Target simulation for UHF RFID DoA estimation systems

In this work a new method for the evaluation of UHF RFID Direction of Arrival (DoA) estimation systems is developed and demonstrated. Instead of simulating the system performance or manually measuring it in realistic or ideal environments, a method for the evaluation of DoA systems using received signals produced by a target simulator is proposed. The simulator generates the signals for each channel of the DoA estimator by attenuating and phase shifting the signals of an UHF RFID chip to replicate the signal propagation conditions for a chosen tag distance and arrival angle. This combines the advantages of the simulative approach and real world evaluation: it is fast, reproducible and doesn't require special measurement environments. To facilitate this method, plane and spherical wave signal models for the simulation of RFID targets are derived, multichannel phase-shifting and attenuation hardware for the simulation of such signals is presented and a demonstrative evaluation of a RFID DoA estimation system is performed, replicating evaluation scenarios in non reflective and multipath environments.