A UHF passive RFID tag position estimation approach exploiting mobile robots: phase-only 3D multilateration particle filters with no unwrapping

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 12; p. 1
• Main Authors: Tripicchio, Paolo, D'Avella, Salvatore, Unetti, Matteo, Motroni, Andrea, Nepa, Paolo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.01.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; Antennas; Estimation; Fourth Industrial Revolution; Industry 4.0; industry 40; Internet of Things; Location awareness; logistics; mobile robot; Mobile robots; Narrowband; particle filter; Particle filters; Phase measurement; phase unwrapping; Radio frequency; Radio frequency identification; Radio Frequency Identification (RFID); Radiofrequency identification; Robot dynamics; Synthetic apertures; Three-dimensional displays; Ultrahigh frequencies; warehouse; warehouse logistics
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3393127

Radio-frequency identification is one of the Internet of Things' most promising technologies and has been recently used in combination with mobile robots for logistics in business and retail applications. This manuscript deals with the localization of passive UHF RFID tags within industrial environments employing receiving antennas mounted on a mobile robot by using multilateration techniques that exploit narrowband phase-delay measurements. Two distinct Particle Filter approaches are presented to solve the 3D multilateration problem online and take advantage of a synthetic aperture created by the motion of the robot in the environment. One of the methods can operate in the presence of acquisition jumps since it does not rely on an unwrapping technique. Experimental results show promising performance concerning the recent literature. Moreover, the presented approach enables robust estimations concerning signal loss due to communication disturbances in noisy environments, typical of the industrial setting.