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Exploitation of the RFID technology for

autonomous living
Alessandra Costanzo, University of Bologna (ITALY)

(invited paper)

Abstract— This paper presents the architecture overview can be used as the packaging of a customized RFID reader,
and the main features of the project HABITAT (Home able to identify and detect people movements inside a typical
Assistance Based on the Internet of Things for the AuTonomy domestic room. An armchair is augmented with a distributed
of everybody) which consists of an Internet of things platform network of wireless sensors able to monitor the occupant
based on wireless sensors and RFID technologies. The project
posture ant their identity at the same time [3]. Wearable RFID
aim has been the design and development of smart devices, to
sustain elderly people autonomy at home or in assisted tags can be worn by the users in a discrete way, like a brooch,
communities. Hardware and software technologies are a pendant, or with the antenna directly integrated in the textile
employed to combined and fuse information coming from materials.
different smart objects, for real-time actions or for medium One significant challenge of the project has been the efficient
term monitoring. In particular the exploitation of customized processing of data collection from sensors and the derived
RFID solutions for continuous tracking of people movements, to elaborated information from them, including actuation
be embedded into the platform, is described. A peculiar operations strategies in case of emergency. Autonomous
characteristic of the HABITAT smart objects is their external decision-making capabilities has been applied to the digital
appearance, being highly technological but non-invasive so that
representation (smart space) of the actual environment. For
they may part of furnishing accessories, thus allowing the
assistive house to be far from a hospitalized aspect. this purpose, a general-purpose infrastructure has been
developed in order to manage any possible interaction and
Keywords—People tracking, RFID, inclusive design, Ambient data fusion among the different technologies of the smart
Assisted Living, Internet of Things. objects [4]. Furthermore the platform has been designed to be
open, in order to include new smart objects and new data
I. INTRODUCTION elaboration as the users needs evolve.
One of the most urgent exploitation of the smart spaces The present work has the goal of providing the description of
paradigm, is probably in the field of ambient assisting the overall HABITAT platform, resulting from the
living(AAL) to be developed for both private and community cooperation of more than twenty researchers with multi-
residences. Reliable and real-time smart spaces are expected disciplinary background; details on the various technologies
to allow elderly people and/or individuals, with chronic adopted, to complete the HABITAT platform, can be found
diseases or with the need for assistance, to be safely in the references [2]-[4].
monitored and assisted at home. Indeed, according to the
World Health Organization (WHO), the elderly population
over 65 years of age will be more numerous than the teens
under the age of 14 by 2050 [1]. This will create a significant
socio-economic impact and it is expected to be the most
challenging objective of future health care models. Smart
home platforms, equipped with the typical technologies of the
IoT, such as RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification),
Wearable Electronics, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Artificial Intelligence, are nowadays mature enough to offer
a solution that can provide extended people independence
with enough reliability. Anyway these technologies need a
multi-disciplinary approach so that a concurrent design of
each smart object, and its integration with the others, is
performed, as summarized in Fig.1. Differently from most of
the current solutions proposed, the technologies addressed in
Fig. 1. The HABITAT goals and technologies.
this project have been implemented in such a way that they
are transparent for the users and they must ensure reduced II. THE HABITAT PLATFORM
latency and sufficient reliability for the caregiver. This has
been obtained after a deep user-oriented analysis of the needs,
The HABITAT platform has been developed to integrate a
form both the cares recipients and the caregivers point of
heterogeneous set of smart devices to exchange information
views [2]. Furthermore, the technological devices have been
with a unique assisted environment. A schematic
designed with the constraint of being able to be drowned in
configuration of such platform is reported in Fig. 2: many
everyday objects, in order to make them part of the dwelling
everyday objects include several wireless sensors, such as
itself and to avoid the feeling of hospitalization at home,
accelerometers, pressure sensors, RFID tags to allow the
typical of many AAL proposals. As an example, a wall frame
collection of physical data signals to be subsequently

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elaborated or fused with each other. Some other devices are
conceived to act as interfaces among the sensors and the
platform: this functionality is a strategic one in order to
realize an open platform able not only to interact with legacy
devices belonging to different technologies and standards,
but also to allow further smart objects to be seamless
integrated in the HABITAT platform, depending on the needs
changes. As a proof-of-concept of the platform, Fig. 2 shows
the cooperation of: i) a belt including sensors for the gait
analysis, ii) an armchair developed on purpose to include
pressure sensors for posture control and an RFID tag, to
identify the furniture thus seamless match it with the identity
of the person seated, iii) a pendant hosting an active RFID tag
and iv) a wall lamp, hosting the RFID reader. The last two
objects actually represent one full smart object since they
cooperate with each other, and with the platform, itself in
order to track the assisted people in the indoor environment.
The symbolic circular crown, named SEPA (SPARQL Event
Processing Architecture) [6], is a Web-based architecture
designed to support the development of distributed, dynamic,
context-aware and interoperable services and applications. Its
role is to provide an interface layer that enables the detection
and notification of changes. Finally such data are further
elaborated into more complex events by the knowledge based
CEP engine. This engine is a Decision Support System based
on Artificial Intelligent algorithm with the role of managing
the data flow of data from the smart environment. This is
accomplished by ordering the events based on their
complexity and on their temporal occurrence. One peculiar
aspect of this procedure is related to the need for timing both
the sensor data acquisition and the notification generation
(to/from the subject or caregiver), as they are an integral part
of the set of events to be analyzed [4].
In the following section a detailed description of the
localization system is provided.
Fig. 2. The smart objects and the HABITAT open platform based on a
decision support engine.
III. RFID-BASED PEOPLE TRACKING TRACKING SYSTEM
The indoor localization system, adopted in the framework of
HABITAT is a customized RFID reader, augmented with a
2-D mono-pulse RADAR antenna system [5] to perform
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azimuthal and elevation scanning of tagged people present in
an indoor environment. The whole system has been designed
in a multi-layer configuration in order to obtain a compact
overall layout but allowing at the same time the radiative
subsystem to be designed with its maximum radiation
efficiency. The photo of the front view of the system,
showing radiating front-end, is reported in Fig. 3 where a
two-dimensional patch array is shown embedded in a frame
attached to the wall.
Fig. 2. The HABITAT RFID tracking reader based on a two-dimensional
patch array for ambient scanning.
In the back side of the patch array the radio sub-system is
designed in order to simultaneously provide in the same
direction two different radiation patterns: the Sum (Δ),
obtained by in-phase feeding of the antennas, and the
Difference (Σ), obtained by out-of-phase feeding of the array
[5]. The four-element arrangement allows the scanning to be
performed in the elevation and azimuthal planes. In this way
the correct angular position of the worn tags, with centimeter-
level accuracy, is obtained. For the calculation of the distance
between the tag and the RFID reader, the maximum value of
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is also used,
compared with the corresponding values measured at
controlled distance (i.e., one meter) and a path-loss model to
simply characterize the radio channel of the indoor scenario
under evaluation [5].
The peculiarity of this localization system is that it does not
rely on reference nodes so that the system can be moved from
a room to another one, depending on the needs. Only a
preliminary calibration of the indoor environment is worthy
to be carried out in order to characterize the indoor radio
channel with respect to the chosen location of the RFID
system. Fig. 4 shows the sectorization of a typical domestic
room: usually three zones are sufficient and for each zone
reference measurements are carried out at a fixed distance of
1 meter and are used to predict in real time the moving person
position in combination with the actual position
measurements.
The frame embedding the system can been located in the wall
at the typical human height (eg.165 cm), suitable to minimize
the indoor radio channel interferences. A fully wearable tag
 



    


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has been designed, using denim as the substrate and adhesive Table 1
copper for the metal layer, in order to be embedded in the Tag
garments of the people to be tracked. Real Measured
Height: 3D Position
Both the reader and the tags adopt the radio CC2530 from Position Position
Real vs Error (%)
(x0; y0) (xm; ym)
Texas Instruments (TI), a System on a Chip (SoC) that Measured
enables radio communication at the 2.4 GHz Band. This
#1 (1.80; 1.67) (1.87; 1.97) 1.55 1.45 13.11
operating frequency has been preferred with respect to the
standard UHF RFID frequency to ensure higher accuracy of
#2 (2.70; 1.00) (2.67; 1.13) 1.55 1.53 7.23
the mono-pulse operation.
#3 (2.70; 2.57) (2.52; 2.33) 1.25 1.10 11.64

#4 (2.70; 1.00) (2.67; 1.00) 1.25 1.16 5.58

#5 (3.30; 1.97) (3.37; 1.95) 0.95 0.83 5.98

#6 (2.10; 2.27) (2.18; 2.68) 0.95 0.90 16.70

#7 (2.10; 1.37) (2.09; 1.43) 0.95 0.90 4.68

#8 (2.40; 1.07) (2.55; 0.98) 0.28 0.64 34.55

#9 (3.30; 1.67) (3.44; 1.67) 0.28 0.00 17.50

#10 (2.70; 2.57) (2.77; 2.63) 0.28 0.00 11.40

Fig. 2. A demonstrative room with the calibration zones.
The tridimensional positioning measurements performed
by the anchorless localization system currently in use have
shown good accuracy both in 2D-position retrieval and in
height detection; mean errors of the order of ten centimetres
were encountered (within a room of about 30 m2),
corresponding approximately to a wavelength for the selected
operating frequency of 2.4 GHz, as reported in Table 1.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this work, a system composed of a customized RFID
reader augmented with 3D localization capabilities able to
continuously tracking people in indoor environment has been
reviewed and described. The system is integrated into an open
platform able to fuse data from different smart objects,
performing heterogeneous monitor activities in real time. AI
algorithms allow the platform to be a proactive instrument
adoptable in AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) environments
for elderly people living in their own houses or in daycare
centers. The RFID system has a compact design and can be
embedded in everyday objects. It can be useful not only for
real-time tracking of tagged people but also for medium term
activities monitoring being a state-of-the-art technology at
home but not invasive for the its habitants.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was partly supported by the European Commission
and the Emilia-Romagna Region, within the framework of
the Regional Operative Project “HABITAT” (Home
Assistance Based on the Internet of Things for the
AuTonomy of Everybody) POR-FESR 2014-2020
(http://www.eng.habitatproject.info/).
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