A Novel Approach to High Performance of RFID-Based Asset Tracking in a Metal Cabinet

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is widely recognized as one of the techniques to track information technology (IT) assets in the data center. However, detuning and multipath interference caused by the nearly all-metal environment of the data center inherently result in false positives and false negatives. The purpose of the study is to investigate the challenge of tracking assets with a handheld RFID reader in a data center and to propose a novel method to improve its performance. We found that the handheld approach can achieve high accuracy in the reading of tags; however, it is highly skilled, time consuming, and manual intensive work. The preliminary evaluation of the tag, the reader sweep, the discovery of the dead zone with the power mapper, and real-time inventory management were adopted to implement such a method. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method can achieve 100% accuracy performance. The findings of the study may serve as a guide for other RFID-based systems for static asset tracking in a metal cabinet.