Data Format for RFID Data Using a Data-on-Tag Approach Sarita Pais (Student ID: 0472377) A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of Master of Computer and Information Sciences Degree at the Auckland University of Technology, Auckland November 2010 Primary Supervisor: Dr. Judith Symonds Acknowledgements I thank my supervisor Dr. Judith Symonds for giving me the opportunity to do research on RFID technology. Dr Symonds has been a tremendous help and assistance in my thesis research over the last two years. I particularly appreciate her help in sourcing the appropriate tags for my research experiments. I am grateful to Dr. Russell Pears, Dr. Andy Connor and Jim Buchan, my lecturers who guided me on the proper approach to academic research. I appreciate the help provided by Grant Hugh and Rebecca Rowley from Tracient Technologies Ltd., Christchurch and Lyndon Baird from Intermec Technologies for providing me the RFID reader, tags and SDK to carry out my experiment; Dr. Nicholas Nicoloudis, Intermec Technologies for guidance on memory blocks and user memory. Last but not least, I acknowledge the co-operation, patience and understanding of my family, friends and colleagues during my absence from work and home. i Table of Contents Table of Figures ............................................................................................................... v Table of Tables .............................................................................................................. vii Acronyms ...................................................................................................................... viii Glossary ........................................................................................................................... ix Declaration ..................................................................................................................... xii Abstract ......................................................................................................................... xiii 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research Motivation .................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Research Objectives .................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Business Problem ........................................................................................................ 3 1.4 Research Design .......................................................................................................... 4 1.5 Research Contribution ................................................................................................. 4 1.6 Thesis Structure ........................................................................................................... 5 2 Literature Review ...................................................................................................... 7 2.1 RFID History ............................................................................................................... 7 2.2 RFID System ............................................................................................................... 8 2.2.1 RFID Tag ......................................................................................................................... 8 2.2.2 RFID Reader .................................................................................................................... 9 2.3 RFID Tag Classification ............................................................................................ 10 2.3.1 Functionality - Passive or Active ................................................................................... 11 2.3.2 RFID Frequency ............................................................................................................ 13 2.3.3 RFID Standards ............................................................................................................. 15 2.3.4 Near and Far Field ......................................................................................................... 16 2.4 Comparison with Barcode Technology ..................................................................... 16 2.5 RFID System Deployment......................................................................................... 17 2.6 Data on Network ........................................................................................................ 18 2.7 Data on Tag ............................................................................................................... 18 2.7.1 Super Distributed Database ........................................................................................... 21 2.7.2 Tuple-based Distributed Data ........................................................................................ 21 2.8 RFID Data Characteristics ......................................................................................... 23 2.8.1 Voluminous RFID Data ................................................................................................. 23 2.8.2 Duplicate RFID Data ..................................................................................................... 23 2.8.3 Erroneous and Missed Readings .................................................................................... 23 2.8.4 Heterogeneous Data Management ................................................................................. 24 2.8.5 Aggregation and Containment ....................................................................................... 25 2.9 User Memory ............................................................................................................. 25 2.9.1 Standards for User Memory........................................................................................... 27 2.10 Data Format ........................................................................................................... 29 2.10.1 XML Format .................................................................................................................. 29 2.10.2 CSV format .................................................................................................................... 30 2.11 Data Compression ................................................................................................. 31 ii 2.12 Requirements to build a Data Model ..................................................................... 33 2.12.1 Structural ....................................................................................................................... 33 2.12.2 Manipulation and Integrity ............................................................................................ 33 2.13 Addressing Research Questions ............................................................................ 34 2.14 Summary ............................................................................................................... 35 3 Research Methodology ............................................................................................ 36 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 36 3.2 Design Science as Research Approach ...................................................................... 36 3.2.1 Design Science Guidelines ............................................................................................ 36 3.3 Business Problem ...................................................................................................... 40 3.4 Design an Artefact ..................................................................................................... 41 3.5 Demonstration and Evaluation .................................................................................. 46 3.6 Contributions and Communication ............................................................................ 48 3.7 Summary .................................................................................................................... 48 4 Experiment Design .................................................................................................. 49 4.1 Experiment Set Up .................................................................................................... 49 4.1.1 Tracient RFID Reader ................................................................................................... 49 4.1.2 RFID Tags - Skyetek and Intermec IT67 ....................................................................... 50 4.2 Tracient Application Software ................................................................................... 54 4.2.1 Control Panel ................................................................................................................. 54 4.2.2 RFID Wedge .................................................................................................................. 56 4.2.3 RFID Sync ..................................................................................................................... 57 4.2.4 Tracient SDK ................................................................................................................. 57 4.2.5 Read/Write User Memory Functions ............................................................................. 58 4.3 Data Format Selection ..............................................................................................