ABSTRACT
Introduction ........................................................................................................ 430 System Overview ............................................................................................... 430
Some History ............................................................................................ 431 Advantages of RFID vs. Barcodes ............................................................ 432
Components of an RFID system ........................................................................ 432 Tags ........................................................................................................ 433 Readers ..................................................................................................... 434 Antennas ................................................................................................... 435 Middleware ............................................................................................... 436 Operating Frequencies .............................................................................. 436 Near-and Far-Field Communications ...................................................... 437 Modulation Procedures ............................................................................. 438 Standards ................................................................................................... 439
EAN.UCC ..................................................................................... 439 ISO/IEC JT1/SC17 ....................................................................... 439 ISO/IEC JT1/SC31/WG4 .............................................................. 439 ISO/IEC JT1/SC31/WG3 .............................................................. 440 EPCglobal Class-1 Gen-2 ............................................................. 440
Privacy ...................................................................................................... 441 Energy Consumption ................................................................................ 442
Hardware Platforms ........................................................................................... 442 Reader Devices .................................................................................................. 443 The Problem of Collisions in RFID ................................................................... 443
Anti-Collision Protocols at the Physical Layer ........................................ 444 MAC Layer Solutions to the Collision Problem ....................................... 444
Single Reader-Multiple Tags (Tag-Tag) Collisions ..................... 444 Single Tag-Multiple Readers Collisions ...................................... 447
Single Reader-Single Reader Collisions .................................................. 449
RFID Integration with Enterprise Information Systems .................................... 449 Functionalities in an RFID Middleware ................................................... 450 System Architecture .................................................................................. 451
Edge Components and Edge Processing ....................................... 451 Self-Organization Capabilities ...................................................... 451
The Product-Centric Approach in Global Commerce ........................................ 452 EPCglobal Network ........................................................................................... 452
Commercial and Open-Source RFID Middleware ................................... 455 MEGASTAND ................................................................................................... 455
Background ............................................................................................... 456 MEGASTAND Architecture ..................................................................... 457
Applications WSI .......................................................................... 459 Database WSI ............................................................................... 459 Event-Handler WSI ....................................................................... 459 Device WSI ................................................................................... 459
Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 460 References .......................................................................................................... 462 Appendix A: List of Companies Mentioned in the Chapter .............................. 465 Appendix B: List of Products Mentioned in the Chapter .................................. 466
Radio Frequency IDentifi cation (RFID) technology enables the automatic identifi cation of items by means of radio devices. Although this technology is usually considered a mere substitute of the nowadays ubiquitous barcode systems, it actually provides a rich variety of information fl ows for the benefi t of enterprises in a wide range of application fi elds.
