Object Search for the Internet of Things Using Tag-based Location Signatures

• Published in: Journal of software 2012-12, Vol.7 (12), p.2886-2886
• Main Authors: Jwo, Jung-Sing, Chen, Ting-Chia, Tu, Mengru
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Internet; Localization; Mathematical models; Position (location); Searching; Signatures; Tags
• ISSN: 1796-217X; 1796-217X
• DOI: 10.4304/jsw.7.12.2886-2893

In this paper, an object search solution for the Internet of Things (IoT) is proposed. This study first differentiates localization and searching. Localization is to calculate an object's current location. Searching is to return a set of locations where a target object could be. It is possible that the locations of the returned set are not contiguous. Searching accuracy can be improved if the number of the returned locations is small. Even though localization technique is applicable to searching applications, a simpler and easier solution will attract more enterprise users. In this paper, based on a concept called location signature, defined by a set of reference tags, an object searching method named Location Signature Search (LSS) is proposed. The study of LSS shows that the searching accuracy can be very high if a location signature is not shared by too many locations. Since location signatures are affected by the deployment of the reference tags, trade-offbetween searching accuracy and implementation cost is achievable. A real world experiment is conducted in this research. The results show that LSS indeed is a practical method for object searching applications. Index Terms-Internet of Things, location signature, object search, RFID, ubiquitous computing