A UHF passive RFID tag position estimation approach exploiting mobile robots: phase-only 3D multilateration particle filters with no unwrapping

Radio-frequency identification is one of the Internet of Things’ most promising technologies and has been recently used in combination with mobile robots for logistics in business and retail applications. This manuscript deals with the localization of passive UHF RFID tags within industrial environments employing receiving antennas mounted on a mobile robot by using multilateration techniques that exploit narrowband phase-delay measurements. Two distinct Particle Filter approaches are presented to solve the 3D multilateration problem online and take advantage of a synthetic aperture created by the motion of the robot in the environment. One of the methods can operate in the presence of acquisition jumps since it does not rely on an unwrapping technique. Experimental results show promising performance concerning the recent literature. Moreover, the presented approach enables robust estimations concerning signal loss due to communication disturbances in noisy environments, typical of the industrial setting.