Identifying Objects Using RF Transmitters and Receivers, and Retrieving Data
Using GSM
Vijayendra R
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology
Bangalore – 560054, Karnataka
E-mail: veejaymania@gmail.com
Abstract—To provide a system for monitoring and locating
objects using Radio Frequency (RF) transmitters and receivers,
and querying about the objects using mobile phones. An object
represents a real world entity. This system is based on RF
transmitters that are tagged to the objects of everyday use and
have the capability of transmitting signals and a receiver that
detects the transmission of the tagged object and stores its
corresponding location in the database which is created
specifically for information maintenance of the tagged objects.
Mobile phones are used to query the location of the tagged
object by sending a message to the Subscriber Identity Module
(SIM) connected to a Global System for Mobile
Communications (GSM) modem. This GSM modem fetches the
location and other relevant information from the database and
encapsulates this information into a message which is sent back
to the mobile phone that has requested the information.
I. INTRODUCTION
Inexpensive sensing devices are expected to play a
major role in future computing systems. They aim to make
the daily life of their users easier by monitoring everyday
physical processes and providing novel features based on
the acquired data. What currently hinders most of the
conceived systems from becoming commercial applications,
however, is a lack of adequate infrastructure of following
types: First, a sensing infrastructure must be installed to
perform an efficient sensing task. Second, a communication
infrastructure is required to distribute and aggregate
readings from multiple transmitters. Finally, a commercial
infrastructure is needed to manufacture and deploy the
transmitting, receiving and communicating devices like
GSM modem, and to generate revenue from the system.
The mobile phone system provides a unique opportunity
to overcome these difficulties. Sensing technologies can be
implemented using transmitters and a receiver and accessed
from the mobile handset via wireless mobile networks.
Wide area communication is a core property of the cellular
network. It enables the integration of data from many
transmitters and the support of applications with backend
services such as data storage. This system is effectively used
in the location of important items that are tagged and their
location can be queried by various users. Making use of
these unique properties of mobile phones and the cellular
network, we present a system which is concerned with
monitoring and locating objects by means of mobile phones.
978-1-4244-5586-7/10/$26.00 C 2010 IEEE
318
Srinivasa K G
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology
Bangalore – 560054, Karnataka
E-mail: srinivasa.kg@gmail.com
The objects that are tagged with the hardware i.e. the
transmitters in the vicinity are detected by the corresponding
receivers and the location are queried using a mobile phone
by means of a GSM modem. The dual technique employed
in this project is: First, object sensing using the RF
transmitters and receivers. Second, user interface provided
by the mobile phone aid for sensing and querying the
personal items simultaneously.
This system allowed us to identify a particular challenge
that is common to many applications that makes use of large
people-centric infrastructure provided by mobile phones and
the cellular network. The challenge is to answer the question
of whether a system based on RF transmitters and receiver
can provide sufficient coverage in relatively short period of
time. In an extensive evaluation, which includes a real-
world experiment with our object localization prototype, we
therefore analyzed the properties of the coverage obtained
given a wide range of different operational parameters such
as the distance between transmitter and receivers, objects in
the path of transmission and range of the transmitters used.
In addition to confirming the feasibility of object
localization based on mobile phones, the study can provide
valuable guidelines for the design of future people-centric
sensing systems in general.
II. OVERVIEW
This article is a novel approach in locating and also
retrieving product related information using mobile phones.
It is difficult to go and locate objects manually or search for
them in a short period of time especially when object
location is unknown. In this paper we are attempting to
locate objects irrespective of its distance from the user who
is trying to track the object. Objects can be located more
easily if they are equipped with Bluetooth or Infra-Red
facilities which nowadays are commonly found in electronic
devices likes Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), laptops.
However the drawback of this is the limited range. But we
are extending the idea to locate objects both stationary and
mobile using RF transmitters and receivers with greater
range. On a larger scale this project can be implemented for
locating landmarks in a city or items in a warehouse. The
implementation is based on two criteria. Firstly, we assume
that the objects being tagged are accompanied with a unique
ID. Secondly, each receiver is given a unique locationID
that determines the current location of the object.
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 TABLE I. PARAMETER SETTINGS FOR THE FOUR USE CASES
Query InRegion OutRegion
Trigger InRegion(obj) OutRegion(obj)
ObjDescription()
Report ObjLocation() OutRegion(obj)
InRegion(obj)
Tmax  
Nmax y1  y2
Qmax  
III. ARCHITECTURE
The system architecture comprises of three parts that is
the sensing functionality, storing functionality and querying
service. The sensing functionality comprises of RF
transmitters and receivers that are used to sense the presence
of tagged objects within the region. An overview of RF
transmitters can be found in [1].The storage functionality is
used to store all relevant information of the object in the
database. The operator provides a user with a database
service in which the user can store application data such as
reports and other information regarding the objects. The
querying service is used by the user for querying necessary
information associated with the object using GSM network
and Short message service (SMS). An overview of GSM
Architecture and its services can be found in [2,6].
IV. OBJECT TRACKING
The object tracking application is used for locating and
managing objects using Use case via mobile phones. Use
cases are specified for various functions such as detecting of
objects within the sensing range, notify objects that have left
the sensing range, querying about objects, identifying new
objects entering and leaving the sensing range. These use
cases are defined as follows,
• OutRegion: This Use case allows the user to set up
their cell phones to keep track of objects which
leave the receiver sensing region. This includes
tracing of object location before and after the loss
event. Most recent location of the object will be
stored and notification will be sent when an object
leaves the sensing region using OutRegion(obj)
function.
• InRegion: This Use case allows the user to set up
their cell phones to keep track of all objects within
the receiver sensing region. This includes tracing of
objects location and storing it in the database.
Current location of the object will be stored and
notification will be sent to indicate the presence of
object in the sensing region using InRegion(obj)
function.
• Find: This Use case allows the user to query an
object from the list of objects that are already being
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Find Gate
InRegion(obj) InRegion(any)
ObjDescription() ObjLocation()
ObjLocation() InRegion(obj)
x 
y3
z 
detected and stored in the database. The system will
forward this query to the GSM modem, which looks
for the corresponding object in the database.
Various object search strategies can be employed
such as string matching, keyword followed by the
object name e.g., Locate Watch. The GSM modem
will notify the user with a short message containing
object’s location and its description using
ObjLocation() and ObjDescription() function.
• Gate: This Use case act as a gatekeeper keeping
track of new objects entering the sensing region and
old objects leaving the sensing region by sending
corresponding notifications. The data is
correspondingly updated in the database. This Use
case provides useful information that helps in Find
query.
Query services and functions implementing the above
use cases are provided in Table I. The parameter x, y1, y2,
y3 and z in the table represent the values used in actual
system. Trigger service is used to indicate when the query
should produce a result. If the queried object is in the
sensing region then query produces a result otherwise it
sends a default message “Object Not Found”. Report service
specifies the information the query should generate if the
object is found. The report consists of location and complete
description of the object e.g., a restaurant object consists of
a report specifying the location, type, theme and facilities.
Different system limits can be specified using the following
parameters,
• Tmax: maximum time taken by a query or the
maximum query time.
• Nmax: maximum number of objects detected by the
receiver.
• Qmax: maximum no of reports that can be
generated by the system.
For OutRegion scenario Tmax, Nmax, Qmax all are
irrelevant since the object is outside the sensing region of
the system. In InRegion scenario Nmax is relevant as it
specifies the maximum number of objects the receiver can
detect and if the system exceeds this limit then unused
objects or out of region objects should be replaced by new
ones. In Find scenario Tmax and Qmax are relevant .Tmax
is dependent upon the network traffic and distance between
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the user and the GSM modem. Tmax is also limited by the
effective search strategy employed in the system. The Find
query is sent to backend database of the system
Figure 1. System Design
is sent. Qmax is limited on the number of objects stored in
the database. Maximum number of reports is proportional to
the maximum number of objects stored in the database .Gate
scenario is concerned with Nmax parameter, when an object
is identified it verifies with the Nmax before its information
is stored in the database.
V. SYSTEM DESIGN
The system design provides the details of the components
employed in the system. It consists of RF transmitters
incorporated into the objects, RF receiver, and a database to
store all the relevant information regarding the objects and a
GSM modem used for sending and receiving SMS regarding
querying of the objects and its location. The components of
the system are provided in Fig. 1.
The RF transmitters operate in a radio frequency range
of 3 KHz to 300 GHz. RF transmitters are programmed at
different frequencies and integrated with objects to be
located. Each RF transmitter will be associated with a
unique ID.RF transmitters can be used to operate in low
frequency range as well as high frequency range depending
upon its application. Frequency range switch is used to
select the desired frequency range for each transmitter.
Modulation techniques employed by the transmitter are
Amplitude modulation (AM), Frequency modulation (FM),
Frequency shift key (FSK), Amplitude shift key (ASK),
Phase shift key (PSK). Data rate is the amount of data
transmitted in bits per second. RF transmitters are available
in market with a wide range of specifications e.g., LR series,
LC series, HP3 series. RF transmitters transmit the unique
ID via the communication network.
RF receivers are electronic devices that separate radio
signals from one another and use demodulator to convert
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infrastructure. GSM modem searches the database and sends
a report if the object exists, otherwise object not found reply
specific signals into audio, video, or data formats. Radio
techniques limit localized interference and noise. Each RF
receiver is associated with a unique location ID. This ID is
used to determine the location of the object. RF receivers
display the unique object ID being detected; all the relevant
data of this object are stored in the database along with its
location. RF receivers are also available in market with
various specifications e.g., MC33591, U4311B.
An object could be a stationary or a mobile object. It
could represent any real world entity. The objects are
incorporated with transmitters that are programmed with
different frequencies and identified by a unique ID. The RF
receivers are used to identify these objects within the region.
The area of the region depends upon the receiver used. The
wireless communication network is built on User Datagram
Protocol (UDP) or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
running over Internet Protocol (IP).
Database represents a storage device like hard disk. Size
of the database depends upon the application. Database is
attached to the GSM modem. A GSM modem can be an
external device or a PC Card / PCMCIA Card. GSM modem
requires a SIM card from a wireless carrier in order to
operate. All SIM cards are associated with a Personal
Identity Number (PIN) used to unlock the mobile station
(MS). All the queries regarding the objects are sent to this
SIM via the GSM network. GSM modems support a
common set of standard AT commands used to provide
Short message service e.g., SIM300_HD_V1.06.
A user agent is a potential user who sends short message
queries regarding the object using mobile devices such as
cell phone, PDA. The queries are sent to the GSM modem
via the GSM network using the find use case. The GSM
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modem interacts with the database and sends back the
corresponding information to the user via the GSM network.
functionality of various parts of the model as shown in Fig.
2. The protocol stack can be divided into two parts: the
Figure 2. Protocol Stack
hardware specification, which describes the protocols for
RF transmitters, RF receivers and database, and the software
specification, which provides protocols and function needed
to query information from the GSM modem. The protocol
stack comprises of the following elements:
• RF transmitters are integrated to the objects. They
are programmed to use a particular frequency in the
radio frequency range. An RF transmitter generally
includes a modulator that modulates an input signal
and a radio frequency power amplifier that is
coupled to the modulator to amplify the modulated
input signal. The radio frequency power amplifier is
coupled to an antenna that transmits the amplified
modulated input signal. The modulation techniques
are as follows: 1) AM causes the baseband signal to
vary the amplitude of the carrier wave to create the
desired information content. 2) FM causes the
instantaneous frequency of a sine wave carrier to
depart from the centre frequency by an amount
proportional to the instantaneous value of the
modulating signal.3) ASK transmits data by varying
the amplitude of the transmitted signal.4) FSK is a
digital modulation scheme using two or more output
frequencies.5) PSK is a digital modulation scheme
in which the phase of the transmitted signal is
varied in accordance with the baseband data signal.
Each RF transmitter transmits a unique ID that
represents the object associated with it to the
corresponding receiver. This data signal is
transmitted using wireless network with TCP/IP and
UDP protocol.
• RF receivers are located in each region with a
unique location ID. This Location ID is used to
locate the region in which RF receiver is placed. RF
receivers use wireless network to receive the signals
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VI. PROTOCOL STACK
The protocol stack provides the integration and
transmitted by the RF transmitters within its sensing
region. RF receiver displays the unique ID of the
object detected along with its location ID. These
IDs are sent to the front end. Visual studio along
with programming language like java, .NET can be
used to create a front end forms to enter the
description of the object and send it to the database.
RF receivers detect all signals transmitted in the
radio frequency range.
• Database comprises of secondary memory devices
such as hard disk. Size of the database is directly
proportional to the area of application. RF receivers
are used to store the description and location of the
objects in the database. And the GSM modem is
used to query the objects from the database. The
database can be created using software toolkit like
MySQL. The database is integrated to RF receivers
and GSM modem using programming languages
like .NET, J2ME, Java running on Windows or
Linux Operating System (OS). Database should be
frequently updated to provide valid data to the users
of the system.
• Radio frequency specifies the air interface, which
also includes the frequencies used, modulation
technique employed and power transmitted. Radio
frequency operates over a range of 3 KHz to 300
GHz.
• Baseband provides a description of basic connection
establishment, packet formats, timing and basic
Quality of service (QoS) parameters used by the
system.
• Link manager is used for link set-up and
management of connections between devices like
database, GSM modem, transmitters and receivers.
Link manager performs functions such as
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 synchronization, capability management, and
quality of service, power control, transmission mode
and authentication.
• The network applications make use of standard TCP
and UDP protocol. Transmission Control Protocol
sends the data directly between two components,
and stay connected for the duration of the transfer.
User Datagram Protocol sends the data packets it
into the network without requiring prior connections
and provides best effort service. TCP/UDP protocol
runs over standard IP protocol. TCP/UDP over IP is
described in [3].
• GSM modem is integrated to the database.
E.g., .NET platform are used to interface GSM with
the database. It makes use of standard AT modem
commands for sending and receiving SMS. Each
GSM modem is associated with a SIM that is used
by the user to query Information about an object.
All SMS are sent to the SIM of the GSM modem.
• GSM network is used for transmission of messages
from the mobile station to the GSM modem.
• User interface consists of cell phones, PDA and so
on. They are used query about the object by sending
SMS to the GSM modem via the network.
VII. CONSTRAINTS
The constraints that limit the design of the system are:
• Same Frequency: If two or more transmitters are
programmed to operate at the same frequency, then
it is not possible to run them simultaneously. The
transmitter closer to the receiver will be detected.
• Range: The range of detection may vary from a few
meters to several kilometers depending on the
transmitters used. Higher range transmitters increase
the overall cost of the system.
• Reliability of Circuits: Since electronic circuits are
used, reliability is a factor of concern. The operation
of equipments depends on the lifetime of hardware.
• Power Consumption: The power consumption
increases as higher capacity transmitters and
receivers are used.
• Performance: For small companies and
organizations with relatively few hundred messages
passing in and out simultaneously from the GSM
modem is feasible. However for global
organizations where several thousand messages per
minute could be anticipated, then the performance
of GSM modem degrades.
VIII. APPLICATIONS
The system being developed has a wide range of
applications. Based on the capacity of transmitters and
receiver, the usability can range from a small house or
building to a large area such as a city. Some of the
applications are as follows,
• Locating landmarks in a city: A transmitter can be
attached to each landmark and its location and
related description can be stored in a database. A
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visitor to the city can query from any mobile phone
and get information about the location.
• Managing items in a warehouse: Finding an item in
a huge warehouse is a task that can be accomplished
using the design.
• Usage as emergency services: A helpline number
attached to the GSM can be used by people to locate
hospitals, fire station and police station in case of
emergencies.
• Locating personal objects: Objects used by people
on a daily basis like spectacles, wallet, and so on
may get displaced very often. Using transmitter and
receiver, these objects can be tracked.
• Organization support: Within an institution it can
be used to locate libraries, canteens, departments
and sport complex.
IX. CONCLUSION
A comprehensive system for managing and finding
essential and everyday objects relying on mobile phones as
omnipresent object-sensing devices is presented. Significant
effort was spent on modeling and testing the system for
detecting objects under various circumstances. In all the
experiments, the results are encouraging but due to the
constraints of cost, implementation was not done on large
scale basis. Even though the system provides a relatively
less accurate positioning for moving objects, but the total
overhead for distributing an object search query remains
acceptably low. This does not change the basic fact that the
objects out of sensing region will not be detected. For
objects within the sensing region, such a system is feasible.
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