GOSSIPY: A Distributed Localization System for Internet of Things using RFID Technology

The popularity of smart objects in our daily life fosters a new generation of applications under the umbrella of the Internet of Things (IoT). Such applications are built on a distributed network of heterogeneous context-aware devices, where localization is a key issue. The localization problem is further magnified by IoT challenges such as scalability, mobility and the heterogeneity of objects. In existing localization systems using RFID technology, there is a lack of systems that localize mobile tags using heterogeneous mobile readers in a distributed manner. In this paper, we propose the GOSSIPY system for localizing mobile RFID tags using a group of ad hoc heterogeneous mobile RFID readers. The system depends on cooperation of mobile readers through time-constrained interleaving processes. Readers in a neighborhood share interrogation information, estimate tag locations accordingly and employ both proactive and reactive protocols to ensure timely dissemination of location information. We evaluate the proposed system and present its performance through extensive simulation experiments using ns-3.