Using RFID-capable cell phones for creating an extended navigation assistance

This paper offers an RFID-based indoor navigation application which utilizes cell phones with an RFID extension and distributed RFID tags fixed to interior equipment. This combination creates a special navigation environment which helps pedestrians to orient oneself in new respectively unknown environments. Therefore, each RFID tag contains information about the current position, location or an unknown environment. Thus, the current position can be determined, which is the basic for navigation. A further advantage of this application is the availability of additional graphical data stored on the RFID tags. This additional graphical data contains global information about the indoor environment and also local graphical information about the near environment of the RFID tag. This yields to an RFID-based navigation system, that not only shows the current position but also the near environment surrounding that specific location. Therefore, this systems grants navigation assistance by leading the user step-by-step or rather tag-by-tag to the final destination.