Device-Free Motion & Trajectory Detection via RFID

Compared with traditional methods that employ inertial sensors or wireless sensors, device-free approaches do not require that people carry devices, and they are considered a useful technique for indoor navigation and posture recognition. However, few existing methods can detect the trajectory and movements of humans at the same time. In this study, we propose a scheme called PADAR for addressing these two problems simultaneously by using passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags but without attaching them to the human body. The idea is based on the principle of radio tomographic imaging, where the variance in a tag’s backscattered radio frequency signal strength is influenced by human movement. We integrated a commodity off-the-shelf RFID reader with a two-dimensional phased array antenna and a matrix of passive tags to evaluate the performance of our scheme. We conducted experiments in a simulated indoor environment. The experimental results showed that PADAR achieved an accuracy of over 70%.