Order of arrival estimation via UHF-UWB RFID

The estimation of the order-of-arrival for items on a conveyor belt is a fundamental operation for automatic supply chain management. Classical solutions are based on optical systems, which are accurate but do not guarantee the transmission of a high amount of data through the barcode, or on ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID), which does not guarantee high-accuracy sorting. Among wireless technologies, ultra-wide band (UWB) provides high-accuracy localization. In this paper, we introduce a joint UHF and UWB RFID system that allows identification and tracking of passive tags attached to objects for high-accuracy order-of-arrival estimation of goods on conveyor belts. A tracking technique based on particle filtering is used for order-of-arrival estimation. Results for a case of study show accuracy of the proposed system for various settings.