Radio Frequency Identification Middleware Research Articles

A new RFID Middleware architecture based on a hybrid security technique using data encryption and RBAC for modern real-time tracking applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a contactless technology that has developed over the 90s and 20th centuries. It employs electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the radio frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum to uniquely identify traceable objects, and is widely used in various sectors (e.g., medical, Supply Chain Management, transportation, and IoT applications.). Through the supply of real-world monitoring and context information about things, the integration of this technology in such areas delivers various benefits in the future of ubiquitous computing. However, one of the primary challenges will be the capacity to manage data since RFID events have specific characteristics and requires special treatment, such as the large volume of data flow, inaccuracy, temporal and spatial data, are typical examples of RFID event data. The goal of this research is to first highlight the concerns and limitations of existing middleware architectures before introducing and implementing a new Middleware architecture to address the identified issues, specifically real-time processing of massive volumes of data coming from physical RFID infrastructure. This middleware combines role-based access control with an encryption algorithm to increase security, a NoSQL database for storing large amounts of data, complex event processing (CEP) to provide high-volume data stream processing, and improved interoperability via the Data Transformation Module. Finally, our architecture is evaluated and compared to several middleware architectures based on standard ISO/IEC 9126 metrics.

RFID BASED SMART LIBRARY

Library circulation is low because of the tedious and time-consuming nature of the institution's traditional management. In addition to being waterproof and anti-magnetic, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) labels can be encrypted, have a huge storage capacity, and more. Using RFID as a foundation, we develop a comprehensive system architecture that takes into account the hardware and software requirements of the university library. The RFID system streamlines library operations by adding intelligence and automation. Using RFID middleware, the system is able to integrate RFID and library management in a natural way, resulting in a library management system that is both efficient and scalable. In order to demonstrate the system's overall functionality and each of its sub-functions, the use case diagram is a ground breaking concept. System for managing libraries and identifying books via radio frequency (RFID) The proposed system is based on RFID readers and passive RFID tags that are able to electronically store information that can be read with the help of the RFID reader. This system would be able to issue and return books via RFID tags and also calculates the corresponding fine associated with the time period of the absence of the book from the library database

Design and Implementation of Port Bulk Storage Management System Based on Internet of Things Technology

Mao, Y. and Zheng, L., 2019. Design and implementation of port bulk storage management system based on Internet of Things technology. In: Li, L.; Wan, X., and Huang, X. (eds.), Recent Developments in Practices and Research on Coastal Regions: Transportation, Environment and Economy. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 98, pp. 62–66. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.This paper builds the overall architecture of the warehouse material management system based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and deploys the radiofrequency identification (RFID) data acquisition system that acts as the IoT perception layer. Furthermore, RFID middleware is structured. By analyzing the current status and management content of warehouse management, the design scheme of the IoT technology warehouse management system is proposed, and the hardware circuit design of the IoT is carried out, which provides ideas for the application of the IoT technology in the warehouse management system of bulk cargo terminals.

Implementation of radio frequency identification middleware with database

This paper introduces the principle of a radio frequency identification (RFID) middleware, including its characteristics, problems and implementation in relation to Electronic Product Code (EPC). The targeted users are small and medium-sized domestic enterprises (SMEs), who need flexible and convenient solutions. This paper provides a framework and construction solutions of this simple RFID middleware, and discusses EPC concepts, solutions and advantages. It has been found that the best solution is to construct a simple and convenient platform and continuously add new common reader adapters based on the actual needs and extend special applications, which will become the basic functions of the RFID middleware, so that SMEs can conveniently use and extend these functions according to their needs. This study shows that the simple RFID middleware is suitable for SMEs to use and the open source can be easily applied to make a platform based on the RFID middleware.

오픈 소스 하드웨어를 이용한 임베디드 기반의 분산형 RFID 게이트웨이의 설계

In this paper, we configure a Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) gateway using an arduino and raspberry pi which are recent issues with a representative open source hardware. RFID technology is emerging as a key technology in a variety of environments as a technique to automatically identify objects using a radio frequency signal. In this paper, we propose a distributed RFID gateway for providing various communication methods and processing a large amount of RFID tag information efficiently, and to increase the scalability and middleware communication efficiency of the RFID reader. Existing RFID middleware systems have the problems that they should adhere the web service for interworking with a reader and the communication standard. Therefore, in this paper, we comprise our RFID gate to satisfy not only the serial communication configuration but also various digital signal processing standard so that it increases the communication efficiency of the middleware system.

Access and privacy control enforcement in RFID middleware systems: Proposal and implementation on the fosstrak platform

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology offers a new way of automating the identification and storing of information in RFID tags. The emerging opportunities for the use of RFID technology in human centric applications like monitoring and indoor guidance systems indicate how important this topic is in term of privacy. Holding privacy issues from the early stages of RFID data collection helps to master the data view before translating it into business events and storing it in databases. An RFID middleware is the entity that sits between tag readers and database applications. It is in charge of collecting, filtering and aggregating the requested events from heterogeneous RFID environments. Thus, the system, at this point, is likely to suffer from parameter manipulation and eavesdropping, raising privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose an access and privacy controller module that adds a security level to the RFID middleware standardized by the EPCglobal consortium. We provide a privacy policy-driven model using some enhanced contextual concepts of the extended Role Based Access Control model, namely the purpose, the accuracy and the consent principles. We also use the provisional context to model security rules whose activation depends on the history of previously performed actions. To show the feasibility of our privacy enforcement model, we first provide a proof-of-concept prototype integrated into the middleware of the Fosstrak platform, then evaluate the performance of the integrated module in terms of execution time.

Security issues in RFID Middleware Systems: Proposed EPC implementation for network layer attacks

Recently, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology becomes very popular. Especially low-cost RFID tags are widely used in supply chain management. Due to lack of security considerations in simple RFID technology, performance optimization becomes quite important rather than securing the data transmitted over RFID media. Since security holes shown variety in RFID systems, this paper classifies the attacks that occurs in different layer of RFID models. The security enhanced EPC RFID middleware systems that are widely used in organizations and their vulnerabilities against Network Layer attacks are investigated in this research to clarify the actual impact of network layer attacks in RFID systems. This paper investigates the RFID middleware attacks and impact of possible integration of EPCglobal architecture to mitigate such attacks on RFID systems.

Tamper Detection in RFID Tags Using Zero-Watermarks

Recently data integrity issues of applications based on radio frequency identification (RFID) have drawn great concerns worldwide and many watermarking-based schemes have been proposed. While those schemes can effectively verify if the protected tag data be modified, they also expose both the protected data and the watermark to any adversaries. In this paper, we present a zero-watermark scheme, which stores the watermark not in part of the data fields of RFID tags but in the back-end database system or that of a trusted third party without any modification of the original RFID data. The novelty of this zero-watermark scheme lies in the fact that we extend the zero-watermark technology to the RFID tags and the use of data tampering from the limited applications of copyright protection of digital works. We term this scheme ZMark-TamDetect because it is a tamper detection solution using zero-watermarks, which is so designed that it can be easily plugged into existing RFID middleware applications. This proposal is one of the first works that integrates zero-watermark and RFID technologies together and it provides a detailed theoretical foundation for the ZMark-TamDetect.

An Approach to Design and Implement RFID Middleware System over Cloud Computing

With the development of Internet of things, the number of radio frequency identification (RFID) network readers and tags increases very fast. Large-scale application of RFID networks requires that RFID middleware system can process a large amount of data efficiently, with load-balancing, efficient redundant data elimination, and Web service capabilities so that required information can be transmitted to applications with low overhead and transparency. In view of these objectives and taking especially advantages of virtualization and transparency of Cloud computing, this paper introduces an advanced RFID middleware management system (ARMMS) over Cloud computing, which provides equipment management, RFID tag information management, application level event (ALE) management, and Web service APIs and related functions. ARMMS has different focuses than existing RFID middleware in distributed design, data filtering, integrated load balance, and Web service APIs and designs all these over Cloud. The distributed architecture can support large-scale applications, integrated load-balancing strategy guarantees stability and high performance of the system, and layered and parallel redundancy data elimination scheme makes sure that needed information is transmitted to application level with low overhead; Web service APIs support cross-platform information processing with transparency to lower level RFID hardware.

SafeRFID-MW: a RFID Middleware with runtime fault diagnosis

In recent years, due to the proliferation of radio fre-quency identification (RFID) technology in everyday life, espe-cially in critical domains such as health care and transportation systems, significant efforts have been made to enhance the de-pendability of this technology. From these efforts have emerged specific techniques and several middleware solutions to handle the large amount of the RFID data. These solutions are not suita-ble for all RFID system requirements especially for issues related to critical domains. In this paper, we propose a novel fault-tolerant RFID middleware providing two fault-tolerant mechan-isms. The first mechanism is an online diagnosis algorithm based on a statistical analysis of the generated RFID data to identify faulty components of the system such as faulty readers or tags. The second mechanism is a verification process based on an extended finite state machine of the Low Level Reader Protocol (LLRP), the communication standard between RFID readers and RFID middleware. This process aims at identifying the causes of the diagnosed failures.

Agent-based Gateway Operating System for RFID-enabled ubiquitous manufacturing enterprise

Capturing and processing of real-time manufacturing shop floor field data is essential in improving the performance of shop floor planning, execution and control. Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) has enabled real-time information visibility and realized ubiquitous manufacturing enterprises with proper functionalities of Enterprise Information Systems (EISs). This paper presents a flexible, modularized and re-configurable framework for the new generation RFID middleware system, named Gateway Operating System (GOS). It is an overall software solution designed and proposed not only to address basic functions of RFID middleware system, but also to overcome the particular challenges and requirements for real-life manufacturing scenarios. GOS aims to provide an easy-to-deploy, simple-to-use and affordable RFID middleware solution for manufacturing applications. A multi-agent based model, named gateway smart agent manager, is designed to enable the heterogeneous RFID devices in a ''Plug and Play'' fashion and to cope with the changes from these connected hardware devices. To guarantee the versatility and scalability of GOS, an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) based message exchanging protocol is designed to fulfill the communication and interactions between applications and devices. Based on this protocol, an easy-to-deploy and simple-to-use application manager is built to manage, configure and use the connected devices as well as deployed applications. The proposed GOS will provide a new referenced framework for the development of lightweight RFID middleware system for manufacturing environment.

A SCADA oriented middleware for RFID technology

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) has emerged as the new technology paradigm for acquisition and information management. RFID can be used to improve significantly the efficiency of business processes by providing the capability of automatic identification and data capture. This technology introduces new challenges on data and process information management in current systems. RFID data are time-dependent and dynamically changing. In addition, data carry implicit semantics. The homogeneous data processing of such implicit semantics allows us to propose RFID middleware as a WHO–WHEN–WHERE data problem. This paper presents DEPCAS, a new middleware for RFID information based on the SCADA architecture for control systems. An application of DEPCAS is the resolution of heterogeneous situations, which solves the WHAT or context-aware to apply the auto identification data received from RFID systems in business applications.

XRFID: Design of an XML Based Efficient Middleware for RFID Systems

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can automatically and inexpensively track items as they are moved through the supply chain. This can automate the whole updating and management system, thereby making the system work with a much smaller workforce and reducing the error that can occur because of interference by human beings. One of the major advantages RFID provides is that it does not require direct physical contact with the objects and also does not require the object to be placed in its ‘Line-of-Sight’. This has given it an edge over other auto-identification systems, like bar-codes. The recent proliferation of RFID tags and readers would require dedicated and very efficient middleware solutions that manage readers and process the vast amount of captured data according to the need of various applications. RFID middleware is the software sitting in between various RFID readers and the enterprise applications. Extracting meaningful information out of huge amount of scan data is a challenging task. In this paper we like to analyze the requirements and propose a design for such an RFID middleware. This paper demonstrates how to enable the middleware to handle a large amount of RFID scan data and execute business rules in real-time. The conventional existing middleware solutions show dramatic degradation in their performance when the number of simultaneously working readers increases. Our proposed solution tries to recover from that situation also. One of the major issues for large scale deployment of RFID systems is the design of a robust and flexible middleware system to interface various applications to the RFID readers. Most of the existing RFID middleware systems are costly, bulky, non-portable and heavily dependent on the support software. Our work also provides flexibility for easy addition and removal of applications and hardware.

Design and Implementation of Embedded RFID Middleware

Abstract An embedded RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) middleware based on ARM Linux operating system and S3C2410 hardware platform was designed and implemented. The system architecture and platform of software and hardware of this middleware were introduced. The key technology applied in some device management and tag data processing and the application of SQLite were specialized. Since its rich standard interfaces offered by the hardware platform, the middleware can connect with different kind of readers from different manufacturers without cosidering the diversity and complexity of RFID bottom layer hardware. So, it can supply upper layer application of system with a powerful, uniform platform, and lay a broader, richer foundation for the application of RFID.

A SIMULATION NETWORK MODEL TO EVALUATE RFID MIDDLEWARES

High-performance radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a challenging issue for large-scale enterprises. As a key component of an RFID system, RFID middleware is an important factor to measure the performance of the system. To evaluate the feasibility of an RFID middleware, the performance of the RFID middleware should be carefully evaluated in various RFID-enabled business environments. However, the construction of an RFID testbed requires a lot of time, money, and human resources because it involves numerous tagged items and a large number of deployed readers. We must provide a meaningful input tag stream representing various business activities, rather than random data. This paper presents a novel simulation model for the virtual construction of RFID testbeds. To ensure the semantic validity of the input tag stream, the proposed RFID simulation network (RSN) extends Petri nets by including sets of functions that represent unique characteristics of RFID environments such as the uncertainty of communications and tag movement patterns. By configuring appropriate functions, the RSN automatically generates an input tag stream that matches the distribution of real data. We demonstrate that the RSN model correctly reflects data from real-world environments by comparing input tag streams from real RFID equipment and from the RSN model.

Software abstractions for mobile RFID‐enabled applications

SUMMARYOur everyday environments may soon be pervaded with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags integrated in physical objects. These RFID tags can store a digital representation of the physical object and transmit it wirelessly to pervasive, context‐aware applications running on mobile devices. However, communicating with RFID tags is prone to many failures inherent to the technology. This hinders the development of such applications, as traditional programming models require the programmer to deal with the RFID hardware characteristics manually. On the other hand, traditional RFID middleware focuses on limited scenarios in an enterprise context and not on general ubiquitous computing scenarios. In this paper, we extend the ambient‐oriented programming paradigm to program RFID applications, by considering RFID tags as intermittently connected mutable proxy objects hosted on mobile distributed computing devices, and detail our prototype implementation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

FlexRFID Middleware in the Supply Chain

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been used since the Second World War to identify “friend or foe” aircrafts. It has become an enabling wireless technology that is widely used in a number of application areas, such as product tracking through manufacturing and assembly, inventory control, and supply chain management (SCM). By 2006, Wal-Mart used RFID for all of its suppliers. The use of RFID in supply chain networks has allowed Wal-Mart to create value through greater visibility in its networks, higher product velocity, reduce human error and labor cost, and more efficient inventory management, which led to the achievement of Quick Response (QR) and improved Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the supply chain. However, RFID system challenges and uncertain Return-On-Investment (ROI) must be overcome to fully achieve these objectives. This paper introduces RFID technology and its key components and concepts, and presents an RFID middleware solution called FlexRFID that achieves the maximum benefits of RFID technology independently of the interested backend applications. This paper illustrates how RFID technology is used to solve the main problems in SCM, the advantages and key issues when implementing RFID in SCM networks, and the relationship between RFID and the main SCM processes.

Incorporating business logics into RFID-enabled applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology promises many benefits to business process automation with real-time context awareness and item level accuracy. Through readers to RFID middleware systems, the information and the movements of tagged objects can be used to trigger business transactions. With the aim to seamlessly incorporate RFID technology into business process automation, this paper investigates the deployment of business logics to RFID edge systems. A comprehensive framework is proposed to model business rules in an event-driven perspective on the basis of event calculus. This framework first elicits the business meaningful events from the large volume of raw RFID reads, and guides the behaviours and interactions of involved objects in response to the elicited events and the pre-defined business rules. The execution and functional invocations are enforced with RFID queries, where a two-block buffering mechanism is proposed to handle the identified delayed effects and thereby improve the RFID query efficiency. Experiments and analysis are conducted to discuss the query efficiency improvements and the scalability to more complex applications.

Research on RFID Integration Middleware for Enterprise Information System

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a promising technology for automated non-line-of-sight object identification. Traditional research of RFID middleware does not concern RFID related integration with enterprise information systems. Considering the requirements of RFID middleware and business process integration with enterprise information systems, an integration framework for RFID middleware based on business process rule and data stream technologies are introduced. Main modules of the RFID integration middleware, such as devices monitoring, data management, XML business documents exchange, business process control and RFID event management, are designed and discussed in detail. The semantic definition of the complex RFID event and RFID event classification are presented. A real-time scheduling strategy of RFID event which is based on the buffer and priority queue, can process the concurrent RFID events. Application system based on RFID is realized to control the business process through RFID events.

A new method for data filtering in RFID middleware

With rapidly increasing development of RFID (radio frequency identification) applications, the RFID middleware has become a very hot topic. RFID middleware is a new breed of application software which facilitates data communication between automatic identification equipments (such as RFID readers) and enterprise applications. RFID data, however, contain false readings and duplicates. Such data cannot be used directly by applications unless they are filtered and cleaned. To compensate for the inherent unreliability of RFID data streams, most RFID middleware systems employ a ‘smoothing filter’. In this paper, a new smoothing filter approach is proposed which is based on the concept of processing the status of tag’s readings. The proposed method uses some rules for solving false positives and false negatives to provide accurate RFID data for applications. The simulation results on prototype data show the effectiveness of the proposed method.