3D localization for sub-centimeter sized devices

Abstract

The vision of tracking small IoT devices runs into the reality of localization technologies — today it is difficult to continuously track objects through walls in homes and warehouses on a coin cell battery. While Wi-Fi and ultra-wideband radios can provide tracking through walls, they do not last more than a month on small coin and button cell batteries since they consume tens of milliwatts of power. We present the first localization system that consumes microwatts of power at a mobile device and can be localized across multiple rooms in settings like homes and hospitals. To this end, we introduce a multi-band backscatter prototype that operates across 900 MHz, 2.4 and 5 GHz and can extract the backscatter phase information from signals that are below the noise floor. We build sub-centimeter sized prototypes which consume 93 W and could last five to ten years on button cell batteries. We achieved ranges of up to 60 m away from the AP and accuracies of 2, 12, 50 and 145 cm at 1, 5, 30 and 60 m respectively. To demonstrate the potential of our design, we deploy it in two real-world scenarios: five homes in a metropolitan area and the surgery wing of a hospital in patient pre-op and post-op rooms as well as storage facilities.