.


Date:			Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Time:			10:00am – 12:00noon

Venue:			Room 3301A
 			Lifts 17/18

Chairman:		Prof. Philip Mok (ECE)

Committee Members:	Prof. Lionel Ni (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Shing-Chi Cheung
                    	Prof. Yunhao Liu
                         Prof. Guohua Chen (CBME)
                         Prof. Jian-nong Cao (Comp., PolyU)


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