Localization of Life Safety Vests in an Aircraft Using Backscattering RFID Communication

In an aircraft, a variety of equipment are installed for the safety of the passengers, including seat belts, life vests, oxygen masks and cylinders, which require traceability for an efficient maintenance schedule. Furnishing them with RFID tags can enable the maintenance personnel to obtain accurate service history by just querying the tags. Overwater air travel mandates that the life vests should be present under each passenger seat before the aircraft is airborne. A mere count of life vests is insufficient as locating the seat that has a missing vest is required - a time consuming and non-trivial activity. We focus on 2D tracking of the life vests using backscattering RFID communication. Our study is limited to single aisle aircraft, although, it can be extended seamlessly to twin aisle wide body aircraft. A Divide-and-Conquer approach has been implemented, using COTS components, for locating the tags based on the phase measured from the signals backscattered by the tags. Extensive experiments are conducted by emulating the environment in an aircraft mockup fuselage. We experimented with two different setups, viz., Standard Mobile Platform and Novel Handheld setups. Average percentage errors of 4.7% and 4.6% have been achieved with the Handheld setup in the x and y directions, respectively.