The Localization of Buried Objects in the Soil Using an RFID Tag: Protocol Description and Parameter Estimation With the Model of the Oscillating Magnetic Field in Media

This paper introduces a localization protocol that fills a gap among already existing methods, such as ground penetrating radar or methods based on inductive prospecting. The principle is to attach a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to a non-metallic object of interest buried in a non-magnetic soil and deduce its depth from the magnetic induction in the near field regime between the buried tag and an RFID antenna. Electromagnetic propagation in soils has been extensively studied in geophysics. The higher the frequency, the lower the penetration depth. The standard frequency range in geophysics is lower than 100 kHz to reach penetration depth as high as several tens of meters and the soil conductance is the main influencing factor. When working with passive RFID tags, their received power and, consequently, the detection range in air grows with the frequency. A frequency tradeoff for the detection in media lies in the range of 10–50 MHz, where the authorized RFID frequency is 13.56 MHZ. In this range, the wavenumber in weakly saline soils depends essentially on the medium dielectric permittivity (see Appendix A ). In this paper, we calculate the precision of the estimation of the burying depth of the tag in terms of the standard deviation and the corresponding bias up to two uncertain parameters—the penetration depth and the activation field. The laboratory experiments provide results supporting the chosen model.