Autonomous Vehicle Navigation and Communication by Radio Frequency Identity Tags

Abstract

This thesis finds the feasibility of using Radio-Frequency Identity tags for current Autonomous Vehicle (AV) limitations such as camera occlusions, traffic-sign tempering, and spotty GPS signals interrupting localization. Experiments were conducted with an AV on a test track up to 90 km/h with Active and Passive Tags in various propagation mediums such as Ice and Snow. Higher speeds could not be tried due to track constraints. One study however was able to read the Passive tags up to 200 km/h. The study finds how to increase the coverage area and read range of the tags. The Active tags performed better than their Passive counterparts, however at the expense of high cost and battery replacement.Mass production and Piezoelectric technology may be able to help with it, respectively. The study found that the technology in its current form is suitable for controlled environments only. However, if more Passive antennas and readers are experimented with, and more equipment is developed while keeping AV use-case in mind, it can show promise against the current AV limitations.

RFID based Infrastructure to Vehicle Communication System for Road Sign Identification

“…Current wireless communication standards are deployed in infrastructure to vehicle (I2V) communication systems like WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID and dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) [4]. There are many limitations to current technologies used to send the warning messages from the road signs to the vehicle [5]. The camera technology where the camera is used to read the information of the signs and send it to the car, the limitation is Cameras can fail because of weather situation like a dust storm, obstacles and heavy rain Camera also fail in a low light condition such as at night when a street light is not distributed correctly.…”