Low-cost Radio Frequency Identification Systems Research Articles

An Arduino-Based RFID Platform for Animal Research

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been broadly applied in the biological sciences to yield new insights into behavior, cognition, population biology, and distributions. RFID systems entail wireless communication between small tags that, when stimulated by an appropriate radio frequency transmission, emit a weak, short-range wireless signal that conveys a unique ID number. These tags, which often operate without a battery, can be attached to animals such that their presence at a particular location can be detected by an RFID reader. This paper describes an RFID data-logging system that can serve as the core for a wide variety of field and laboratory applications for monitoring the activities of individual animals. The core electronics are modeled on an Arduino circuit board, which is a hobbyist electronics system. Users can customize the hardware and software to accommodate their needs. We demonstrate the utility of the system with cursory descriptions of three real-world research applications. The first is a large-scale deployment that was used to examine individual breeding behaviors across four local populations of Wood Ducks. The second application employed an array of RFID-enabled bird feeders that allowed for tests of spatial cognition. Third, we describe a nest-box monitoring system that both records visits from breeding birds and administers experimental treatments, such as increasing temperature or playing audio recordings, in accordance to the presence/absence of individual birds. With these examples we do not attempt to relate details with regard to research findings; rather our intent is to demonstrate some of the possibilities enabled by our low-cost RFID system. Detailed descriptions, design files, and code are made available by means of the Open Science Framework.

A double PUF-based RFID identity authentication protocol in service-centric internet of things environments

The rapid development of sensing, automation and communication technologies has led to the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), providing recognized promising opportunities to build complex industrial systems and applications, leveraging the growing ubiquity of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and wireless sensor devices. With the pervasiveness of the interconnected systems encompassed with an ever-growing number of RFID-enabled devices being deployed, RFID security is an issue of high concern. As lightweight security encryption primitive, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is used to protect the information security of low-cost devices. Unfortunately, they are vulnerable to attacks, so countermeasures should be employed in the design. Aimed at low-cost and security of connected IoT devices to satisfy various security requirements of RFID technology in IoT, a two-stage multiple-choice arbiter (TSMCA)-based PUF in RFID systems is proposed, referred as TSMCA PUF. It is aimed at the design of a double PUF-based bidirectional RFID identity authentication protocol that permits the realization of bidirectional authentication between a server and a tag for the IC authentication in low-cost RFID systems, where the exclusive-OR (XOR) and character padding operations are adopted to generate the response of the PUF; the string-matching method is used in authentication, without exposing the PUF response to the verifier. Evaluation and analysis show that the advantages over conventional schemes include reduced area, higher randomness, and high stability, yet experimental results depict that the proposed protocol is promising resilient against attacks and practical for the deployment of low-cost hardware.

Quantitative analysis of RFID’ publications from 2006 to 2016

This paper aims to verify the trends in the scientific research about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) published in journal papers from 2006 to 2016. RFID is a well-known information technology, which is used in different sectors to track and identify goods and to control and preserve the quality of products and their data. Because many researchers have studied RFID, practitioners are investing their time in developing low-cost and longer-life RFID systems using artificial intelligence, decision-aid tools, and the inclusion of a variety of sensors, questions emerge about its publications. Some different multidisciplinary database (Scopus and Web of Science), mainly based on peer-reviewed journals, were accessed. Therefore, to examine these papers, a sequence of statistical analyses was also studied. We found 17,190 papers, most of which were concentrated in SciVerse Scopus, and the increase paper tax (RGR(i)) decreased between 2006 and 2015, and started increasing between 2015 and 2016. Even though some journals are very famous for publishing information technology subjects, a journal on mechanical and materials concentrated most papers.

A Lightweight RFID Grouping-Proof Protocol Based on Parallel Mode and DHCP Mechanism

A Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) grouping-proof protocol is to generate an evidence of the simultaneous existence of a group of tags and it has been applied to many different fields. For current grouping-proof protocols, there still exist some flaws such as low grouping-proof efficiency, being vulnerable to trace attack and information leakage. To improve the secure performance and efficiency, we propose a lightweight RFID grouping-proof protocol based on parallel mode and DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) mechanism. Our protocol involves multiple readers and multiple tag groups. During the grouping-proof period, one reader and one tag group are chosen by the verifier by means of DHCP mechanism. When only a part of the tags of the chosen group exist, the protocol can also give the evidence of their co-existence. Our protocol utilizes parallel communication mode between reader and tags so as to ensure its grouping-proof efficiency. It only uses Hash function to complete the mutual authentication among verifier, readers and tags. It can preserve the privacy of the RFID system and resist the attacks such as eavesdropping, replay, trace and impersonation. Therefore the protocol is secure, flexible and efficient. It only uses some lightweight operations such as Hash function and a pseudorandom number generator. Therefore it is very suitable to some low-cost RFID systems.

A secure search protocol for lightweight and low-cost RFID systems

In radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, search protocols are used to find a specific item in a large number of tagged products. These protocols should be secure against RFID attacks such as traceability, impersonation, DoS and eavesdropping. Sundaresan et al. (IEEE Trans Dependable Secure Comput, 2015) presented a server-less search protocol based on 128-bits PRNG function and claimed that their method can address all vulnerabilities of previous protocols. In this paper, we prove that Sundaresan et al.’s protocol is vulnerable to traceability attack with the high probability. In addition, we present an improved protocol to solve the proposed problem and analyze its security level informally and formally based on AVISPA tool and BAN logic.

Design of an HF-Band RFID System with Multiple Readers and Passive Tags for Indoor Mobile Robot Self-Localization.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has already been explored for efficient self-localization of indoor mobile robots. A mobile robot equipped with RFID readers detects passive RFID tags installed on the floor in order to locate itself. The Monte-Carlo localization (MCL) method enables the localization of a mobile robot equipped with an RFID system with reasonable accuracy, sufficient robustness and low computational cost. The arrangements of RFID readers and tags and the size of antennas are important design parameters for realizing accurate and robust self-localization using a low-cost RFID system. The design of a likelihood model of RFID tag detection is also crucial for the accurate self-localization. This paper presents a novel design and arrangement of RFID readers and tags for indoor mobile robot self-localization. First, by considering small-sized and large-sized antennas of an RFID reader, we show how the design of the likelihood model affects the accuracy of self-localization. We also design a novel likelihood model by taking into consideration the characteristics of the communication range of an RFID system with a large antenna. Second, we propose a novel arrangement of RFID tags with eight RFID readers, which results in the RFID system configuration requiring much fewer readers and tags while retaining reasonable accuracy of self-localization. We verify the performances of MCL-based self-localization realized using the high-frequency (HF)-band RFID system with eight RFID readers and a lower density of RFID tags installed on the floor based on MCL in simulated and real environments. The results of simulations and real environment experiments demonstrate that our proposed low-cost HF-band RFID system realizes accurate and robust self-localization of an indoor mobile robot.

RFID mutual-authentication protocol with synchronous updated-keys based on Hash function

With the wide application of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, its security privacy issues are becoming more and more prominent. A RFID mutual-authentication protocol with synchronous updated-keys based on Hash function is proposed to tackle those problems in this paper. An updated mechanism of the dynamic tag keys is introduced and a self-synchronized scheme is designed in the protocol, which has achieved the second verification for the tags. The security of the protocol is verified and analyzed by the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic and the attack models, moreover it has been compared with the existing schemes of security properties and its storage and computational performance. The results show that the proposed protocol has the ability to considerably reduce the amount of computation between tags and back-end database, and enhance the search efficiency of the whole system without the additional cost of the tags. It can satisfy safe requirements of RFID system effectively, also improve the authentication efficiency. The proposed protocol is more suitable for the low cost RFID system.

A Secure Lightweight Mutual Authentication for RFID Systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is an automated identification technology which is widely used to identify and track all kind of objects. It is well suitable for many fields and is expected to replace barcodes in the near future. However, it is a challenging task to design an authentication protocol because of the limited resource of low-cost RFID tags. Recently, a lightweight RFID authentication protocol presented by Kulseng et al uses Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFSRs) which are well known lightweight operations. The number of gates which the protocol require can be significantly decreased. Unfortunately, their protocol faces several serious security issues. In this paper, based PUFs and LFSRs, we suggest a secure mutual authentication for low-cost RFID Systems. Security analysis shows that our protocol owns security and privacy.

Securing Low-cost RFID Systems: A Research Survey

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology has moved from academic obscurity into mainstream business and practice. Although this technology has many catching and exclusive characteristics, security and privacy issues associated are not easy to address due to tags’ modest computational and storage capabilities and the necessity to keep their prices low. This paper provides a general overview of the rather broad area of RFID security and privacy and gives the main citations for the comprehensive understanding and further explorations of this area. To be specific, previous attempts to enable or increase the security and privacy of the low-cost RFID systems are examined, including: (1) design and cryptanalysis of lightweight ciphers; (2) privacy-preserving authentication protocols and their designing requirements; and (3) non-conventional solutions leveraging physical characteristics of RFID tags or physical layer of the tag-reader communication for security and privacy purposes.

Secure Indefinite-Index RFID Authentication Scheme with Challenge-Response Strategy

In 2011, Chen, Tsai, and Jan proposed a radio frequency identification (RFID) access control protocol for a low-cost RFID system (CTJ-scheme for short). They claimed that their scheme not only guarantees mutual authentication and location privacy but also resists man-in-the-middle, spoofed reader, and spoofed tag attacks. However, in late 2011, Chen et al. pointed out that CTJ-scheme is vulnerable to a spoofed reader attack and did not provide any protection against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. In addition, our research also found that under Chen et al.’s spoofed reader attack, tag contents can be surreptitiously altered by replaying message. In this paper, we analyze the weaknesses of CTJ-scheme and propose an enhanced scheme. According to our analyses, the proposed scheme is secure against the aforementioned DoS, spoofed reader, and modification attacks, while maintaining the merits of the original scheme.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.42.2.1615

Research of RFID System Security

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been gradually into our daily production and life as a new non-contact automatic identification technology.However , the limited resources of low-cost RFID largely restrict the implementation of RFID security mechanisms,which leads to personal privacy issues ,and the issues greatly hinder the rapid adoption of the technology.Here, RFID communication model and security requirements are discussed,and then it analyzes the security solutions for low-cost RFID systems.

Low-cost RFID authentication protocol based on PUF

The available security mechanisms for the low-cost Radio Frequency IDentification(RFID) systems are either defective or high-cost.Therefore,this paper proposed an efficient security authentication protocol for low-cost RFID system based on Physical Unclonable Function(PUF) and Linear Feedback Shift Register(LFSR).The protocol provides strong security and can resist physical attack and tag clone with strong privacy.

SRFID: A hash-based security scheme for low cost RFID systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a promising technology. It uses radio waves to identify objects. Through automatic and real-time data acquisition, this technology can give a great benefit to various industries by improving the efficiency of their operations. However, this ubiquitous technology has inherited problems in security and privacy, due to the powerful tracking capability of the tags. This paper proposes a new simple, low cost, and scalable security scheme relying on one-way hash functions and synchronized secret information. The proposed scheme provides a two steps mutual authentication between the backend server and the tag which does not require a secure channel between the tag reader and the backend server to complete the authentication process. The proposed scheme meets the requirements for tag delegation and secure tag ownership transfer. The general idea is to change the ID of a tag on every read attempt in a secure and synchronized manner. This means that attempts like eavesdropping, replay attacks, tag cloning, tag tracing, denial of service attack, or man-in-the-middle attacks cannot compromise the scheme. Our analysis results show that the proposed scheme outperforms existing schemes in terms of security and performance.

Zero-Knowledge Authentication Protocol Based on Alternative Mode in RFID Systems

As radio frequency identification (RFID) applications become ubiquitous, security and privacy issues have been addressed with universal acceptances. This paper proposes a lightweight Zero-Knowledge Authentication Protocol (ZKAP) based on alternative mode to address such severe problems. In ZKAP, dual zero-knowledge proofs are randomly chosen to provide anonymity and mutual authentication without revealing any sensitive identifiers. Pseudo-random flags and access lists employed for quick search and check ensure high efficiency and scalability. Meanwhile, formal proof model based on reasonable mathematical assumptions is established to prove the adaptive completeness, soundness and zero-knowledgeness, and the attack models are adopted to analyze the resilience and resistance for malicious attacks. It indicates that ZKAP owns no obvious design defects theoretically and is robust enough to resist major attacks (e.g., forgery, replay, Man-in-the-Middle, and tracking). The protocol is attractive and appropriate for low-cost and resource-restricted RFID systems.

A Secure Authentication Protocol for Low-Cost Radio Frequency Identification Systems based on Modular Exponentiation

A Secure Authentication Protocol for Low-Cost Radio Frequency Identification Systems based on Modular Exponentiation

The design of RFID access control protocol using the strategy of indefinite-index and challenge-response

This paper proposes a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) access control scheme, which includes not only an authentication mechanism, but also an access right authorization mechanism designed for a low-cost RFID system. The scheme guarantees mutual authentication and location privacy and also resists the man-in-the-middle attack, the spoofed reader attack, and the spoofed tag attack. Our scheme is more suitable for meeting future RFID system demands.

Security and privacy on low-cost Radio Frequency Identification systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems have already been widely applied in industry supporting supply chain management and inventory control. While the continuation increasing applications of RFID in our daily life, RFID also creates new security and privacy problems to individuals and organisations. This paper focuses on the challenges on security and privacy of low-cost RFID. The security and privacy challenges are analysed after a brief introduction of various RFID systems and their associated operations. A proposal to protecting security and privacy of customers, as a solution of the challenge for low-cost RFID systems is designed. Finally, comparisons to related works of the proposal are described.

A lightweight anti-desynchronization RFID authentication protocol

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in ubiquitous infrastructures. However, resource constraint in the low-cost RFID systems has posed potential risks such as privacy and security problems, becoming adoption barrier for RFID-based applications. In this paper, current security issues in RFID are introduced firstly. Then, we propose a lightweight Anti-desynchronization privacy preserving RFID authentication protocol. It is particularly suitable for the low-cost RFID environment for only the capacity of one-way hash function and XOR operation is needed. In this lightweight Anti-desynchronization RFID authentication protocol, the back-end server keeps the history of the random key update to prevent the active attackers from de-synchronizing the shared secret between the tag and the back-end server. The security and the performance of the proposed protocol are analyzed as well.

Cellular automata-based authentication for low-cost RFID systems

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be affixed with every item to identify the objects without any visual or physical contact. At the same time, the use of the tags can have serious implications on new risks to security and privacy. Also, it is difficult to implement the cryptographic mechanisms into low-cost RFID tags. In this paper, we propose a cellular automata-based authentication mechanism suitable for low-cost RFID systems.

A Low Cost Key Agreement Protocol Based on Binary Tree for EPCglobal Class 1 Generation 2 RFID Protocol

There are many protocols proposed for protecting Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system privacy and security. A number of these protocols are designed for protecting long-term security of RFID system using symmetric key or public key cryptosystem. Others are designed for protecting user anonymity and privacy. In practice, the use of RFID technology often has a short lifespan, such as commodity check out, supply chain management and so on. Furthermore, we know that designing a long-term security architecture to protect the security and privacy of RFID tags information requires a thorough consideration from many different aspects. However, any security enhancement on RFID technology will jack up its cost which may be detrimental to its widespread deployment. Due to the severe constraints of RFID tag resources (e.g., power source, computing power, communication bandwidth) and open air communication nature of RFID usage, it is a great challenge to secure a typical RFID system. For example, computational heavy public key and symmetric key cryptography algorithms (e.g., RSA and AES) may not be suitable or over-killed to protect RFID security or privacy. These factors motivate us to research an efficient and cost effective solution for RFID security and privacy protection. In this paper, we propose a new effective generic binary tree based key agreement protocol (called BKAP) and its variations, and show how it can be applied to secure the low cost and resource constraint RFID system. This BKAP is not a general purpose key agreement protocol rather it is a special purpose protocol to protect privacy, un-traceability and anonymity in a single RFID closed system domain.