Improvement of RFID tracking accuracy for a personnel tracking system in healthcare

Abstract

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been widely adopted by different industries for various purposes. While implementing a RFID system for personnel tracking in an industrial environment, such as a hospital, the tracking accuracy is not always satisfactory due to incorrect placement of RFID hardware, coarse system configuration or environment. This thesis proposes comprehensive optimization methods for improving the tracking accuracy of a RFID system for personnel tracking. The improvement is achieved from four perspectives including RFID data cleaning, experimental design, data fusion and simulation modeling. This research is based on a case study carried out in a local community hospital where a RFID system for personnel tracking has been implemented. Through applying the optimization methods, the tracking accuracy of the RFID system has been improved to 87.33%. The thesis provides a guideline for the hospital and other similar application environment to implement improvement methods on a RFID tracking system.