Application of Radio Frequency Identification for Museum Environment

Recently, Information and Communication Technologies provided a significant support to the communication activities of cultural heritage centers. In particular, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a promising solution to improve both object inventory and visitor guide applications in museums. However, due to the indoor propagation environment, it is necessary to properly characterize the RFID system behavior to ensure the correct functioning of RFID applications. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a RFID system for cultural heritage applications. We consider that museum visitors are endowed with RFID Readers able to detect RFID Tags storing the appropriate artwork description. We carry out various tests aimed at assessing the capability of the system to support visitors in real environmental conditions. The obtained results can be useful for system dimensioning and deployment.