A Low-cost RFID/GPS Location Sensing Algorithm for Urban Infrastructure

Low-cost Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) location sensing algorithm is practical and crucial for urban infrastructure location. Current RFID location algorithms are based on fixed multiple RFID reader or reference points (reader or tag) with known position, which is cost and difficult to deployment in urban environment. The objective of this study is to develop a low-cost location sensing algorithm using RFID technique to locate urban infrastructure. This paper presents an algorithm based on multilateration with the integration of mobile RFID and Global Position System (GPS). The mobility of RFID reader can measure many distances between different RFID reader positions and target tag which represent multilateration. The GPS provides coordination of RFID reader. The location of tag is calculated based on triangle geometric property. The redundant observation is adopted to get the optimum location. In practice, the only one RFID reader is necessary, thus the cost is reduced hardly. The performance and accuracy assessment are conducted in field experiment. The experiment proves that the proposed low-cost location sensing algorithm is able to location the urban infrastructure with smaller position error. The lower cost makes it even more economically feasible than other algorithm.