Radio Frequency Identification Middleware Research Articles

Incorporating business process management into RFID‐enabled application systems

PurposeThe emergence of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology promises enormous opportunities to shift business process automation up to the wire level. The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodology of incorporating business logics into RFID edge systems, and thereby facilitate the business process automation in the RFID‐applied environment.Design/methodology/approachFollowing the object‐oriented modelling perspective, concepts of classes, instances are deployed to characterise the runtime context of RFID business scenarios; event patterns are used to aggregate RFID tag read events into business meaningful events; and business rules are established to automate business transactions according to the elicited events.FindingsThe paper has emphasised the synergy between business process automation and automatic data acquisition, and has identified the inter‐relations between RFID tag read events, application‐level events, business rules, and business operations. The reported research has demonstrated a feasible scheme of incorporating business process control and automation into RFID‐enabled applications.Originality/valueThe paper analyses the characteristics of RFID data and event handling in relation to business rule modelling and process automation. The features of event‐relied awareness, context containment and overlapping, etc. are all captured and described by the proposed object‐oriented business model. The given data‐driven RFID middleware architecture can serve as one reference architecture for system design and development. Hence, the paper plays an important role in connecting automatic data acquisition and existing business processes, and thereby bridges the physical world and the digital world.

RFID 애플리케이션 개발을 위한 태그 흐름기반 배치 시뮬레이터

최근 RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)는 소형화, 저가화, 고기능화가 점차적으로 실현되면서 그 기술이 적용되는 분야도 더욱 다양해지고 있다. RFID 애플리케이션은 RFID 태그의 실시간 정보를 기반으로 하는 업무 프로세스를 의미하는 것으로, RFID 기반 정보를 이용해 비즈니스 프로세서를 자동화하고 변형시킬 수 있도록 요구된다. 이러한 RFID 애플리케이션은 단순하게는 하나의 리더기에서 읽혀지는 RFID 태그를 모니터링하는 기능만을 가지기도 하지만, 대부분 RFID 태그의 흐름에 따라 태그가 부착된 사람 또는 사물의 가시성(visibility)과 추적성(traceability)을 지원하기 위한 기능을 구현한다. 이를 위해 RFID 리더기를 여러 곳에 분산 배치시킨 후, 다양한 시나리오에 따라 태그의 흐름을 변경시켜봐야 한다. 그러나 RFID 애플리케이션 개발 시, 필요한 관련 RFID 리더기가 모두 준비되지 않았거나, 실제 현장과 유사한 환경을 구축하기가 어려울 때가 많다. 본 연구에서는 RFID 애플리케이션 개발 시, 개발 환경을 모형화 시키고 RFID 리더기 및 센서를 다양한 곳에 배치시킨 후, 여러 개의 RFID 태그를 다양한 시나리오를 통해 이동시켜볼 수 있는 시뮬레이터를 개발하고자 한다. 본 시뮬레이터는 RFID 미들웨어 및 애플리케이션 구현물의 정확한 테스트를 가능하게 하여 개발 생산성을 높인다. 또한 데이터의 신뢰성에 문제가 발생한 경우, RFID 하드웨어와 미들웨어 중 어떤 부분에서 발생한 문제인지 가리기 위해 활용될 수 있다. More recently, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) systems have begun to find greater use in various industrial fields. The use of RFID system in these application domains has been promoted by efforts to develop the RFID tags which are low in cost, small in size, and high in performance. The RFID applications enable the real-time capture and update of RFID tag information, while simultaneously allowing business process change through real-time alerting and alarms. These be developed to monitor person or objects with RFID tags in a place and to provide visibility and traceability of the seamless flows of RFID tags. In this time, the RFID readers should be placed in diverse locations, the RFID flows between these readers can be tested based on various scenarios. However, due to the high cost of RFID readers, it may be difficult to prepare the similar environment equipped with RFID read/write devices. In this paper, we propose a simulator to allow RFID application testing without installing physical devices. It can model the RFID deployment environment, place various RFID readers and sensors on this model, and move the RFID tags through the business processes. This simulator can improve the software development productivity by accurately testing RFID middleware and applications. In addition, when data security cannot be ensured by any fault, it can decide where the problem is occurred between RFID hardware and middleware.

Toward an SCA-OSGi based middleware for radio frequency identification applications

The radio frequency identification (RFID) technology progressing is becoming a increasing interest in several application areas. To accommodate diverse and changing requirements from applications, RFID middleware should be reconfigurable. However, current RFID middleware is limited in its ability to support reconfiguration. To solve this problem, we adopt the service-oriented component-based approach in building the middleware. Component-based design enables decomposition of middleware functionality and is easier than the current one to manage and modify the structure of the middleware both statically and dynamically. Applying service-oriented architecture (SOA) can further reduce the coupling between components and external software and ease the integration between middleware and applications. We propose a two-layered service component architecture (SCA) open service gateway initiative (OSGi) component model so as to enable reconfigurability. Based on the proposed component model, we build a standard-based RFID middleware—SCA-OSGi based RFID middleware (SORM) which supports flexible deployment topologies and reconfigurability. The design and implementation details of SORM are illustrated.

An adaptive load balancing management technique for RFID middleware systems

AbstractIn recent years, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) industries have taken a great interest in utilizing the benefits of RFID for supply chain management, inventory control and various other applications. This paper proposed an adaptive load balancing technique for RFID middleware systems to meet the demands of scalability and heterogeneity. First, we explored five basic load balancing policies, namely, information policy, job selection policy, transfer policy, initiation policy and location policy. Eighteen load balancing schemes were then proposed for RFID middleware systems that were combinations of various types of the five basic load balancing policies. Our empirical study suggested that these load balancing strategies performed differently under different workload statuses. Finally, an adaptive load balancing strategy was proposed. The load balancing schemes and the proposed adaptive load balancing strategy have been implemented in the RFID Middleware Load Management System (RM‐LMS). Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research of data processing and filtration in RFID middleware

As the data collection part of the platform of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system test, RFID data collection middleware is mainly responsible for test data collection and low-level data processing and filtration. We firstly presented its architecture. Secondly, we emphatically introduced its data processing and filtration module, analyzed the logical mapping engine, and presented three kinds of RFID data filters in detail: duplication elimination filter, event filter and TagID filter.

시스템 상호 운용성을 위한 웹 서비스 기반의 RFID 미들웨어 구현

Recently, RFID(Radio Frequency IDentification) has emerged as the main technology in the logistic services. When the existing recognition technology based on bar codes brings about lots of problem due its own limits. RFID becomes the center of attention to solve them. However, RFID is not without any obstacles : companies have their own operating systems. while RFID is developed regardless of each campany's special features. RFID middleware system based on web service is expected to remove these obstacles. This paper shows how to operate the middleware based on web service and to lay in the DB the tag informations taken from reader system Middle assures that companies adopting RFID system for their logistic service are given athptabwebty to any systems whatsoever, avaweable by way of defining logistic information, tag information and reader information. For this purse, we implement as the basic web service a middleware system that turns all data into XML(eXtensatle Markupmsngunfo) of SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol), the standard data.

The Design of a Lightweight RFID Middleware

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) middleware is often regarded as the central nervous system of RFID systems. In this paper, a lightweight RFID middleware is designed and implemented without the need of an Application Level Events (ALE) structure, and its implementation process is described using a typical commerical enterprise. A short review of the current RFID middleware research and development is also included. The characteristics of RFID middleware are presented with a two-centric framework. The senarios of RFID data integration based on the simplified structure are provided to illuminats the design and implementation of the lightweight middleware structure and its development process. The lightweight middleware is easy to maintain and extend because of the simplified and streamlined structure and the short development cycle.

An RFID-Based Manufacturing Control Framework for Loosely Coupled Distributed Manufacturing System Supporting Mass Customization

In this study we propose a manufacturing control framework based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and a distributed information system to construct a mass-customization production process in a loosely coupled shop-floor control environment. On the basis of this framework, we developed RFID middleware and an integrated information system for tracking and controlling the manufacturing process flow. A bicycle manufacturer was used to demonstrate the prototype system. The findings of this study were that the proposed framework can improve the visibility and traceability of the manufacturing process as well as enhance process quality control and real-time production pedigree access. Using this framework, an enterprise can easily integrate an RFID-based system into its manufacturing environment to facilitate mass customization and a just-in-time production model.

USN/RFID/GPS 응용을 위한 서비스 미들웨어 연구

Recently, there is increasing the development requirement of middleware and interface for GPS(Global Positioning System), RFID(Radio Frequency IDentification), sensor networks. GPS supports a useful location based service. RFID supports products logistic and distribution services through the identification. A sensor network collects a context information, such as humidity, temperature and atmospheric pressure. This paper implements and verifies a integrated service middleware for supporting efficiently process of sensing data collected from RFID, GPS and sensor network. This middleware have the temporary store function, the redundancy exclusion function, certification function, the classification function and the database storage function. Additionary, this middleware connects with low-level adaptor using socket interface and supports the high-level application services using database connection. Therefore, user can develop easily various many ubiquitous application system using proposed middleware instead of each RFID middleware, GPS middleware and, middleware based on sensor network.

Design of RFID middleware architecture

Radio Frequency IDentification(RFID)middleware is the key software between tag readers and database and enterprise applications.It is the center of RFID application deployment operation.A Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA)real-time RFID middleware infrastructure was designed according to the requirement of related enterprises,and the corresponding UML class diagrams for the device management and integration components were given.The roles of RFID middleware components were described.The test of catering system shows that this middleware can improve the portability,maintainability and reliability of the system.

RFID 미들웨어 표준 아키텍처에 기반한 적응적 부하 분산 방법

최근 RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) 기술은 사물에 대한 자동적인 인식을 가능케 함으로써 물류, 의료, 식품관리 등과 같은 분야에 적용되고 있다. 부하 분산은 과부하 상태인 노드로부터 부하가 적은 노드로 작업 부하를 이동시켜 시스템의 확장성을 향상시키는 기본 기술이다. 시스템의 부하를 예측하기 어렵고 부하량의 편차가 큰 경우에는 적응적 부하 분산이 효과적인 것으로 알려져 있다. RFID 미들웨어는 많은 수의 리더로부터 수신된 태그 정보를 효율적으로 처리하기 위하여 기존의 부하 분산기술이 도입될 필요가 있다. RFID 시스템이 부하량을 예측하기 힘들고 편차가 큰 환경에 적용될 경우 실행시간에 시스템의 전체 부하량에 따라 적합한 정책으로 변경할 수 있는 적응적 부하 분산 기법을 사용하는 것이 바람직하다. 본 논문에서는 RFID 미들웨어에 적응적 부하 분산 기법을 도입하기 위한 접근 방법과 결과를 제시한다. 먼저 RFID 미들웨어의 작업 부하 모델을 결정한다. 그리고 부하 모델을 바탕으로 다양한 부하 분산 정책을 시스템의 부하 상태 별로 적용하여 시스템의 부하 상태에 적합한 부하 분산 정책을 선택한다. Because of its capability of automatic identification of objects, RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) technologies have extended their application areas to logistics, healthcare, and food management system. Load balancing is a basic technique for improving scalability of systems by moving loads of overloaded middlewares to under loaded ones. Adaptive load balancing has been known to be effective for distributed systems of a large load variance under unpredictable situations. There are needs for applying load balancing to RFID middlewares because they must efficiently treat vast numbers of RFID tags which are collected from multiple RFID readers. Because there can be a large amount of variance in loads of RFID middlewares which are difficult to predict, it is desirable to consider adaptive load balancing approach for RFID middlewares, which can dynamically choose a proper load balancing strategy depending on the current load. This paper proposes an adaptive load balancing approach for RFID middlewares and presents its design and implementation. First we decide a performance model by a experiment with a real RFID middleware. Then, a set of proper load balancing strategies for high/medium/low system loads is determined from a simulation of various load balancing strategies based on the performance model.

통합 RFID 미들웨어의 응답시간 개선을 위한 효과적인 캐쉬 구조 설계

This paper proposes an efficient caching mechanism appropriate for the integrated RFID middleware which can integrate wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and RFID (radio frequency identification) systems. The operating environment of the integrated RFID middleware is expected to face the situations of a significant amount of data reading from RFID readers, constant stream data input from large numbers of autonomous sensor nodes, and queries from various applications to history data sensed before and stored in distributed storages. Consequently, an efficient middleware layer equipping with caching mechanism is inevitably necessary for low latency of request-response while processing both data stream from sensor networks and history data from distributed database. For this purpose, the proposed caching mechanism includes two optimization methods to reduce the overhead of data processing in RFID middleware based on the classical cache implementation polices. One is data stream cache (DSC) and the other is history data cache (HDC), according to the structure of data request. We conduct a number of simulation experiments under different parameters and the results show that the proposed caching mechanism contributes considerably to fast request-response times.

An adaptive RFID middleware for supporting metaphysical data independence

Sensor devices produce data that are unreliable, low-level, and seldom able to be used directly by applications. In this paper, we propose metaphysical data independence (MDI), a layer of independence that shields applications from the challenges that arise when interacting directly with sensor devices. The key philosophy behind MDI is that applications do not deal with any aspect of physical device data, but rather interface with a high-level reconstruction of the physical world created by a sensor infrastructure. As a concrete instantiation of MDI in such a sensor infrastructure, we detail MDI-SMURF, a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) middleware system that alleviates issues associated with using RFID data through adaptive techniques based on a novel statistical framework.

RFID malware: Design principles and examples

This paper explores the concept of malware for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems — including RFID exploits, RFID worms, and RFID viruses. We present RFID malware design principles together with concrete examples; the highlight is a fully illustrated example of a self-replicating RFID virus. The various RFID malware approaches are then analyzed for their effectiveness across a range of target platforms. This paper concludes by warning RFID middleware developers to build appropriate checks into their RFID middleware before it achieves wide-scale deployment in the real world.