On-body communication channels are of increasing interest for a number of applications, such as medical-sensor networks, emergency-service workers, and personal communications. This paper describes investigations into channel characterization and antenna performance at 2.45 GHz. It is shown that significant channel fading occurs during normal activity, due primarily to the dynamic nature of the human body, but also due to multipath around the body and from scattering by the environment. This fading can be mitigated by the use of antenna diversity, and gains of up to 10 dB are obtained. Separation of the antenna's performance from the channel characteristics is difficult, but results show that for many channels, an antenna polarized normal to the body's surface gives the best path gain. Simulation and modeling present many challenges, particularly in terms of the problem's scale, and the need for accurate modeling of the body and its movement.

Focusing the electromagnetic field radiated by an antenna at a point in the antenna near-field (NF) region is a wellknown technique to increase the electromagnetic power density in a size-limited spot region close to the antenna aperture. This article encompasses the basic working principles and the applications of the NF-focused (NFF) microwave antennas as well as the synthesis procedures suggested for the NF shaping around the focal point and the technologies currently used for their implementation.

The specific problems encountered in the design of near-field focused planar microstrip arrays for RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) readers are described. In particular, the paper analyzes the case of a prototype operating at 2.4 GHz, which has been designed and characterized. Improvements with respect to conventional far-field focused arrays (equal phase arrays) are discussed and quantified.

This paper presents a state-of-the-art analysis on the methods suitable for vehicle indoor localization and exploiting the RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology. The survey describes three main categories of vehicle localization systems: (i) solutions exploiting only the RFID technology, (ii) sensor-fusion techniques combining data from RFID systems and proprioceptive sensors, and (iii) sensor-fusion techniques combing RFID data with those of other exteroceptive sensors in addition to the RFID system itself. For each method, implementation and methodological details are discussed, by highlighting the applied RFID technology, namely passive HF-RFID, passive UHF-RFID, or any other RFID system. Also, the employed RFID parameters, i.e., tag EPC, RSSI or backscattered phase, are discussed. The survey focuses on the achievable localization performance, also accounting for infrastructure-deployment costs together with complexity and maintenance overhead. Positioning, tracking, navigation and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) issues are here considered. The analysis highlights pros and cons of each method, together with the main challenges and perspectives of RFID-based solutions for vehicle localization.

A detailed performance analysis of near-field-focused planar arrays is addressed. Design curves and performance data are shown for planar square arrays as a function of the array size, the inter-element distance, and the focal distance. The performance curves are compared with results presented in earlier studies relevant to continuous-aperture antennas, as well as with numerical results obtained from a full-wave analysis of planar microstrip arrays.

A new phase-based technique for localization and tracking of items moving along a conveyor belt and equipped with ultrahigh frequency-radio frequency identification (UHF-RFID) tags is described and validated here. The technique is based on a synthetic-array approach that takes advantage of the fact that the tagged items move along a conveyor belt whose speed and path are known a priori. In this framework, a joint use is done of synthetic-array radar principles, knowledge-based processing, and efficient exploitation of the reader-tag communication signal. The technique can be easily implemented in any conventional reader based on an in-phase and quadrature receiver and it does not require any modification of the reader antenna configurations usually adopted in UHF-RFID portals. Numerical results are used to investigate the performance analysis of such methods, and also to furnish system design guidelines. Finally, the localization capability is also demonstrated through a measurement campaign in a real conveyor belt scenario, showing that a centimeter-order accuracy in the tag position estimation can be achieved even in a rich multipath environment.