A Robust RFID-Based Method for Precise

Indoor Positioning

Andrew Lim1,2 and Kaicheng Zhang1

1
Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
{iealim, kczhang}@ust.hk
2
School of Computer Science & Engineering
South China University of Technology, Guangdong, PR China

Abstract. A robust method for precise indoor positioning utilizing Ra-

dio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is described. The indoor
environment is partitioned into discrete locations, and a set of RFID
tags are scattered in the environment. Sample reading patterns of RFID
tags are collected at each location by an RFID reader. A pattern recog-
nition and classification method is used, when human, vehicle, or other
carrier moves around the environment with an RFID reader, to estimate
its physical location based on the reading pattern. The resulting esti-
mation error is within one meter. The method is adaptive to different
tag distributions, reader ranges, tag reading defects, and other alterable
physical constraints. Results from extensive experiments show that the
described method is a robust and cost-saving solution to indoor position-
ing problems in logistics industry. A provisional US patent is granted on
the described method.

Keywords: Intelligent Systems, Systems for Real Life Applications, In-

door Positioning.

1 Introduction
Positioning and location identification are useful in a number of industrial fields.
In logistics and transportation domain, the real-time position of each cargo,
vehicle carrier, and even human worker can be valuable information. There are
growing needs for acquiring high-precision indoor location information at a low
cost.

1.1 Background and Related Work

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) has great value in determining the position
of a user around the globe. However, for indoor applications, GPS has some
problems. First, when it comes to indoor or urban outdoor areas, GPS is not
reliable solution due to the poor reception of satellite signals. In addition, in-
door applications usually require a much higher precision than that GPS could
achieve, sometimes as high as within one meter.

M. Ali and R. Dapoigny (Eds.): IEA/AIE 2006, LNAI 4031, pp. 1189–1199, 2006.

c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006
1190 A. Lim and K. Zhang

Many of the existing Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) [1] are based on Wire-
less Local Area Network. Wireless access points are installed in each room and
portable receiving device can determine which room it is in when it receives
signal from access points. This approach would be useful to determine which
room inside a building the tracked subject is in. However the precision is not
high enough for logistics applications. Also there will be problem if any of the
access points fails to work.
There are other technologies that provide more precise positioning. Wi-Fi,
infrared, ultrasonic, or magnetic technologies has been employed in positioning
applications such as [2], [3] and [4]. The use of these technologies comes with
high-cost. And when comes into industrial environment, the performance may
not be good.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a technology invented more than half
a century ago, has recently receive overwhelming attention, especially in its use
in the logistic applications for cargo tracking and identification. For a compre-
hensive understanding of RFID, refer to [5]. There has been notably efforts in
employing RFID in positioning, both in outdoor applications [3] and indoor
applications [6, 7].

1.2 Indoor Positioning – An Industrial Example

Located at the International Container Terminal, SunHing godown, owned by
SunHing Group, is one of the largest distribution centers in Hong Kong. Its
main operations include receiving goods from various manufacture plants in
South China, storing them inside its 11,000 sq ft warehouse, and picking the
cargos and loading them into containers, which are then transshipped to various
locations in Japan, Europe and the U.S.
The receiving, picking and transferring of cargos within SunHing warehouse
are done by more than 20 forklifts. In peak seasons, the operations are quite
busy and error in placement or picking could be costly. SunHing believes that an
indoor positioning system could be used on its forklifts to enhance its operation
accuracy and efficiency.
Usually within a warehouse, a cargo terminal, or a truck depot, we want to
know the position of each vehicle. This position information enables the ware-
house to have better performance measurement, dynamic job scheduling, and
automatic information acquisition. Furthermore, the use of high precision in-
door positioning system is not restricted to such logistics application. It could
also be used in high precision local navigation system or intelligent system where
location-awareness of the mobile agents is required.

2 Our Proposed System

2.1 “Mobile Reader Dispersed Tag” Approach
There exist RFID positioning systems that put tags on mobile agent and place
RFID readers at fixed locations [8, 9]. In this approach, when one tag is being
 A Robust RFID-Based Method for Precise Indoor Positioning 1191

read by a reader, the system verdicts that the mobile agent carrying the tag
is inside the read range of the particular reader. This approach will be practi-
cal for applications in which, mobile agents move around well-partitioned and
separated areas through some checkpoints. Readers are normally placed at such
checkpoints to detect the movement of the agents. However, when the precision
requirement is higher, or the number of checkpoint increases, this “mobile tag
fixed reader” approach becomes impractical. Also, the unstable nature of wireless
communication, especially of the UHF radio wave communication in industrial
environment [10], introduces high error rate when position information of the
mobile agent is only based on the reading of one single tag.
Thus, in contrast to “mobile tag fixed reader” method, a “super-distributed
tag infrastructure” [11] approach is proposed. In this approach, a large number of
passive tags are distributed in the environment, and an RFID reader is carried
by each mobile agent. When an agent moves inside the environment, at each
location one tag is read and its location determined. Successful applications of
such method include [6] and [7]. However, the restriction that only one single
tag could be read at any time is too harsh. To place tags on the floor [6, 7] is
also inconvenient or infeasible in some industrial applications.
Therefore we propose a new “mobile reader dispersed tag” approach: a large
number of tags are dispersed in the environment, allowing more than one tag
being read by a reader in the environment. A mobile agent is first placed at
designated grid points, or “sample points”. “Sample readings” of what tags are
read by reader at each point are collected and stored. After that when the agent
is moving about in the environment, the real-time reading results are collected
and compared against the sample readings; and the location of the agent is
classified into one of the sample points with pattern recognition and classification
techniques.

2.2 System Overview

Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of our proposed RFID-based indoor position-

ing system. The system basically contains Dispersed Tags, Mobile Reading and
Processing Module, and Backend Server. Dispersed tags are a set of fixed tags dis-
tributed in the environment, in this case on the ceiling of the indoor environment.
The Mobile Reading and Processing Module is carried by the mobile agent, for in-
stance, a forklift. The module consists of RFID antenna, RFID reader, PDA, and
wireless adapter. RFID reader controls antenna, which emits and receives UHF
radio waves, and identify the RFID tags inside its reading range. A PDA or a PC
is connected to RFID reader, to control the reader and collect the tag reading
results. The results are merely on what tags are read in the most recent reading
cycle. No additional information, such as signal strength, or direction of tag is
required. The processed reading results are then sent through wireless network to
the backend server, where classification algorithms convert the reading results to
an estimate of the mobile agent’s location. The backend information and control
server could provide positioning service and control for more than one mobile
agent, and can be further integrated into the warehouse management system.
1192 A. Lim and K. Zhang

Fig. 1. Architecture of proposed RFID-based indoor positioning system

2.3 Pattern Matching Formulation

We now formulate the positioning problem in the proposed system as a pattern
matching process:
First, a set R of m RFID tags, each identified by a 96-, 128-, or 256-bit string,
is dispersed in the environment.
Next, we partition the environment into n discrete grid points. The sample
data we collect at the ith (0 ≤ i ≤ n) point is a ternary tuple Si = (xi , yi , oi ),
where
xi is the x-coordinate of ith sample point,
yi is the y-coordinate of ith sample point, and
oi a subset of R, is the set of observed RFID tag identification strings at the
ith sample point.
Finally we define the input and output of the problem.

Input: A sample data set U collected at n points {S1 , S2 , . . . , Sn }, and

A set T of tags observed by a mobile agent at an unknown position,
T ⊆ R.
Output: An integer j (1 ≤ j ≤ n), where (xi , yi ) is the estimated location for T .

3 System Setup and Experiment Design

3.1 System Setup
We set up out proposed system in a quasi-industrial indoor environment in our
re-search center. The effective area is a rectangle of size 4.2 m by 8.4 m. This area
 A Robust RFID-Based Method for Precise Indoor Positioning 1193

Fig. 2. Floor Plan of Experiment Environment

is partitioned into 7 rows and 7 columns, thus creating 49 grids. The width and
length of a grid are not equal. It is made this way so that one grid can perfectly
match with one piece of tile on the ceiling. Fig. 2 shows the floor plan of the
test environment and the partition. Fig. 3(a) and (b) are photos of the floor and
ceiling of the experiment area.
A total number of 176 RFID tags, arranged in 22 columns by 8 rows, are
placed onto the ceiling. In Fig. 2, each tag is illustrated by a small square. Each
rectangular tile on the ceiling has 4 tags at its vertices and another 4 on its two
long sides. The tags used are 4” by 4” Symbol UHF Carton Tag, as shown in
Fig. 4.
A simple carrier is built for the experiment as a mobile agent, as shown in
Fig. 5. One Symbol AR400 RFID Reader with power supply and two Symbol
High Performance Antenna are installed on the carrier. Metal bars are attached
to both long and short sides of the carrier to assist in placing the carrier at
precise locations. The height and angel of the antenna are adjustable. The reader
is connected to a computer that collects the reading results at each location.

3.2 Experiment Design

The main purpose of the experiments is to examine the feasibility of the proposed
method as an effective and practical approach for indoor positioning in logistics
applications. Also, good algorithms for solving the formulated pattern matching
problem are to be discovered. A number of factors related to the performance
1194 A. Lim and K. Zhang

Fig. 3. (a)Experimental Indoor Environment (b)The Ceiling

Fig. 4. A Tag Placed on the Ceiling Fig. 5. Mobile Agent with Reader and
Antenna

of the system are considered: height, angle, orientation and power level of the
antenna, and the density of sample data collection (sampling rate). In total, 7
sets of sample data are collected, as summarized in Table 1.
The standard sample data set U1 is collected at the center of each partitioned
grid, thus having 49 sample points. The standard power level is 255, which is
full power. The standard antenna angel is 0◦ with respect to the horizontal
plane. The standard antenna height is 77 cm (antenna to ceiling 144.5 cm). The
standard orientation of the carrier is facing east (long side of antenna parallel to
long side of the rectangular area). U2 is collected with standard configuration at
both center and boundary of each grid, thus having 15×14 points. U3 through
U6 are sample sets with variations on the power, angel, orientation, and height of
the antenna, as described in Table 1. U7 is the union of U1 and U5 , introducing
another element ri , the orientation, into the tuple (xi , yi , oi ).
Note that, when collecting the readings at every point for each sample set,
an additional 9 readings are collected. Together the 10 readings at each point
are used as testing set of observations at that point with respect to its sample
set. And this testing set is classified against a sample data (normally itself, or a
standard sample set) with a pattern matching algorithm to examine the accuracy
of the classification or the effect of various alteration on the configuration.
 A Robust RFID-Based Method for Precise Indoor Positioning 1195

Table 1. Sample Data Sets

Sample Data Sets Descriptions Sample Points

U1 –7×7 std Standard 7×7
U2 –15×14 std Standard 15×14
U3 –7×7 power192 Power level = 192 (half) 11◦ 7×7
U4 –7×7 slope11 Slope of antenna 11◦ 7×7
U5 –7×7 side Carrier rotated 90◦ (facing north) 7×7
U6 –7×7 height115 Raised antenna 7×7
U7 –7×7 std side mix U1 ∪ U5 7×7×2

4 Pattern Matching Algorithms

We have tested several different algorithms to solve the pattern matching prob-
lem formulated in 2.3. Each algorithm runs over all 6 sample data and the re-
sults are compared. We find that two algorithms – “Intersection over Union” and
“Tag-to-Location Mapping Count’ – are able to provide sufficiently good results,
as compared to the rest. They are describes in this chapter and the experiment
results presented in Chapter 5.

4.1 “Intersection over Union” Algorithm

As in the formulation of the problem in 2.3, the algorithm takes in a sample
data set U and an Observation T , and outputs an integer j – the index of the
matched pattern. Following are the steps to find such j:
1. For each Si ∈ U , compute the “similarity” between Si and T as follows
|Si ∩ T |
Sim(Si , T ) = (1)
|Si ∪ T |

2. Choose j such that Sim(Sj , T ) ≥ Sim(Si , T ) for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n.

Equation (1) merely suggests that the “similarity” between the observation set
and a sample set is the quotient of the number of their common elements over
the number of their unified elements.

4.2 “Tag-to-Location Mapping Count” Algorithm

The “Tag-to-Location Mapping Count” algorithm matches observation set T to
a sample set Sj ∈ U in the following way:
1. Define tag-to-location mapping, a mapping from a tag id string to a set of
integers, which are the indices of the tag’s associated sample points.

T T L(s) = { p | s ∈ op , 1 ≤ i ≤ n} (2)
1196 A. Lim and K. Zhang

2. Given T , for each sample point at (xi , yi ), compute the mapping count score
  0, if i ∈ T T L(s)
score(i, T ) = (3)
1, if i ∈ T T L(s)
s∈T

3. Choose j such that score(j, T ) ≥ score(i, T ) for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n.

Intuitively, (3) suggests that for each tag in an observation, we add one count
to every sample point where its corresponding sample set contains the tag. The
sample point that receives most count will be considered as solution. Note that,
however, this would be faulty when dealing with observations at boundary areas,
as Fig. 6 explains. Thus we exclude the boundary points when evaluating the
performance of “Tag-to-Location Mapping Count” algorithm.

Fig. 6. “Tag-to-Location Mapping Count” Algorithms Runs into Problem with Bound-
ary Cases

5 Experimental Results
5.1 Comparison on Algorithms
To compare the effectiveness of the classification algorithms, 10 readings col-
lected at each point in 7×7 sample data are used as observations and U1 is used

Table 2. Comparison on Two Algorithms

Sample Test Test “Intersection over “Tag-to-Location

Data Data Points Union” Mapping Count”
Errors Error Rate Errors Error Rate
U1 U1 250 3 1.2% 1 0.4%
U1 U3 250 113 45.2% 72 28.8%
U1 U4 250 5 2.0% 36 14.4%
U1 U5 250 81 32.4% 111 44.4%
U1 U6 250 143 57.2% 116 46.4%
U2 U2 1210 43 3.55% 72 5.95%
 A Robust RFID-Based Method for Precise Indoor Positioning 1197

as sample data set. The reading accuracy are presented in Table 2. Boundary
points are excluded for the comparison. Thus for row 1–5, there are 5×5×10=250
test cases. And for row 6, there are 11×11×10=1210 test cases.
We can see that, both algorithms perform well on U1 –7×7 std self-validation
test case. Each algorithm outperforms the other in some of the rest test cases. We
also observe that change of power, orientation and height of the antenna while
using the standard sample data significantly reduces the positioning accuracy.

5.2 Positioning Accuracy of the Proposed Method

Table 3 presents the results of the “Intersection over Union” algorithm run-
ning over each same sample data and test data. For all the test cases, our pro-
posed method could provide >97% accuracy in determining the correct position.
Furthermore, for the <3% error cases, the average error on x and y is within
0.50 unit with respect to the width and length of one tile, which are within 1
meter.

Table 3. Positioning Accuracy

Sample Data Test Data Errors Test Points Error Rate

U1 –7×7 std U1 11 490 2.24%
U3 –7×7 power192 U3 2 490 0.41%
U4 –7×7 slope11 U4 0 490 0.00%
U5 –7×7 side U5 5 490 1.02%
U6 –7×7 height115 U6 2 490 0.41%
U2 –15×14 std U2 43 2100 2.05%

5.3 Discussion on Other Factors Related to Accuracy

Through experiment, we also verified that our proposed solution is able to de-
termine the orientation of the carrier by adding an orientation attribute in the
sample data tuple, generating sample data U7 . Using it as a sample data, we
achieved 2.45% error rate in 7×7 std case and 1.43% 7×7 side case.
From the experiment results, the following recommendations could be made to
ensure a high accuracy of the positioning system. First, height and power level of
the antenna should be consistent in the whole system. A small change in height or
power may lead to big variation on the observation and damage the performance,
as one could compare the error rates in Table 2. Second, a slight variation of
antenna angle with respect to horizontal plane would not affect the accuracy too
much, as shown in Table 2 row 3. This suggests that the method is practical for
industrial application where carrier moves on uneven floor in high speed with
vibration. Finally, increase on the sampling rate, as we expected, would generally
produce higher accuracy (error rate reduced from 2.24% to 1.02% on 7×7 std
when sample data changed from 7×7 std to 15×14 std).
1198 A. Lim and K. Zhang

6 Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper, we identify the importance of precise indoor positioning problem

in industry applications. We propose a new approach – “mobile reader dispersed
tag”, allowing multiple tags be read each time, to combat the RF-unfriendly
environment in real industry workplace. We formulate the positioning problem
as pattern matching problem and propose two algorithms that are particular
effective. Extensive experiments are carried out and several factors in the sys-
tem are examined. We conclude that our method achieved >97% positioning
accuracy with <1 m error. We also propose a simple approach for identifying the
orientation of the carrier in addition to location, which adds on the practicality
of the proposed system.
The presented method has several improvements and advantages: It is more
precise than existing WLAN-based indoor positioning system. It is low cost so-
lution, since no battery-support is needed for the passive RFID tags, and no
information on RF signal strength is required. It is robust to environment noise
and tag failure. Finally it provides a way to determine the orientation of the
carrier. Future work includes improving of current pattern matching algorithms,
possibly with online-learning and reasoning, solving more general 360◦ orienta-
tion problem, and improving the experiment design to estimate the precision of
the system on continuous points in the environment.

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