RFInD: An RFID-Based System to Manage Virtual Spaces

We present RFInD, a cost-effective utilitarian system for locating objects using RFID technology. RFInD separates the notion of location from that of physical co-ordinates by using the abstraction of a virtual space. A virtual space is created by using RFID tags to label entities and locations in the physical space as references. RFInD manages the virtual space by using the references to create a spatial map, over which objects can be tracked and located. The target objects are labeled and embedded in a virtual space by associating them with proximate reference tags. RFInD creates the technology to automatically and efficiently manage these associations. In this work, we first characterize the capabilities of a commercially available RFID reader. We show how to use these capabilities for two tasks, namely proximity detection and tag association. RFInD uses these capabilities as primitives to create virtual spaces, embed objects in the virtual space, and navigate the space to track the embedded objects. Further, our experiments establish the effectiveness of our approach in managing virtual spaces