| Project Reference: | ITP/003/17LP |
| Project Title: | 3D Positioning Technologies for Passive RFID System |
| Hosting Institution: | LSCM R&D Centre (LSCM) |
| Abstract: | Positioning is a very useful additional feature for RFID. It has attracted more and more attention in the recent years, and will improve the RFID's user experience and expand its use. Currently, most RFID systems in the market do not provide positioning function, and only a few RFID systems provide positioning in two-dimension way. The goal of this project is to design a set of RFID system including readers, smart antennas, positioning algorithms and software, to prove concept of the 3D positioning. The R&D contents include: 1. Development of the reader module: Design a RFID reader module for 3D positioning. With the customized digital base band of the reader module, the phase information of received tag signal can be measured and derived, to perform PDOA positioning. In the front end, base band and firmware, a group of customized circuit, interface and function will be designed to act in concert with the smart antenna. To meet the high sensitivity and high speed required by 3D positioning, a novel carrier cancellation approach will be developed, and the techniques such as anti-collision algorithm, clock and phase recovery, automatic gain control, pre-correction of nonlinearity and LBT will be researched and used. 2. Development of the smart antenna: Design a smart antenna which can co-operate with the reader module to perform 3D positioning. The smart antenna consists of antenna array and beam-forming network. Through adjusting beam-forming network by the intelligent algorithm, the antenna’s beam direction will be controlled. Beam-forming and AOA algorithm will be used to measure the direction of tag. Meanwhile, with the scheme developed, the smart antenna will be able to expand the reader's read range, increase the signal-interference ratio and signal-noise ratio, reduce the blind zone and blind zone of the reader, and save the reader’s power. 3. Development of the 3D positioning algorithm and demonstration software: PDOA, smart antenna and RSSI will be effectively combined together to achieve the optimal positioning algorithm, by taking use of the advantage of each technique. Through the supplement of the smart antenna, the required antenna number, operation steps and operation time for 3D positioning will be reduced. Demonstration software will be developed to control the reader and antenna, and realize the location positioning algorithm and user interface. |
| Project Coordinator: | Dr Chung-Dak SHUM |
| Approved Funding Amount: | HK$2.7M |
| Project Period: | 01 Apr 2017 - 31 Mar 2018 |
