The future of ultra-wideband localization in RFID

In the new scenarios foreseen by the Internet of Things (IoT), industrial and consumer systems will be required to detect and localize tagged items with high accuracy using cheap, energy autonomous, and disposable tags. To meet these challenging requirements, the adoption of passive ultra-wideband (UWB) radio-frequency identification (RFID) appears a promising solution to overcome the limitations of current Gen.2 RFID standard. In this paper we provide a survey on recent developments in the field of UWB-RFID by discussing the main advantages and open issues in providing high positioning accuracy with energy autonomous devices. Successively, we envision the possible cutting-edge technologies for next generation UWB-RFID as a key enabler for the IoT.