The design and implementation of a cost-effective RFID indoor localization system

Recently, there has been growing interest in indoor localization, because numerous applications depend on the rapid and accurate position estimation of tagged objects. While RFID-based indoor localization is attractive, the need for a large-scale and high-density deployment of readers and reference tags is costly. By using mobile readers mounted on guide rails, we design and implement a cost-effective RFID indoor localization system, which requires neither reference tags nor RSSI functions, for stock-taking and searching in warehouse operations. In particular, we install two guide rails, which can allow a reader to move horizontally or vertically, on the ceiling of a warehouse or workshop. We then propose a continuous scanning algorithm to improve the accuracy for locating a single tagged object, and a category-based scheduling algorithm to shorten the time for locating multiple tagged objects. Our primary experimental results show that the system can achieve high time efficiency and localization accuracy in the indoor localization.