A new asset tracking architecture integrating RFID, Bluetooth Low Energy tags and ad hoc smartphone applications

The paper describes an original architecture aimed at tracking assets within construction sites. The main components are Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tags and smartphones. The core functions are performed by two Android applications, which implement asset tracking and searching. The main merits of the architecture are its ability to maximize smartphone battery lifetime, that can reach an entire working shift, very satisfactory accuracy of BLE tag-smartphone distance estimation (with a mean error around 2 [m]), high probability of detecting all the tags present in the construction site, as well as a suitably short Aging time.