Technology and Health Care 26 (2018) 11–16 11

DOI 10.3233/THC-171402
IOS Press

A passive RFID-based location system for

personnel and asset monitoring

Rong-Shue Hsiao∗ , Chun-Hao Kao, Tian-Xiang Chen and Jui-Lun Chen

Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 10608, Taiwan

Abstract.
BACKGROUND: Typical radio frequency identification (RFID) access control system can be ineffective if an unauthorized
person tailgates an authorized person through an access area.
OBJECTIVE: To propose a system by using indoor locating and tracking techniques address this problem, which is to prevent
unauthorized Alzheimer’s and dementia patients from getting lost including by tailgating.
METHODS: To achieve accurate target location, passive RFID deployment strategy is studied and a fingerprinting based
passive RFID localization algorithm is proposed. The proposed system was evaluated in a building environment to simulate
the performance of access control. RFID reader was installed on ceiling near the access area and tags were stitched on both
shoulders of the experiment subject’s garments.
RESULTS: The probability of the error distance within 0.3 m achieved 97% in the warning area; the location precision achieved
97% within 0.4 m in the monitoring area.
CONCLUSIONS: The result showed that if an unauthorized person enters the restricted area, the system can initiate an alert
signal accurately. Therefore, the proposed system is very suitable to be used in nursing home or hospital to prevent unauthorized
personnel and assets entering/exiting a confined location.

Keywords: Indoor location, access control, passive RFID

1. Introduction

In nursing homes, one of the problems with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients is that they can easily
get lost [1,2]. Therefore, this is very important for the caregiver to keep track of the patients’ location us-
ing effective location systems. Passive radio frequency identification (RFID) system has the advantages
of low cost, easy to carry. Many researchers have utilized RFID technology in developing access control
system. In [3], the researchers combine RFID system with a face recognition system to improve the au-
thentication efficiency and to enhance the security of access control system. In [4], the authors proposed
a security and access control system which combines RFID technology and camera to track the person’s
movement and to restrict the unauthorized person from entering/exiting the compound. However, camera
is usually restricted to be used in the system for privacy reasons.
Real-time location system (RTLS) is a technology that can be used to track and identify the location of
assets and/or people in real-time. An RTLS consists of specialized location sensors (receivers or readers)
to receive wireless signals from tags attached to people of interest and/or objects, to determine where

∗
Corresponding author: Rong-Shue Hsiao, Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology,
Taipei, Taiwan. E-mail: rshsiao@ntut.edu.tw.

0928-7329/18/$35.00 c 2018 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
12 R.-S. Hsiao et al. / A passive RFID-based location system for personnel and asset monitoring

Fig. 1. System architecture.

the tagged entities are located. The location information can be used in many ways to improve security,
safety, and service quality [5]. In [8], the authors proposed a passive RFID-based location system for
mobile equipment positioning in hospitals. In [9], the authors proposed an Alzheimer’s RTLS to track all
the patients instantaneously in real time and help in analyzing patient spatial movement for enhancing
their care management.
Localization accuracy is generally used to evaluate the RTLS performance. However, the accuracy
should be considered according to the requirements of the application [10]. To track Alzheimer’s pa-
tients, the two most important factors are the localization accuracy and price [11]. Although passive
RFID based RTLS is low cost, it suffers from localization accuracy problem in indoor environment.
This is caused by the effect of multipath radio propagation and interference. For the indoor location, the
location fingerprinting technique associates location-dependent received signal strength (RSS) signa-
tures to infer the location [12,13]. This method has been proved to be very accurate for indoor location.
Therefore, this paper proposes a fingerprinting based ultra high frequency (UHF) passive RFID location
system which can achieve the requirement of accurate target location. In addition, the proposed location
system incorporates with an alarm system, which can prevent the patients from following the authorized
people to leave the confined area.

2. Methods

2.1. System architecture

The proposed secure access control system consists of a RTLS and an alarm system. The RTLS in-
cludes components: tags, reader and antennas, localization algorithm, and server, as shown in Fig. 1.
In the RTLS, UHF RFID reader transmits radio and receive signal from tags via antennas. There are
 R.-S. Hsiao et al. / A passive RFID-based location system for personnel and asset monitoring 13

also two sensor tags installed on the wall near the exit to determine whether target enters the warning
area. Then the location system uses the RSS value to identify and locate people wearing a semi-passive
tag in detection area consisting of monitoring area and warning area. Therefore, unauthorized people’s
location can be tracked.

2.2. Sensor deployment

To improve localization accuracy and real-time performance, a novel sensor deployment method is
proposed that incorporates a genetic algorithm (GA) with a computer vision system. The computer
vision system provides target’s actual location for the GA to find appropriate deployment locations of
antennas.
During the sensor deployment stage, we deploy more sensors for the GA to select an antenna set
which has the smallest error distance. In the detection area, each candidate sensor (antenna set) will
be introduced to the localization algorithm to locate target at reference points. For the monitoring area,
deployed antennas are selected from candidates of antennas, according to the localization error. For the
warning area, antennas are selected from the antennas for the sensor tag. After deployment stage, the
remaining sensors will be removed.

2.3. Localization algorithm

The proposed localization algorithm is based on the fingerprinting localization method [12]. During
the offline training phase, the radio map is established by collect all the received signal strength (RSS)
vectors (fingerprints). During the online location estimation phase, fingerprints are found by the k -NN
algorithm [12]. In the warning area, a hybrid fingerprinting based localization method is conducted by
employing target tag and sensor tags. For a target tag, the fingerprint is obtained, representing RSS values
received by antennas. For a sensor tag, the fingerprint is obtained, representing RSS values received by
radio links between antennas and sensor tags. Since the radio link is sensitive to human body, the radio
link added to the fingerprint to increase the positioning accuracy of the warning area. For a particular
radio link, received power varies because of shadow fading [14]. The proposed method locates people
by the shadowing effect arising from human body [15]. Then, the target location can be determined from
the candidates of the fingerprinting location result. For the hybrid localization method, a full fingerprint
is obtained.

2.4. Alarm system

Alarm system and RTLS cooperates with each other. Subsequently, if personnel enter to the warning
area and the exit door is open, the alarm system will be started.

3. Experimental results

3.1. Experimental setup

In the experiment, passive tags were used as sensor tags, and semi-passive tags were used as target
tag. The experiments were conducted in a small area (1.6 m × 2.0 m), as shown in Fig. 2. We deployed
five UHF RFID antennas which can cover whole detection area. Finally, three antennas were selected by
the sensor deployment algorithm will be retained.
14 R.-S. Hsiao et al. / A passive RFID-based location system for personnel and asset monitoring

Fig. 2. Experimental setup.

Fig. 3. Location precision.

 R.-S. Hsiao et al. / A passive RFID-based location system for personnel and asset monitoring 15

Another independent experiment at nine reference points evidences the effect of radio links from the
two sensor tags which are passive tag and placed on two sides of the wall.

3.2. Experimental results

The experiment of the effect of radio links between the sensor tags and the antennas showed the
passive RFID is much more sensitive to human body. When a person is at the reference point #6, the
RSS value of the radio link, which human body arise the shadowing effect on, between antenna #3 and
sensor tag #2 is much lower than other reference points.
In the warning area, location precision is presented, as shown in Fig. 3. The experimental result showed
that the selected antenna set {#1, #2, #3} has the best location performance. The probability of the error
distance within 0.3 m achieved 97% in the warning area.

4. Conclusions

In this paper, the proposed access control system consists of a RFID based real time location system
and an alarm device technology, to prevent unauthorized Alzheimer’s and dementia patients in nursing
homes from getting lost including by tailgating. The real time location system can accurately identify
and track patients’ location. The proposed system can improve patients’ security and safety, increasing
the quality of care and lower caregiver costs for the nursing homes.

Conflict of interest

None to report.

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