Optimizing Directional Reader Antennas Deployment in UHF RFID Localization System by Using a MPCSO Algorithm

Network planning plays a critical role in the performance of ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) system. Existing works mainly focus on the impact of reader antennas’ location with regard to coverage, quality of service, and cost, rather than localization accuracy. Moreover, since the link budget of stated solutions was investigated based on omnidirectional antennas, most research findings cannot be directly applied to practical directional localization scene. Hence, a novel deployment optimization approach for the directional reader antennas is proposed in this paper. By investigating the gain characteristic of patch antenna and dipole antenna, a propagation model is established in the first place. Then, we build a new network planning model for identifying the placement of a fixed number of reader antennas, which maximizes coverage and minimizes location error as well as interference. Finally, an improved chicken swarm optimization algorithm, termed as MPCSO, is developed for this problem. Simulation results show that the proposed approach achieves much better performance than other classic algorithms.