This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
Review on UHF RFID Localization methods
Chenyang Li, Lingfei Mo, Member, IEEE, Dongkai Zhang
Abstract—With the widespread of Internet of Things (IoT), the
wireless localization technology has provided various
location-based applications and services. Radio frequency
identification (RFID) has been widely used in objects
identification and tracking. Combining with its excellent
identification ability, RFID is also a promising technique for
indoor localization. This paper provides the state-of-art of UHF
RFID localization and gives an introduction of methods and
applications. The major methods of UHF RFID localization have
two types: range-based and range-free reported in previous
literature. The range-based methods obtain the distance or angle
between the antenna and tag utilizing the received signal strength
indicator (RSSI), time information or signal phase and estimate
tag location further combining the scheme geometrical
characteristics. The methods based on fingerprinting and
non-fingerprinting are mainly discussed in the range-free domain.
Finally, a comparative study of these surveyed works are
presented and concluded with a future trend.
Index Terms—indoor localization, UHF RFID, range-based,
range-free
I. INTRODUCTION
W ITH the deep integration of the Global Position System
(GPS) and mobile internet, the outdoor localization has
made great success in map navigation, people location, objects
tracking, etc. However, GPS technology meets its frustration in
indoor applications because of the great attenuation of the
satellite signal and multipath effect causing by the obstruction
from buildings and the complex indoor environment. In the
same time, with the fast development of the Internet of Things
(IoT), there is a growing demand for the indoor location based
service (LBS). Indoor LBS applications such as underground
garage parking route planning, shopping navigation, and fire
rescue, etc. provide services relying on the target’s location
which is the key factor for the performance, accuracy,
reliability of LBS applications. Existing technologies for
indoor localization are infrared, ultrasonic, wireless local area
network (WLAN), ultra-wideband (UWB), Bluetooth, ZigBee,
RFID etc. [1]. A well-known location system based on infrared
is Active Badge [2]. In the system, the infrared sensor network
is deployed in a building, and a designed tag equipped with the
infrared LED emits the modulated infrared signal every 15
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu
Province under Grant BK20130632.
Lingfei Mo is with the School of Instrument Science and Engineering,
Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China (e-mail:
lfmo@seu.edu.cn).
Chenyang Li is with the School of Instrument Science and Engineering,
Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China (e-mail:
licy@seu.edu.cn).
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
seconds to a sensor. Furthermore, the location server is able to
compute the position of the target according to the information
of the sensors. Although the infrared localization system has
high accuracy, it is only suitable for the line-of-sight (LOS) and
short-range transmission environment, which leads to
limitations in the real applications. Similarly, the ultrasonic
solution also has a good performance in some systems, such as
Active Bat [3] and Cricket[4]. However, due to the
transmission attenuation and high construction cost, the
ultrasonic system cannot be applied widely. The WLAN
localization system, i.e. Wi-Fi localization system, obtains the
location of the wireless terminal using time of arrival (TOA) [5],
time difference of arrival (TDOA) [6], [7] or RSSI [8], [9]. In
recent years, with the rapid development of WLAN technology,
people can access wireless hotspots anywhere and anytime,
which makes the Wi-Fi localization system easy to be widely
promoted. But the target can only be a wireless terminal with
wireless capacity, and it is not suitable for the situation with
limited energy consumption. UWB technology is a new type of
radio communication technology, which transmits data by
emitting short pulses, below the nanosecond, and occupies a
wide band of GHz level. The UWB localization system has
advantages of high localization accuracy which can reach to
centimeter level, strong anti-jamming capability, and good
security, but high construction cost [10]–[13]. Bluetooth is a
technical standard for wireless data transmission between
different devices with high security, low cost, and low power
consumption. The Bluetooth system performs localization
using signal strength [14][15]. As the Bluetooth sensor is
widely equipped in mobile phones, computers, other mobile
devices, it is easy to form the localization system. However, it
has the disadvantages of limited coverage area and poor
real-time performance. ZigBee technology is also a wireless
communication technology of short range, low power, which
has aroused wide concern by researchers since it was proposed.
Despite being able to realize self-organizing network
communication between nodes, the network of ZigBee needs to
be established in advance. The merits and defects of these
technologies are compared in Table I.
IoT concept has been popularized since the “Smart Earth”
was proposed by IBM in 2008. As the key technology of IoT,
RFID plays an important role in the development of IoT.
Especially, UHF RFID tag is expected to replace the traditional
barcode and become the new generation of the electronic tag.
Compared with the aforementioned indoor localization
technologies, UHF RFID has advantages of low cost (passive
RFID tags), long reading range (decades meters), fast reading
speed (real-time localization), and non-contact communication.
Moreover, UHF RFID system can locate the object while
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < 2

acquiring the identifying information. So that UHF RFID energy into electricity by the inner rectification circuit instead
technology has a promising prospect in indoor localization of the battery. As demonstrated in Fig. 1, the passive tag sends
applications. Combined with the internet, UHF RFID data based on backscatter modulation. When the object
technology can achieve the objects tracking and information attached with the passive RFID tag enters the effective read
sharing worldwide, and the application can span from asset range, the reader transfers the energy and interrogation
management, logistics tracking, and flexible manufacturing, to instruction to the tag. Once the chip is activated, the tag reflects
information service. And a mass of research have dedicated to the modulated signal to the reader carried with the information
the UHF RFID localization system. stored in the tag. The information of the tag is demodulated by
TABLE I the reader and transmitted to the computer control system.
COMPARISON OF UHF RFID LOCALIZATION SCHEMES
According to the information extracted by the reader control
System Advantages Disadvantages program, the location can be estimated using the localization
algorithm. It is a challenge to realize high precision localization
High cost; LOS transmission;
Infrared High accuracy Short range; Easily be of UHF RFID system, especially for the passive system owing
disturbed by light, smoke etc. to the low signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the backscatter
High accuracy; Strong modulation.
High cost; Sensitive to
Ultrasonic penetrating power;
environment Over the years, many localization methods have been
Simple construction
High power proposed and improved to locate objects or persons. The three
WLAN consumption; Only Available everywhere common metrics of the backscatter radio frequency (RF) signal:
locate wireless terminal
High accuracy; strong the travel time, RSSI, and phase are used in these methods [22].
UWB anti-jamming capability; High construction cost In term of the localization principle, the existing methods can
Good security be divided into two types: range-based and range-free, as
High accuracy; Low
Bluetooth power consumption;
Short range; Long localization shown in Fig. 2. Range-based localization method is the most
latency widely used in traditional positioning applications. Based on
Low cost
Short range; Low data the propagation characteristics of the RF signal, the range
ZigBee Low power; Low cost
transmission rate
Low cost; Real-time
between the reader and the tag can be estimated by the RSSI,
RFID Sensitive to environment TOA, TDOA, and phase. Then, the location can be calculated
localization
Most literature review the indoor localization technologies by the geometrical relationship. Range-based localization
and applications [1], [16]–[18] and only several overviews of method has the advantages of simple principle, but low
RFID localization can be found in [19]–[21]. Moreover, some accuracy, huge computation, and complex environment
references cited in the previous reviews are outdated. On the sensitivity. The range-free methods are generally based on the
basis of traditional methods, this paper has a survey of the latest scene analysis which quantifies the environment parameters to
researches in this domain. The principles and construction of form the information map for a special localization scene. Thus,
the typical RFID localization systems are discussed, and the range-free methods have good robustness in the complex
pros and cons are also summarized. indoor environment and relatively high accuracy. Typical
The rest of paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we localization systems based on reference tags and fingerprinting
introduce the composition and principle of a classical UHF utilize RSSI to measuring the environment features. In recent
RFID system and give the classification of UHF RFID researches, some algorithms of machine learning and statistical
localization methods. Section III describes the range-based analysis are introduced to the scene analysis. Additionally,
methods, most of which are conventional solutions. Section IV some methods using phase information evaluate the likelihood
focuses on the methods based on fingerprinting using statistical of the correct positions by introducing virtual antennas of
learning and machine learning algorithms. Besides, some novel virtual reference tags. And a new approach RTI measuring the
range-free approaches adopting spatial likelihood and Radio RSSI information images the signal attenuation in the
Tomographic Imaging (RTI) are also discussed. A comparison environment are studied with potential in moving human
of the UHF RFID localization schemes surveyed in this paper is positioning and through-wall localization.
presented in Section V. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in
Section VI.

II. UHF RFID WORKING MECHANISM AND LOCALIZATION

METHODS
A typical UHF RFID system is composed of an RFID reader,
RFID tags and an upper computer. RFID tags can be classified
into three types: active tags, passive tags, and semi-active tags,
according to the power supply and operation mode. The active
tag equipped a battery transmits the signal to the reader without
the inquiry command of the reader. Unlike the active tag, the
energy of the passive tag is supplied by converting microwave Fig. 1 The working mechanism of a typical passive UHF RFID system

2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
Localization
Methods
Range-based
Methods
Distance Angle
Measurement Measurement Fingerprinting
Fig. 2 The classification of RFID localization methods
III. RANGE-BASED METHODS
Range-based methods can be broadly classified into two
categories: distance measurement and angle measurement,
which both locate the tag based on the geometry characteristic
of reader antennas and tags. The difference is that distance
measurement methods solve the target position by the distance
or the distance difference. However, angle measurement
methods constitute equations with the angles between antennas
and tags.
A. Distance Measurement
Distance measurement methods obtain the distance between
the reader and the tag (tag-to-reader distance) by measuring the
physical metrics of the RF signal, including RSSI, TOA,
TDOA, POA, etc. Furthermore, the target location can be
estimated by trilateration or multi-lateration.
1) RSSI
A typical representative of range-based methods using RSS
is SpotOn proposed by Hightower et al [23]. In this system,
AIR ID active tag and AIR ID base stations are deployed to
measuring the RSSI of the target tag. To realize the
internetworking, a special device: Hydra microwebserver is
introduced to connect base stations. The RSSI information is
sent to a center server via the RS-232 port of the base station or
Ethernet port of the hydra microwebserver. The center server
estimates the precise position of the target tag by using the
RSSI of multiple base stations. The localization principle is
simple as shown in Fig. 3. Besides, a custom SpotOn tag is built
to capturing RSSI, which is more accurate and low power.
Although a complete SpotOn system has not been established
because of its complicated calculation and bad real-time, it can
be considered as the first successful attempt of indoor
localization based on RFID tags.
Base Station 1 Base Station 2
Target Tag
Base Station 3
Fig. 3 Schematic diagram of the SpotOn localization system
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
of Radio Frequency Identification
3
It is easy to capture the RSSI information of the radio signal.
Hence, the RSSI-based localization has been exploited a lot.
However, it is vulnerable to multipath effect, and most schemes
based on RSSI ranging have limited localization accuracy.
Range-free 2) TOA/ TDOA
Methods
Apart from RSSI, the distance can be estimated through the
propagation time of the RF signal, and two common methods
Non-
are TOA and TDOA. The distance between the reader and the
Fingerprinting tag can be calculated by multiplying the electromagnetic wave
speed, then, the tag can be positioned by trilateration or other
algorithms. A common algorithm used in TDOA is hyperbolic
localization as shown in Fig. 4. From Fig. 4, the coordinates of
three antennas are (x1, y1), (x2, y2), and (x3, y3), and the
coordinate of the target tag is (x, y). By measuring the time
difference received by reader antennas, the distance difference
between ranges of the target tag away from two reader antennas.
Thus, it can be thought that the target tag locates in a hyperbolic
curve whose focuses are two reader antennas and the distance
difference is d1-di (where i can be 2 or 3). The location can be
determined by the intersection of pairs of hyperbolic curves,
and the equations are as follows:
( x1 − x) 2 + ( y1 − y ) 2 − ( x2 − x) 2 + ( y2 − y ) 2 = d1 − d 2 , (1)
( x1 − x) 2 + ( y1 − y ) 2 − ( x3 − x) 2 + ( y3 − y ) 2 = d1 − d3 . (2)
Reader Antenna 3
(x3, y3)
d3
Target Tag
(x, y)
d1 d2
(x1, y1) (x2, y2)
Reader Antenna 1 Reader Antenna 2
Fig. 4 Schematic diagram of TDOA
The real location needs to be screened by prior conditions
because the solution of the above equations is not unique. And
the solution can be obtained by some calculation algorithms,
such as the least square method [24], [25], the Fang algorithm
[26], [27], the Chan algorithm [28], etc.
Because the electromagnetic waves travel with the speed of
light, a small error in time measurement will cause a large error
in the distance estimation. The measurement accuracy of the
TOA and TDOA has a great influence on the localization
results. Therefore, the methods based on TOA and TDOA
requires high precision hardware clock, and high
synchronization clocks are particularly needed in TOA system
at both transmitter and receiver [29], [30]. In addition, it is
required to timestamp the signal and the devices are more
expensive. Compared with TOA, TDOA has higher accuracy.
However, the delay time of the signal round trip of the UHF
RFID system is about tens of nanoseconds and the bandwidth is
narrow. Thus, it is not suitable for TDOA scheme since the
system is unable to operate in short pulse mode [31].
3) Phase
The phase information can also be used in the distance
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
measurement method. The phase of RF signal is the product of
the propagation time τ and the angular frequency ω, and the
phase can be obtained easily by complex demodulation.
Therefore, the phase information can be the equivalent of TOA
to measure the distance as shown in Fig. 5.
Target Tag
Reader
ϕ where ∆ϕ = ϕ1−ϕ2, ∆ϕΑ= ϕΑ1−ϕΑ2, ∆f = f1−f2. Multi-frequency
Reader Antenna
Fig. 5 Schematic diagram of phase information used in distance measurement
The phase changes a period as the range changes half
wavelength. The LOS distance R has a relationship with the
phase information which can be expressed as follows:
4π fR
ϕ= − + ϕA , (3)
c in [34] with flexible modules for FD-PDOA measurements, and
where ϕ is the phase value, f is the operation frequency, c is the
electromagnetic wave speed, and ϕΑ is the additional phase
caused by the hardware. The monotonous variation range of the
phase is half wavelength. When using ultra-high frequency, the
phase is ambiguous, and half wavelength is too short to be used
directly. Hence, it is needed to solve ambiguity in the real
scenario. Nikitin et al. have summarized and analyzed three
main methods based on the phase difference of arrival (PDOA):
time domain (TD), frequency domain (FD) and spatial domain
(SD) [31].
TD-PDOA can be used to estimate the velocity vector in the
direction of LOS. The schematic of TD-PDOA illustrated in
Fig. 6, shows that a tag moves at a constant speed around the
reader antenna. Assuming the additional phase shift and the
environment are fixed and stable, the velocity vector can be
calculated by the derivative of the phase difference with respect
to the time difference. The radial velocity vector can be
indicated as:
c (∆ϕ − ∆ϕ A )
Vr = − , (4)
4πf ∆t
where ∆ϕ = ϕ1−ϕ2, ∆ϕΑ= ϕΑ1−ϕΑ2, ∆t = t1−t2. TD-PDOA has
less calculation and equipment cost. However, TD-PDOA is
not suitable for the situation that the tag moves at a fast speed
considering the phase periodicity or the tag keeps still. To
overcome these drawbacks, FD-PDOA and SD-PDOA are
proposed.
Tag
Vr
ϕ 1, t 1
Vrq
V
Reader
ϕ2 , t
2
Reader antenna
Fig. 6 Schematic diagram of TD-PDOA
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
4
FD-PDOA can be used to estimate the distance between the
tag and the reader antenna by measuring the tag phase at
different frequencies [32]–[34]. The schematic of FD-PDOA is
illustrated in Fig. 7. Similarly, assuming the additional phase
shift and the environment are fixed and stable, the distance can
be calculated by the derivative of the phase difference with
respect to the frequency difference. The tag range can be
expressed as:
c (∆ϕ − ∆ϕ A )
R= − , (5)
4π ∆f
can be used to overcome the ambiguity and extend the
monotonous range. Li et al. used unequally spaced frequencies
to confront the signal attenuation at some frequencies and got
the maximum unambiguous range [32]. To fuse the estimated
range results of multiple frequency pairs, different methods are
investigated. Thus, the diversity of frequencies enables a
satisfactory localization accuracy and robustness to a
complicated environment. A front-end prototype was designed
several phase measurements were also addressed and analyzed.
The FD-PDOA can unwrap the ambiguous phase effectively.
But the phase difference changes insensitively because of the
narrow available frequency band, and the performance is
influenced greatly by the complicated environment. SD-PDOA
is mainly employed to estimate the bearing or the angle of
arrival (AOA), which shall be presented in Section III-B along
with the angle measurement methods.
Tag
f 1, ϕ 1
Reader f 2, ϕ 2
Reader antenna
Fig. 7 Schematic diagram of FD-PDOA
Multidimensional scaling (MDS)-based localization has
been lucubrated in the domain of wireless sensor networks
(WSNs) localization [35]. MDS-based localization algorithm
also has good potential in RFID localization for its tolerance of
range error and requirement of fewer readers [36]. A distance
matrix is constructed for representing the pairwise distance in
the network, and MDS explores the similarity of the matrix by
eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) to get the inferred position.
However, tags in the RFID system cannot communicate with
each other, the distance between tags (inter-tag distance) thus
can only be estimated indirectly by the tag-to-reader distance
measured according to RSSI [36], [37] or phase information
[38]. Furthermore, it is easy to extend to three dimensions [39]
in which a structure of 3D tetrahedron was designed to cover a
localization sub-region. From the simulation and experimental
results, the MDS algorithm achieves an apparent gain in
performance compared with conventional multi-lateration
methods.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
B. Angle Measurement
Classical algorithms for direction of arrival (DOA)
estimation is multiple signal classification (MUSIC) [40] and
the estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance
techniques (ESPRIT) [41]. Reference [42] proposed a method
based on subspace decomposition. The ESPRIT is used to
estimate the direction of departure (DOD), and Root-MUSIC is
for DOA. Five DOA estimation methods were analyzed and
compared in [43], which can be derived from maximum
likelihood (ML) principle. Within them, method of direction 2
(MODE-2) is statistically efficient and needs less computing.
Except for the estimation methods based on antenna array [44]–
[46], SD-PDOA can estimate the bearing of the tag utilizing the
phase received by several reader antennas. Zhou et al. proposed
a two-dimension localization method using the phase
difference to calculate AOA [47]. The schematic based on the
SD-PDOA model is shown in Fig. 8. According to the
geometry relationship, it can be derived ( if D<<R):
c have a great influence on the electromagnetic signal leading to
R1 − R2 = − (∆ϕ − ∆ϕ A ) ≈ − D sin θ , (6)
4π f
where ∆ϕ = ϕ1−ϕ2, ∆ϕΑ= ϕΑ1−ϕΑ2. Then, the AOA can be
expressed as:
 c 
= θ sin −1  (∆ϕ − ∆ϕ A )  . (7)
 4π fD  using the reference tags and fingerprinting based on UHF RFID
The distance offset x of the tag can be can be calculated by:
x = Ro tan θ . (8)
Tag
R 1, ϕ 1
x The metrics of the radio signal, such as RSSI and phase, are
,ϕ
2
θ
R2
Reader D O
Ro
Reader antenna
Fig. 8 Schematic diagram of SD-PDOA
The phase characteristics are stable only in the main lobe of
the antenna. Eq. (8) shows that with the increasing of θ, x will
vary severely even if ∆ϕ has a very slight error, which means
the performance of SD-PDOA is deterioration when the tag
deviates the antenna. Besides, to ensure the ∆ϕ is within one
period and monitor the whole plane in front of the antenna,
SD-PDOA requires the distance between two antennas D less
than half wavelength, which is unpractical in real applications.
Azzouzi et al. proposed a new measurement result for AOA
localization [48]. A self-designed microstrip patch antenna
array containing three directional antennas was used to evaluate
the AOA based on the phase difference of the adjacent elements.
In the experiment, three antenna arrays are deployed to test the
25 target points in a grid of 3m × 3m. The position was
calculated by measurement results of the three antenna arrays,
and the mean localization error is 0.21m. It is demonstrated that
the AOA measurement is a promising approach for the indoor
environment. It is also indicated that the AOA can be evaluated
by the combination of one isotropic antenna and multiple
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
5
steerable directive antenna arrays.
Other studies [49], [50] based on the angle measurement
have been reported. Despite the high accuracy of these methods,
multiple antennas need to be deployed, which results in a high
cost. What’s more, in the case of the NLOS and multipath effect,
the measurement of angle suffers a larger error. Reference [51]
presented a method based on a combination of AOA and PDOA
using virtual stations to convert NLOS paths into LOS paths. It
can combat the NLOS effect and achieves a decimeter level
accuracy in the simulation.
IV. RANGE-FREE METHODS
The traditional range-based methods can convert the RSSI,
time of fight and phase information to the distance between the
reader antenna and the target tag based on the electromagnetic
propagation regulation. And the position of the target tag is
inferred by the geometry characteristic. The computation is
large and complex. Moreover, the NLOS and multipath effect
the low accuracy in the complex indoor environment. In recent
years, the wireless localization using range-free methods has
been exploited, among them, fingerprinting has attracted a lot
of attention [52], especially in the field of Wi-Fi [53]–[56] and
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) [15], [57]. Likewise, localization
has received much research effort, which has better adaptability
to the complicated environment. In addition, some non-
fingerprinting methods also has achieved high localization
precision and gained extensive attention.
A. Fingerprinting
relatively stable when the environment is fixed. On this basis,
the information of RSSI and phase can be used to indicate the
electromagnetic field distribution of the environment, which
can be regarded as the fingerprints of a certain environment.
Generally, the distribution of reference tags is regular within
the surveillance area. The fingerprint dataset can be collected as
the historical database in advance or established with the target
tag using reference tags. The position of the target tag is
calculated by coordinates of several reference tags which are
selected by database matching. In the same way, the radio map
is constructed by measuring reference tags when using
fingerprinting. Fingerprinting method is performed in two
phases: offline phase and online phase, as illustrated in Fig. 9.
RFID Tags
Capture RSSI and
Phase Information
of Reference Tags
Fingerprint
Space Training
Samples
Offline Phase
Learning
Online Phase
Test Trained
Position
Capture RSSI and Samples Model
Phase Information
of Target Tags
Fig. 9 Schematic diagram of localization system based on fingerprinting
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < 6

In the offline phase, the RSSI and phase of reference tags are
extracted from the received radio signal and are collected in a
database together with the known position of the corresponding
reference tag. The database can be trained to build a machine
learning model. During the online phase, the location of the
target tag can be estimated by comparing with the records of
reference tags in the database or the trained localization model.
A representative based on reference tags is LANDMARC
system presented by Ni et al. [58]. The schematic diagram of
the system is demonstrated in Fig. 10. The readers capture the
signal strength corresponding to the tag range. The location of
the target tag is estimated based on the kNN (k-nearest neighbor)
algorithm as follows:
a) In the localization prototype, the infrastructure consists of m
readers, n reference tags deployed in a grid array, and u target
tags distributed randomly.

b) Collect the RSSI of the reference = tag R ( R1 , R2 , …, Rm )
where Ri denotes the RSSI received by reader i, and the RSSI of
 influence on the signal characteristics. Second, to improve the
=
the target tag T (T1 , T2 ,…, Tm ) where Ti denotes the RSSI of
the target tag.
m radio signal interference, and the accuracy deteriorates instead.
=
c) Define the Euclidean distance Ej ∑ (R − T )
i =1
i i
2
(j = 1,
2, …, n)as the distance between the target tag and the j-th
reference tag. Then, the distance vector between the target tag
 redundant real reference tags. The RSSI value of virtual
and n reference tags can be written=as E ( E1 , E2 , …, En ) .
d) The distance of the nearest reference tag to the target tag is
the smallest, and the coordinate of the target tag ()can be
calculated by k nearest reference tags’ coordinates as follows:
k different readers. The precision is increased from 17 to 73
( xt , yt ) = ∑ ωi ( xi , yi ) ,
i =1
where ωi is the weight of the i-th nearest neighbor. Empirically,
the nearer the neighboring reference tag is, the greater the
weight factor is. The expression employed in the prototype
system is:
1 to 0.31m in case the distance of the tags is 1 m.
E2
ωi = k i . (10)
1 the tag and the reader antenna, which leads to the difficult to
∑i =1 Ei
2 locate tags with high accuracy. Recently, the phase information
Antenna
Reference Tag
Target Tag
Nearest Neighbor
Tags (k=4)
Estimated Tag
Fig. 10 Schematic diagram of LANDMARC system
The effect of the value of k, the number of readers, and the
placement of reference tags are discussed in the paper. In the
experiment, 50% of target tags have an error around 1m.
Although the positioning accuracy still has a gap form the real
application, LANDMARC system proves that the active tag is a
competitive candidate for the indoor localization. In order to
improve the performance of the LANDMARC system, many
researches have been studied [59]–[62]. Han et al. introduced
the adaptive k-nearest neighbor algorithm to improve the
accuracy of the original LANDMARC system [60]. The main
idea is to find the best k to make sure the lowest estimation error.
Xu et al. used a Gaussian filter to reduce the fluctuations of
RRSI caused by the environment and located the target tag
based on the Bayesian probability and kNN, and a mean error of
15cm was achieved [61]. Hu et al. redefined the in-weight and
ex-weight to overcome the great difference of RSSI between
tags when tags were close to the reader [62]. Compared to the
existing LANDMARC system, the simulation results indicate
that weight optimization has a superior performance.
The introduction of reference tags enhances the adaptability
to environmental dynamics. However, there are two
shortcomings [63]. First, the multipath effect has a severe
localization accuracy, the density of reference tags need to be
increased, but overmuch reference tags may give rise to the
The limitation can be broken by inserting virtual reference tags.
VIRE system [63] proposed the concept of virtual reference
tags to provide denser reference tags without deploying
reference tags is interpolated by linear interpolation algorithm.
A probability map is obtained by each reader. And the unlikely
positions of the target tag are eliminated through the
intersection of same positions from the probability maps of
(9) percent over the LANDMARC system. BAHAALDIN et al.
introduced the boundary virtual reference tags (BVIRE)
algorithm to improve the precision of the location area
boundary [64]. The virtual reference tags are inserted on the
boundary and the RSSI value is calculated by a linear
regression model. The mean error of BVIRE can be minimized
The RSSI value changes slightly with the distance between
has been introduced to the scene analysis due to its sensitivity to
the distance. The phase varies a period as the distance varies
about 16 cm (half of the wavelength) at UHF. Thus, the phase
can describe the environment more detailed and the accuracy
can be improved a lot compared with the RSSI information.
Zhao et al. presented a new method SAIL using the phase
information combined RSSI as the attribute vector of reference
tags [65]. To restrain the phase information within [0, 2π), the
ambiguity of phase is eliminated by the difference of two
frequencies (FD-PDOA). Furthermore, the concept of
clustering is introduced to screen out the tags to locate the target
tag. The reference tags with the similarity in propagation
distance can be considered as a group, and these tags have more
referential value for position estimation. By using the k-means
algorithm for clustering, it is more flexible to determine the
number of candidate tags for estimation compared with a fixed

2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
number, such as kNN. The simulations and experiments show
that the proposed SAIL is superior to other RFID localization
scheme in cost, accuracy, and flexibility. Mo et al. used the
phase directly as the attribute vector combined with RSSI
information [66]. A nonlinear interpolation algorithm, the
natural neighbor interpolation (NNI), is introduced to obtain the
attribute value of virtual reference tags. In comparison to the
linear interpolation used in VIRE or the polynomial
interpolation, NNI has high fidelity and smooth interpolation
because the value of the interpolation point is only related to its
adjacent points. Moreover, the Laiyite criterion with variable
coefficient is proposed to eliminate the multipath effect. In the
experiment, 15 test positions are set randomly and located
based on the similarity measurement. The results demonstrate
that the performance after introducing phase is much better than
using signal RSSI information. The localization error of 12 test
tags are less than 4 cm, 14 test tags are within 10 cm.
Apart from the most applied kNN, other algorithms of
statistical learning and machine learning are employed to deal
with the fingerprints database. Yamano et al. proposed a
self-localization of mobile with an RFID system based on
support vector machine (SVM) [67]. The RFID reader is
mounted on the top of the robot, and the reference tags are
arranged at effective locations in the environment. Through the
trained SVM model, the location of the robot can be finally
classified and refined. Also, the relationship between the
fingerprints and locations of reference tags can be discovered
by support vector [68], [69]. Berz et al. [69] trained a support
vector regression (SVR) model using RSS fingerprints to
estimate the target tag location. The predicted results of the
target tag are clustered in the online phase based on the k-means
algorithm, and the centroid of the cluster containing the most
predicted locations is selected as the final location of the target
tag. By applying k-means, the accuracy has been improved,
which can reach to 17.6cm in the best case with coverage of
2.25 m2. For the sake of eliminating excessive reference tags in
LANDMARC system, [70] picked out key reference tags by
constructing a decision tree. Fewer reference tags make the
system more efficient and time-saving. Subedi et al. used
maximum likelihood (ML) to locate and track the reader which
is moving over passive reference tags [71]. The RSSI is
measured as the reader activates passive tags. Using the RSSI
map, the reader position is estimated by ML and Kalman filter
is applied to infer the moving trajectory. The experimental error
achieves centimeter-level accuracy.
At present, the neural network has become a hot spot in
various fields and successfully been applied to computer vision,
natural language processing, intelligent control, etc. Due to its
strong ability in nonlinear fitting, the neural network has
considerable potential in wireless localization domain. Some
literature has reported the neural network application in RFID
localization. Reference [72] evaluated and compared the
performance of trilateration, multi-lateration, and MDS for
range-based methods, and kNN and artificial neural network
(ANN) for scene analysis methods. The simulation results
indicate that the scene analysis methods have higher accuracy
and ANN outperforms the other methods, while as a trade-off,
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
7
scene analysis requires more infrastructures. Ma and Wang
employed extreme learning machine (ELM) for trajectory
tracking because of its fast learning speed and good
generalization ability [73]. The fusion fingerprints of RSSI and
phase shift is normalized to feed the ELM model. The rough
estimation location is predicted by the trained ELM model and
a more accurate location for tracking is obtained by the Kalman
filter. The proposed method is robust to tag’s heterogeneity and
has an impressive tracking precision. Wu et al. built a
3D-LANDMARC system for localization in a warehouse [74].
The radial basis function (RBF) neural network is utilized to
map the RSS fingerprints. Meanwhile, the quantum particle
swarm optimization (QPSO) is introduced to solve the optimal
location of the target tag. From the experiments, the method
shows faster convergence speed and higher localization
accuracy (a mean error of 0.2m) than previous studies [61][75].
B. Non-fingerprinting
Fingerprinting localization often requires a dense
deployment of reference tags, which cause the limitation of
accuracy. When tracking a moving tag, the captured phase
sequence can distinguish different trajectories. By constructing
a spatial likelihood map, the initial location and moving
trajectory can be inferred. RF holograph is introduced to
calculate the spatial likelihood distribution in [76]–[79], which
is commonly used in the area of ultrasonic and radar imaging.
Miesen et al. tested a linear trajectory based on the phase value
measured from a synthetic aperture [77]. Given by a likelihood
function, usually a summation of measured signals, the
holograph is an image showing the spatial likelihood of a grid is
probably to be the initial position of the trajectory as exhibited
in Fig. 11. At positions far away from the tag position, the
signals cancel each other, and the sum value is lower. The result
grows when more coherent signals superimpose. Thus, the
position with the greatest likelihood is the estimation result.
The error of experiments is within a decimeter. Liu’s team
proposed Tagoram to track the moving tag instantly.
Fig. 11 Schematic diagram of Spatial Likelihood (Results of Differential
Augmented Hologram presented in [76])
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
Differential Augmented Hologram (DAH) is constructed by the
virtual antenna array [76]. The Tagoram has a satisfactory
precision: millimeter accuracy in the lab experiment and a
centimeter-level of the real application in Beijing Capital
International Airport (BCIA T1) and Sanya Phoenix
International Airport (SPIA). TrackT presented in [80] firstly
introduces phase periodicity to extract candidates for initial
positions of a trajectory, and eliminates the ambiguous
positions by double difference wrapped phase. For an unknown
trajectory, the relative displacements of each movement are
calculated by a first-order Taylor series expansion. As the
difference of phase periodicity has a strong tolerance to the
environment interference, an average error of 0.26 cm and 0.55
cm for known and unknown trajectories are reached
respectively. It also has less computation and better real-time
performance.
Another emerging method for wireless localization is RTI
employing the shadowing losses of the wireless signal to
construct an image of the attenuation of objects within the
monitor area [81]. Radio Tomographic is inspired by two
widely used imaging technical: radar system and computed
tomography, which can be applied in the device-free
localization (DFL) for moving people or objects tracking. Joey
Wilson and Neal Patwari proposed a linear model for imaging
the parameters of the environment using RSSI [81]. The
experiment results demonstrate the competence of RTI for
imaging the RF attenuation caused by humans in wireless node
networks. Afterward, some research is conducted to improve
the performance of RTI [82]–[84]. The multipath effect can be
impaired by antennas transmitting the energy through the
monitor area. Reference [85] presented a new approach for RTI
using RFID passive tags as shown in Fig. 12. The mean
location error of various human positions can reach 30 cm in an
indoor environment. RTI is able to achieve high accuracy with
low computational complexity. No need of carrying devices
makes the RTI has great potential in the situation of security,
search, rescue, etc.
Fig. 12 Schematic diagram of RTI using passive RFID (Experiment setup
presented in [85])
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
8
V. COMPARISON STUDY
A brief comparison of UHF RFID localization schemes
surveyed in this paper is presented in Table II, showing the
algorithms, accuracy, infrastructures, etc. From the table, the
range-free methods outperform the range-based methods with a
trade-off of the hardware consumption. Additionally, it is clear
that the methods using the metric of phase have higher accuracy
than the methods using RSSI information as the phase is more
sensitive to the distance.
Since UHF RFID signal is sensitive to the environment, the
localization performance suffers a lot due to the multipath
effect and NLOS. And the UHF RFID is a narrow band
communication system so that the multipath is hardly to be
eliminated [86]. It can be mitigated by improving SNR, signal
filtering [87], data preprocessing [66], novel multipath channel
model [38], and innovative localization algorithms and
framework [34] [88]. Methods based on scene analysis are
more robust to the severe indoor environment. Other
shortcoming of UHF RFID localization system is limitation of
the effective read range. Generally, the SNR deteriorates as the
tag gets far way the reader and the read range of the passive tag
is about decade meters. For now, one can deploy active tags or
more reader antennas to expand the coverage. As the progress
of RFID hardware, both the performance and the read range
will be improved.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the
methods and systems of UHF RFID localization. The existing
techniques can be categorized into two classes: range-based
and range-free. The range-based methods utilize the metrics of
the radio signal, RSSI, TOA, TDOA, and phase to estimate the
distance and angle. The location of the target is then calculated
based on the trilateration, multi-lateration, AOA, etc. The
range-free methods rely on the scene analysis instead of using
distance and angle directly. Mostly, reference tags are required
to establish the fingerprints database beforehand. The target
location can be obtained by matching the radio map or
predicted by the machine learning model trained by fingerprints.
Generally, range-free methods have higher accuracy and better
robustness than range-based methods, but more cost in the
facility. To compensate for the deficiency of the redundant
reference tags, virtual reference tags, virtual antennas, spatial
likelihood, RTI, etc. have exploited.
Although extensive researches have been conducted, UHF
RFID localization is still far from real application in ubiquitous
computing. Hybrid algorithms and technologies can be
integrated to optimize performance. Moreover, in the context of
industry 4.0, the localization system can be customized to meet
the specific environment.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < 9

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF UHF RFID LOCALIZATION SCHEMES
Target
Scheme Type System Localization Algorithm Accuracy Infrastructure
Type
At least 3 base
SpotOn [23] RSSI, multi-lateration Active About 3 m
stations
Agilent network
Mean: 0.7690m analyzer E8363B
Ma et al. [30] TOA Passive
Variance: 0.0862m and a pair of UHF
antennas
Distance The direction the tag
measurement movement and the point
Range-based 4 antennas and >20
Nikitin et al. [31] Phase, TD-PDOA Active when the tag passes the
RFID tags
center crossing can be
effectively identified.
1 custom RFID
Mean absolute error
Povalac et al. [33] Phase, FD-PDOA Passive front-end prototype
(MAE): 0.14 m
and 1 tag
Angle One pair of antennas
AOA [47] Phase, SD-PDOA Passive Satisfactory
measurement and 1 tag
Outperforms previous
RSSI, MDS, maximum
localization schemes based 4~9 readers and 30
Shi et al. [36] likelihood estimation Active
on multi-lateration tags
(MLE)
(simulation results).
4 antennas, 16
LANDMARC [89] RSSI, reference tag, kNN Active 1~2 m reference tags, and 8
target tags
Increased from 17 to 73 4 antennas, 16
RSSI, virtual reference
VIRE [63] Active percent over the reference tags, and 9
tag, linear interpolation
LANDMARC system target tags
80% of the 15 test tags is
RSSI and phase, virtual
Mo et al. [66] Passive within 4 cm, 90% is within 4 antennas and1 tag
Fingerprinting reference tag, NNI
10 cm
80% of robot locations are A mobile robot
Yamano et al. [67] Signal intensity, SVM Active classified correctly when equipped with a
more than 15 tags are used. reader and 25 tags
17 cm ~ 31cm 2 antennas and 13
Berz et al. [69] RSSI, SVR, k-means Passive
(in 2.25 m2 area coverage) reference tags
Range-free RSSI and phase, ELM, 4 antennas and 2
Ma et al. [73] Passive Average: 0.0592 m
Kalman filter different tags
4 antennas, known
3D-LANDMARC RSSI, RBF neural reference label, and
Passive Average: 0.2 m
[74] network, QPSO unknown testing
labels
Lab environment: median
accuracy 5 mm and 7.29
Linear track: 2
mm (linear and circular
antennas and 1 tag
Tagoram [76] Phase, DAH Passive track respectively).
Circular track: 1
Baggage sortation systems
antenna and 1 tag
deployed in two airports:
Non-fingerprinting median accuracy 6.35 cm
Phase, double-difference
of phase periodicity, Known track: 0.26 cm
TrackT [80] Passive 4 antennas and1 tag
first-order Taylor series Unknown track: 0.55 cm
approximation
Passive RFID RTI 4 antennas and 36
RSSI, RTI Passive Squared field: 0.3 m
[85] transponders

[2] R. Want, A. Hopper, V. Falcão, and J. Gibbons, “The Active Badge

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation
of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK20130632.
REFERENCES
[1] L. Angrisani, P. Arpaia, and D. Gatti, “Analysis of localization
technologies for indoor environment,” in 2017 IEEE International
Workshop on Measurement and Networking (M&N), 2017, pp. 1–5.
Location System,” ACM Trans. Inf. Syst., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 91–102,
1992.
[3] A. Ward, A. Jones, and A. Hopper, “A new location technique for the
active office,” IEEE Pers. Commun., vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 42–47, 1997.
[4] N. B. Priyantha, “The Cricket Indoor Location System,” Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2005.
[5] M. Ciurana, F. Barceló, and S. Cugno, “Indoor Tracking in WLAN
Location with TOA Measurements,” in Proceedings of the 4th ACM
International Workshop on Mobility Management and Wireless Access,
2006, pp. 121–125.

2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
[6] R. Yamasaki, A. Ogino, T. Tamaki, T. Uta, N. Matsuzawa, and T. Kato,
“TDOA location system for IEEE 802.11b WLAN,” in IEEE Wireless
Communications and Networking Conference, 2005, 2005, vol. 4, pp.
2338-2343 Vol. 4.
[7] A. Makki, A. Siddig, M. Saad, J. Cavallaro, and C. Bleakley, “Indoor
Localization Using 802.11 Time Differences of Arrival,” IEEE Trans.
Instrum. Meas., vol. 65, pp. 1–10, 2015.
[8] D. Milioris, G. Tzagkarakis, A. Papakonstantinou, M. Papadopouli, and
P. Tsakalides, “Low-dimensional Signal-strength Fingerprint-based
Positioning in Wireless LANs,” Ad Hoc Netw., vol. 12, pp. 100–114,
2014.
[9] Z. Turgut, S. Üstebay, G. Zeynep Gürkaş Aydın, and A. Sertbaş, “Deep
Learning in Indoor Localization Using WiFi,” in International
Telecommunications Conference, 2019, pp. 101–110.
[10] S. Gezici et al., “Localization via ultra-wideband radios: a look at
positioning aspects for future sensor networks,” IEEE Signal Process.
Mag., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 70–84, 2005.
[11] D. B. Jourdan, D. Dardari, and M. Z. Win, “Position error bound for
UWB localization in dense cluttered environments,” IEEE Trans.
Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 613–628, 2008.
[12] L. Taponecco, A. A. D’Amico, and U. Mengali, “Joint TOA and AOA
Estimation for UWB Localization Applications,” IEEE Trans. Wirel.
Commun., vol. 10, no. 7, pp. 2207–2217, 2011.
[13] A. Alarifi et al., “Ultra Wideband Indoor Positioning Technologies:
Analysis and Recent Advances,” Sensors, vol. 16, pp. 1–36, 2016.
[14] J. J. M. Diaz, R. d. A. Maués, R. B. Soares, E. F. Nakamura, and C. M. S.
Figueiredo, “Bluepass: An indoor Bluetooth-based localization system
for mobile applications,” in The IEEE symposium on Computers and
Communications, 2010, pp. 778–783.
[15] R. Faragher and R. Harle, “Location Fingerprinting With Bluetooth Low
Energy Beacons,” IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 33, no. 11, pp.
2418–2428, 2015.
[16] Z. Farid, R. Nordin, and M. Ismail, “Recent Advances in Wireless
Indoor Localization Techniques and System,” Journal of Computer
Networks and Communications, vol. 2013. pp. 1–12, 2013.
[17] H. Li, G. Chan, J. K. W. Wong, and M. Skitmore, “Real-time locating
systems applications in construction,” Autom. Constr., vol. 63, pp. 37–47,
2016.
[18] A. Yassin et al., “Recent Advances in Indoor Localization: A Survey on
Theoretical Approaches and Applications,” IEEE Commun. Surv.
Tutorials, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 1327–1346, 2017.
[19] T. Sanpechuda and L. Kovavisaruch, “A review of RFID localization:
Applications and techniques,” in 5th International Conference on
Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and
Information Technology, ECTI-CON 2008, 2008, vol. 2, pp. 769–772.
[20] J. Zhou and J. Shi, “RFID localization algorithms and applications-A
review,” J. Intell. Manuf., vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 695–707, 2009.
[21] W. Al-Khater, S. Kunhoth, and S. Al-Maadeed, “A review on Radio
Frequency Identification methods,” in 2017 13th International Wireless
Communications and Mobile Computing Conference, IWCMC 2017,
2017, no. 2, pp. 1751–1758.
[22] M. Bouet and A. L. dos Santos, “RFID tags: Positioning principles and
localization techniques,” in 2008 1st IFIP Wireless Days, 2008, pp. 1–5.
[23] J. Hightower, G. Borriello, and R. Want, “SpotON: An Indoor 3D
Location Sensing Technology Based on RF Signal Strength,” Seattle
WA, 2000.
[24] J. Yuan et al., “ISILON - An intelligent system for indoor localization
and navigation based on RFID and ultrasonic techniques,” in
Proceedings of the World Congress on Intelligent Control and
Automation (WCICA), 2010, pp. 6625–6630.
[25] T. Qiao, Y. Zhang, and H. Liu, “Nonlinear expectation maximization
estimator for TDOA localization,” IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett., vol. 3,
no. 6, pp. 637–640, 2014.
[26] B. T. Fang, “Simple solutions for hyperbolic and related position fixes,”
IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 748–753, 1990.
[27] N. Okello, F. Fletcher, D. Musicki, and B. Ristic, “Comparison of
recursive algorithms for emitter localisation using TDOA measurements
from a pair of UAVs,” IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 47, no. 3,
pp. 1723–1732, 2011.
[28] Y. T. Chan and K. C. Ho, “A simple and efficient estimator for
hyperbolic location,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 42, no. 8, pp.
1905–1915, 1994.
[29] Y. Zhao and J. R. Smith, “A battery-free RFID-based indoor acoustic
localization platform,” in 2013 IEEE International Conference on RFID
(RFID), 2013, pp. 110–117.
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
10
[30] Y. Ma, K. Pahlavan, and Y. Geng, “Comparative Behavioral Modeling
of POA and TOA Ranging for Location-Awareness Using RFID,” Int. J.
Wirel. Inf. Networks, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 187–198, 2016.
[31] P. V Nikitin, R. Martinez, S. Ramamurthy, H. Leland, G. Spiess, and K.
V. S. Rao, “Phase based spatial identification of UHF RFID tags,” in
2010 IEEE International Conference on RFID (IEEE RFID 2010), 2010,
pp. 102–109.
[32] X. Li, Y. Zhang, and M. G. Amin, “Multifrequency-based range
estimation of RFID Tags,” in 2009 IEEE International Conference on
RFID, 2009, pp. 147–154.
[33] A. Povalac and J. Sebesta, “Phase difference of arrival distance
estimation for RFID tags in frequency domain,” in 2011 IEEE
International Conference on RFID-Technologies and Applications,
2011, pp. 188–193.
[34] Y. Zhang, Y. Ma, X. Miao, S. Zhang, and B. Wang, “Multipath
Mitigation Algorithm for Multifrequency-Based Ranging via Convex
Relaxation in Passive UHF RFID,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 1,
pp. 744–752, 2019.
[35] G. Han, J. Jiang, C. Zhang, T. Q. Duong, M. Guizani, and G. K.
Karagiannidis, “A Survey on Mobile Anchor Node Assisted
Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks,” IEEE Commun. Surv.
Tutorials, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 2220–2243, 2016.
[36] W. Shi and V. W. S. Wong, “MDS-Based Localization Algorithm for
RFID Systems,” in 2011 IEEE International Conference on
Communications (ICC), 2011, pp. 1–6.
[37] W. Ni, W. Xiao, Y. K. Toh, and C. K. Tham, “Fingerprint-MDS based
algorithm for indoor wireless localization,” in 21st Annual IEEE
International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio
Communications, 2010, pp. 1972–1977.
[38] J. Wang, Y. Ma, Y. Zhao, and K. Liu, “A Multipath Mitigation
Localization Algorithm Based on MDS for Passive UHF RFID,” IEEE
Commun. Lett., vol. 19, no. 9, pp. 1652–1655, 2015.
[39] F. Tlili, N. Hamdi, and A. Belghith, “Accurate 3D localization scheme
based on active RFID tags for indoor environment,” in 2012 IEEE
International Conference on RFID-Technologies and Applications,
RFID-TA 2012, 2012, pp. 378–382.
[40] R. Schmidt, “Multiple emitter location and signal parameter estimation,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 276–280, 1986.
[41] A. Paulraj, R. Roy, and T. Kailath, “Estimation Of Signal Parameters
Via Rotational Invariance Techniques- Esprit,” in Nineteeth Asilomar
Conference on Circuits, Systems and Computers, 1985, pp. 83–89.
[42] M. L. Bencheikh and Y. Wang, “Joint DOD-DOA estimation using
combined ESPRIT-MUSIC approach in MIMO radar,” Electron. Lett.,
vol. 46, no. 15, pp. 1081–1083, 2010.
[43] P. Stoica and K. C. Sharman, Maximum likelihood methods for
direction-of-arrival estimation, vol. 38. 1990.
[44] H. Gazzah and K. Abed-meraim, “Optimum Ambiguity-Free Directional
and Omnidirectional Planar Antenna Arrays for DOA Estimation,” IEEE
Trans. Signal Process., vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 3942–3953, Nov. 2009.
[45] R. Sanudin, N. H. Noordin, A. O. El-Rayis, N. Haridas, A. T. Erdogan,
and T. Arslan, “Analysis of DOA estimation for directional and isotropic
antenna arrays,” in 2011 Loughborough Antennas and Propagation
Conference, 2011, no. November, pp. 1–4.
[46] F. Shu et al., “Low-Complexity and High-Resolution DOA Estimation
for Hybrid Analog and Digital Massive MIMO Receive Array,” IEEE
Trans. Commun., vol. 66, no. 6, pp. 2487–2501, 2018.
[47] J. Zhou, H. Zhang, and L. Mo, “Two-dimension localization of passive
RFID tags using AOA estimation,” in 2011 IEEE International
Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference, 2011, pp. 1–
5.
[48] S. Azzouzi, M. Cremer, U. Dettmar, R. Kronberger, and T. Knie, “New
measurement results for the localization of UHF RFID transponders
using an Angle of Arrival (AoA) approach,” 2011 IEEE International
Conference on RFID. pp. 91–97, 2011.
[49] C. Hekimian-Williams, B. Grant, X. Liu, Z. Zhang, and P. Kumar,
“Accurate localization of RFID tags using phase difference,” in 2010
IEEE International Conference on RFID (IEEE RFID 2010), 2010, pp.
89–96.
[50] S. Azzouzi, M. Cremer, U. Dettmar, T. Knie, and R. Kronberger,
“Improved AoA based localization of UHF RFID tags using spatial
diversity,” in 2011 IEEE International Conference on
RFID-Technologies and Applications, 2011, pp. 174–180.
[51] Y. Ma, B. Wang, S. Pei, Y. Zhang, S. Zhang, and J. Yu, “An Indoor
Localization Method Based on AOA and PDOA Using Virtual Stations
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JRFID.2019.2924346, IEEE Journal
of Radio Frequency Identification
> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) <
in Multipath and NLOS Environments for Passive UHF RFID,” IEEE
Access, vol. 6, pp. 31772–31782, 2018.
[52] S. Yiu, M. Dashti, H. Claussen, and F. Perez-Cruz, “Wireless RSSI
fingerprinting localization,” Signal Processing, vol. 131, pp. 235–244,
2017.
[53] N. Le Dortz, F. Gain, and P. Zetterberg, “WiFi fingerprint indoor
positioning system using probability distribution comparison,” in 2012
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal
Processing (ICASSP), 2012, pp. 2301–2304.
[54] M. Pastorino et al., “A Trainingless WiFi Fingerprint Positioning
Approach Over Mobile Devices,” IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett.,
vol. 13, pp. 832–835, 2014.
[55] C. Yang and H. Shao, “WiFi-based indoor positioning,” IEEE Commun.
Mag., vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 150–157, Mar. 2015.
[56] S. Yiu and K. Yang, “Gaussian Process Assisted Fingerprinting
Localization,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 683–690, 2016.
[57] F. Subhan, H. Hasbullah, A. Rozyyev, and S. T. Bakhsh, “Indoor
positioning in Bluetooth networks using fingerprinting and lateration
approach,” in 2011 International Conference on Information Science
and Applications, 2011, pp. 1–9.
[58] L. M. Ni, Y. Liu, Y. C. Lau, and A. P. Patil, “LANDMARC: indoor
location sensing using active RFID,” in Proceedings of the First IEEE
International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications,
2003, pp. 407–415.
[59] M. A. Khan and V. K. Antiwal, “Location estimation technique using
extended 3-D LANDMARC algorithm for passive RFID tag,” in 2009
IEEE International Advance Computing Conference, 2009, pp. 249–
253.
[60] K. Han and S. H. Cho, “Advanced LANDMARC with adaptive k-nearest
algorithm for RFID location system,” in 2010 2nd IEEE International
Conference on Network Infrastructure and Digital Content, 2010, pp.
595–598.
[61] H. Xu, Y. Ding, P. Li, R. Wang, and Y. Li, “An RFID indoor positioning
algorithm based on bayesian probability and K-Nearest neighbor,”
Sensors (Switzerland), vol. 17, no. 8, pp. 1–17, 2017.
[62] B. Hu, H. Peng, and Z. Sun, “Landmarc localization algorithm based on
weight optimization,” Chinese J. Electron., vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 1291–
1296, 2018.
[63] Y. Zhao, Y. Liu, and L. M. Ni, “VIRE: Active RFID-based Localization
Using Virtual Reference Elimination,” in 2007 International Conference
on Parallel Processing (ICPP 2007), 2007, p. 56.
[64] N. BAHAALDIN and E. Erçelebi, “BVIRE improved algorithm for
indoor localization based on RFID and a linear regression model,”
TURKISH J. Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci., vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 2944–2958,
2018.
[65] Y. Zhao, K. Liu, Y. Ma, Z. Gao, Y. Zang, and J. Teng, “Similarity
Analysis-Based Indoor Localization Algorithm With Backscatter
Information of Passive UHF RFID Tags,” IEEE Sens. J., vol. 17, no. 1,
pp. 185–193, 2017.
[66] L. Mo and C. Li, “Passive UHF-RFID Localization Based on the
Similarity Measurement of Virtual Reference Tags,” IEEE Trans.
Instrum. Meas., 2018.
[67] K. Yamano, K. Tanaka, M. Hirayama, E. Kondo, Y. Kimuro, and M.
Matsumoto, “Self-localization of mobile robots with RFID system by
using support vector machine,” in 2004 IEEE/RSJ International
Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2004, vol. 4, pp.
3756–3761.
[68] A. Wille, M. Broll, and S. Winter, “Phase difference based RFID
navigation for medical applications,” in 2011 IEEE International
Conference on RFID, 2011, pp. 98–105.
[69] E. L. Berz, D. A. Tesch, and F. P. Hessel, “RFID indoor localization
based on support vector regression and k-means,” in 2015 IEEE 24th
International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), 2015, pp.
1418–1423.
2469-7281 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
11
[70] W. Li, J. Wu, and D. Wang, “A novel indoor positioning method based
on key reference RFID tags,” in 2009 IEEE Youth Conference on
Information, Computing and Telecommunication, 2009, pp. 42–45.
[71] S. Subedi, E. Pauls, and Y. D. Zhang, “Accurate Localization and
Tracking of a Passive RFID Reader Based on RSSI Measurements,”
IEEE J. Radio Freq. Identif., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 144–154, 2017.
[72] Z. Belhadi and L. Fergani, “Fingerprinting methods for RFID tag indoor
localization,” in 2014 International Conference on Multimedia
Computing and Systems (ICMCS), 2014, pp. 717–722.
[73] H. Ma and K. Wang, “Fusion of RSS and Phase Shift Using the Kalman
Filter for RFID Tracking,” IEEE Sens. J., vol. 17, no. 11, pp. 3551–3558,
2017.
[74] X. Wu, F. Deng, and Z. Chen, “RFID 3D-LANDMARC Localization
Algorithm Based on Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization,”
Electronics, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 1–11, 2018.
[75] J. Li, S. Zhang, L. Yang, X. Fu, Z. Ming, and G. Feng, “Accurate RFID
localization algorithm with particle swarm optimization based on
reference tags.,” J. Intell. Fuzzy Syst., vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 2697–2706, Nov.
2016.
[76] L. Yang, Y. Chen, X.-Y. Li, C. Xiao, M. Li, and Y. Liu, “Tagoram:
Real-time Tracking of Mobile RFID Tags to High Precision Using
COTS Devices,” in Proceedings of the 20th Annual International
Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, 2014, pp. 237–248.
[77] R. Miesen, F. Kirsch, and M. Vossiek, “Holographic localization of
passive UHF RFID transponders,” in 2011 IEEE International
Conference on RFID, RFID 2011, 2011, pp. 32–37.
[78] R. Miesen, F. Kirsch, and M. Vossiek, “UHF RFID localization based on
synthetic apertures,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 10, no. 3, pp.
807–815, 2013.
[79] R. Zhao, Q. Zhang, D. Li, H. Chen, and D. Wang, “A novel accurate
synthetic aperture RFID localization method with high radial accuracy,”
18th IEEE Int. Symp. A World Wireless, Mob. Multimed. Networks,
WoWMoM 2017 - Conf., pp. 1–9, 2017.
[80] Z. Wang, N. Ye, R. Malekian, F. Xiao, and R. Wang, “TrackT: Accurate
tracking of RFID tags with mm-level accuracy using first-order taylor
series approximation,” Ad Hoc Networks, vol. 53, pp. 132–144, 2016.
[81] J. Wilson and N. Patwari, “Radio tomographic imaging with wireless
networks,” IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput., vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 621–632, 2010.
[82] J. Wilson and N. Patwari, “See-Through Walls: Motion Tracking Using
Variance-Based Radio Tomography Networks,” IEEE Trans. Mob.
Comput., vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 612–621, 2011.
[83] B. R. Hamilton, X. Ma, R. J. Baxley, and S. M. Matechik, “Propagation
Modeling for Radio Frequency Tomography in Wireless Networks,”
IEEE J. Sel. Top. Signal Process., vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 55–65, 2014.
[84] Y. Zhao and N. Patwari, “Robust Estimators for Variance-Based
Device-Free Localization and Tracking,” IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput.,
vol. 14, no. 10, pp. 2116–2129, 2015.
[85] B. Wagner, N. Patwari, and D. Timmermann, “Passive RFID
tomographic imaging for device-free user localization,” in 2012 9th
Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication, 2012, pp.
120–125.
[86] R. Liu, G. Huskić, and A. Zell, “Dynamic objects tracking with a mobile
robot using passive UHF RFID tags,” in 2014 IEEE/RSJ International
Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2014, pp. 4247–4252.
[87] J. Zhang, Y. Lyu, J. Patton, S. C. G. Periaswamy, and T. Roppel, “BFVP:
A Probabilistic UHF RFID Tag Localization Algorithm Using Bayesian
Filter and a Variable Power RFID Model,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.,
vol. 65, no. 10, pp. 8250–8259, 2018.
[88] M. Scherhäufl, M. Pichler, E. Schimbäck, D. J. Müller, A. Ziroff, and A.
Stelzer, “Indoor Localization of Passive UHF RFID Tags Based on
Phase-of-Arrival Evaluation,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol.
61, no. 12, pp. 4724–4729, 2013.
[89] M. N. Lionel, Y. Liu, Y. C. Lau, and A. P. Patil, “LANDMARC: Indoor
location sensing using active RFID,” in Wireless Networks, 2004, vol. 10,
no. 6, pp. 701–710.