Experimental validation of a SAR-Based RFID localization technique exploiting an automated handling system

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) approach has attracted a considerable interest in the context of phase-based techniques for the localization of UHF-RFID passive tags. In this letter, the results of an extensive experimental activity are presented, when the reader antenna is moved in front of a set of static passive UHF-RFID tags by means of a planar handling system. Measured performance is evaluated with respect to several system parameters: tag number and typology, tag reciprocal distance and orientation, trajectory and speed of the moving reader antenna. It is shown that the SAR processing can guarantee an accurate two-dimensional localization of multiple tags, with a localization error comparable to the size of typical commercial tags, by using a single reader antenna and without the need for any reference tag.