Comparison of Antenna Types and Frequency Bands for Radio-based Device-free Localization

Radio-based device-free localization systems measure effects on radio signals e.g. signal strength variations to locate objects or persons in a target area. Such systems detect and track persons that do not participate in the localization process. Models for calculating the radio signal propagation are key for the performance in device-free localization systems. Received signal strength (RSS) is simple to measure. However, it is susceptible to changes in the environment and multipath propagation. In this paper, we compare PCB antennas to a circularly polarized cloverleaf antenna and measurements in the 2.4 GHz with measurements to the 868MHz ISM band. We investigate especially if a circularly polarized cloverleaf antenna is resilient against multipath propagation. Our preliminary results demonstrate that our model is suitable to the 868MHz band and the use of the 868MHz band increases the area where a person affects the RSS. The use of a circularly polarized cloverleaf antenna does not help to avoid multipath propagation.