RFID-based indoor positioning system

In logistics supply chains, automated guided vehicles are not used owing to the lack of suitable localised positioning systems to guide them. A wide variety of technologies have been researched including vision, sensor networks and radio frequency signals, but there are still issues in cost, accuracy, line of sight and installation of these technologies in situ. This paper describes a low-cost two-dimensional RFID-based positioning system. The position of the RFID reader in two-dimensional space is computed using a weighed function with a localisation exponential function. To find the best value for the localisation exponent, a series of experiments were conducted and the mean error of the expected position was computed on different exponential functions. The research found that the best value for the exponent is 1, and that the accuracy of the system is approximately 76 mm on a 300 mm-spaced RFID array. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.