Abstract
The surge of RFID technology and ensuing competition in the RFID vendor market has increased the complexity of integration of RFID into current business processes. To address this problem, we present FlexRFID, a modeling template composed of state indicators, conditions, a simulation engine, and a device-independent deployment architecture for rapid prototyping of control applications using RFID and sensor hardware. The modeling technique is based on Moore Machines, a variant of finite state automata that allow states to be associated with outputs. With FlexRFID, users design applications by modeling business logic via transition of states based on sensor events. Outputs associated with individual states can handle operational characteristics of the application. In this article, we present the modeling methodology and demonstrate how organizations can develop complex applications easily using FlexRFID. We believe that the simplicity and flexibility of FlexRFID will lead to the development of RFID applications quickly even with limited resources. In addition, the parking entry application presented in our paper demonstrates FlexRFID’s capability of being used in business application context, as well as in research, training, and teaching.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aberer, K., Hauswirth, M., & Salehi, A. (2006). A middleware for fast and flexible sensor network deployment, Proceedings of the 32nd international conference on Very large data bases—Volume 32. 2006. VLDB Endowment: Seoul, Korea.
Chappell, G., Durdan, D., Gilbert, G., Ginsburg, L., Smith, J., & Tobolski, J. (2002). Auto-ID on Delivery: The Value of Auto-ID Technology in the Retail Supply Chain. Auto-ID Lab, MIT. p. 28.
Chen, H., Chou, P. B., Cohen, N. H., Duri, S. S., & Jung, C. W. (2008). DRIVE: A tool for developing, deploying, and managing distributed sensor and actuator applications. IBM Systems Journal, 47(2), 1–19.
Chen, H., Chou, P. B., Duri, S., Elliott, J. G., Reason, J. M., & Wong D. C. (2005). A Model-Driven Approach to RFID Application Programming and Infrastructure Management. Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE ’05). Beijing, China: IEEE Computer Society.
Dyo, V. (2005). Middleware design for integration of sensor network and mobile devices, Proceedings of the 2nd international doctoral symposium on Middleware, ACM Press: Grenoble.
Eckfeldt, B. (2005). What does RFID do for the consumer? Communications of the ACM, 48(9), 77–79.
Floerkemeier, C., & Lampe, M. (2005). RFID middleware design: addressing application requirements and RFID constraints. Proceedings of the 2005 joint conference on Smart objects and ambient intelligence: innovative context-aware services: usages and technologies. ACM Press: Grenoble, France.
Glover, B., & Bhatt, H. (2005). RFID Essentials. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Holmqvist, M., & Stefansson, G. (2006). Mobile RFID—A Case from Volvo on Innovation in SCM. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’06).
Huebscher, C., & McCann, A. (2005). An adaptive middleware framework for context-aware applications. Personal Ubiquitous Computing, 10(1), 12–20.
Lefebvre, L. A., Lefebvre, E., Bendavid, Y., Fosso, S., & Boeck, H. (2006). RFID as an Enabler of B-to-B e-Commerce and Its Impact on Business Processes: A Pilot Study of a Supply Chain in the Retail Industry. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’06).
Moore, E. F. (1956). Gedanken experiments on sequential machines, Automata Studies (pp. 129–153). Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Pal, R., Sengupta, A., & Bose, I. (2008). Role of Pilot Study in Assessing Viability of New Technology Projects: The Case of RFID in Parking Operations. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 22(15), 257–276.
Sarma, S. (2004). Integrating RFID. Queue, 2(7), 50–57.
Windley, P. (2003). Wal-Mart’s Move to Use RFID, Sept 17, 2003. Retrieved on October 30, 2008 from http://www.windley.com/archives/2003/09/walmarts_move_t.shtml.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sengupta, A., Schiller, S.Z. FlexRFID: A design, development and deployment framework for RFID-based business applications. Inf Syst Front 12, 551–562 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-009-9217-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-009-9217-5