Perfect tag identification protocol in RFID networks

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems are becoming more and more popular in the field of ubiquitous computing, in particular for objects identification. An RFID system is composed by one or more readers and a number of tags. One of the main issues in an RFID network is the fast and reliable identification of all tags in the reader range. The reader issues some queries, and tags properly answer. Then, the reader must identify the tags from such answers. This is crucial for most applications. Since the transmission medium is shared, the typical problem to be faced is a MAC-like one, i.e. to avoid or limit the number of tags transmission collisions. We propose a protocol which, under some assumptions about transmission techniques, always achieves a 100% perfomance. It is based on a proper recursive splitting of the concurrent tags sets, until all tags have been identified. The other approaches present in literature have performances of about 42% in the average at most. The counterpart is a more sophisticated hardware to be deployed in the manufacture of low cost tags.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Practical Schemes For Privacy & Security Enhanced RFID

Proper privacy protection in RFID systems is important. However, many of the schemes known are impractical, either because they use hash functions instead of the more hardware efficient symmetric encryption schemes as a efficient cryptographic primitive, or because they incur a rather costly key search time penalty at the reader. Moreover, they do not allow for dynamic, fine-grained access control to the tag that cater for more complex usage scenarios. In this paper we investigate such scenarios, and propose a model and corresponding privacy friendly protocols for efficient and fine-grained management of access permissions to tags. In particular we propose an efficient mutual authentication protocol between a tag and a reader that achieves a reasonable level of privacy, using only symmetric key cryptography on the tag, while not requiring a costly key-search algorithm at the reader side. Moreover, our protocol is able to recover from stolen readers.Comment: 18 page

Tag Anti-collision Algorithm for RFID Systems with Minimum Overhead Information in the Identification Process

This paper describes a new tree based anti-collision algorithm for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems. The proposed technique is based on fast parallel binary splitting (FPBS) technique. It follows a new identification path through the binary tree. The main advantage of the proposed protocol is the simple dialog between the reader and tags. It needs only one bit tag response followed by one bit reader reply (one-to-one bit dialog). The one bit reader response represents the collision report (0: collision; 1: no collision) of the tags' one bit message. The tag achieves self transmission control by dynamically updating its relative replying order due to the received collision report. The proposed algorithm minimizes the overhead transmitted bits per one tag identification. In the collision state, tags do modify their next replying order in the next bit level. Performed computer simulations have shown that the collision recovery scheme is very fast and simple even with the successive reading process. Moreover, the proposed algorithm outperforms most of the recent techniques in most cases

From M-ary Query to Bit Query: a new strategy for efficient large-scale RFID identification

The tag collision avoidance has been viewed as one of the most important research problems in RFID communications and bit tracking technology has been widely embedded in query tree (QT) based algorithms to tackle such challenge. Existing solutions show further opportunity to greatly improve the reading performance because collision queries and empty queries are not fully explored. In this paper, a bit query (BQ) strategy based Mary query tree protocol (BQMT) is presented, which can not only eliminate idle queries but also separate collided tags into many small subsets and make full use of the collided bits. To further optimize the reading performance, a modified dual prefixes matching (MDPM) mechanism is presented to allow multiple tags to respond in the same slot and thus significantly reduce the number of queries. Theoretical analysis and simulations are supplemented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed BQMT and MDPM, which outperform the existing QT-based algorithms. Also, the BQMT and MDPM can be combined to BQMDPM to improve the reading performance in system efficiency, total identification time, communication complexity and average energy cost

From M-ary Query to Bit Query: a new strategy for efficient large-scale RFID identification

The tag collision avoidance has been viewed as one of the most important research problems in RFID communications and bit tracking technology has been widely embedded in query tree (QT) based algorithms to tackle such challenge. Existing solutions show further opportunity to greatly improve the reading performance because collision queries and empty queries are not fully explored. In this paper, a bit query (BQ) strategy based Mary query tree protocol (BQMT) is presented, which can not only eliminate idle queries but also separate collided tags into many small subsets and make full use of the collided bits. To further optimize the reading performance, a modified dual prefixes matching (MDPM) mechanism is presented to allow multiple tags to respond in the same slot and thus significantly reduce the number of queries. Theoretical analysis and simulations are supplemented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed BQMT and MDPM, which outperform the existing QT-based algorithms. Also, the BQMT and MDPM can be combined to BQMDPM to improve the reading performance in system efficiency, total identification time, communication complexity and average energy cost

Tag anti-collision algorithms in RFID systems - a new trend

RFID is a wireless communication technology that provides automatic identification or tracking and data collection from any tagged object. Due to the shared communication channel between the reader and the tags during the identification process in RFID systems, many tags may communicate with the reader at the same time, which causes collisions. The problem of tag collision has to be addressed to have fast multiple tag identification process. There are two main approaches to the tag collision problem: ALOHA based algorithms and tree based algorithms. Although these methods reduce the collision and solve the problem to some extent, they are not fast and efficient enough in real applications. A new trend emerged recently which takes the advantages of both ALOHA and tree based approaches. This paper describes the process and performance of the tag anti-collision algorithms of the tree-ALOHA trend

AN INTERNET OF THINGS–BASED APPROACH TO INNOVATE CANTEEN STORES DEPARTMENT’S RETAIL OPERATIONS

In a competitive business environment, retail organizations in the Western world are capitalizing on technological tools and solutions to enhance customer experience and boost sales. Specifically, retailers that adopt Internet of Things (IoT) technologies improve customer experience and achieve cost savings. Yet such innovation is rare outside the Western world. Hence, early adopters of IoT technologies in retail operations in Pakistan could gain a competitive advantage. This study aims to create a deeper understanding of how Pakistan-based Canteen Stores Department (CSD), a retail chain mainly serving service members and their families, can use IoT technologies to significantly modernize and improve its operations and distinguish itself from competitors. To do so, this study conducts a qualitative analysis of scholarly articles on the relevant technologies and on IoT-based products offered by commercial companies. The authors also include findings from discussions with CSD customers and management. The results of the study indicate CSD can use IoT technologies to optimize store layout, offer interactive in-store mapping, automate checkout systems, implement smart shelving and digital price tagging, improve in-store promotions, enhance customer relationship management, and modernize distribution, transportation, and warehousing. The study also offers CSD management guidance on how to implement IoT technologies into retail operations at one location as a pilot.Outstanding ThesisLieutenant Commander, Pakistan NavyWing Commander, Pakistan Air ForceLieutenant Colonel, Pakistan ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Fast splitting based tag identification algorithm for anti-collision in UHF RFID System

Efficient and effective objects identification using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is always a challenge in large scale industrial and commercial applications. Among existing solutions, the tree based splitting scheme has attracted increasing attention because of its high extendibility and feasibility. However, conventional tree splitting algorithms can only solve tag collision with counter value equals to zero and usually result in performance degradation when the number of tags is large. To overcome such drawbacks, we propose a novel tree-based method called Fast Splitting Algorithm based on Consecutive Slot Status detection (FSA-CSS), which includes a fast splitting (FS) mechanism and a shrink mechanism. Specifically, the FS mechanism is used to reduce collisions by increasing commands when the number of consecutive collision is above a threshold. Whereas the shrink mechanism is used to reduce extra idle slots introduced by FS. Simulation results supplemented by prototyping tests show that the proposed FSA-CSS achieves a system throughput of 0.41, outperforming the existing UHF RFID solutions

KALwEN: a new practical and interoperable key management scheme for body sensor networks

Key management is the pillar of a security architecture. Body sensor networks (BSNs) pose several challenges–some inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselves–that require a new key management scheme to be tailor-made. The challenge is taken on, and the result is KALwEN, a new parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework. KALwEN is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user, and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network. One of KALwEN's key features is that it allows sensor devices from different manufacturers, which expectedly do not have any pre-shared secret, to establish secure communications with each other. KALwEN is decentralized, such that it does not rely on the availability of a local processing unit (LPU). KALwEN supports secure global broadcast, local broadcast, and local (neighbor-to-neighbor) unicast, while preserving past key secrecy and future key secrecy (FKS). The fact that the cryptographic protocols of KALwEN have been formally verified also makes a convincing case. With both formal verification and experimental evaluation, our results should appeal to theorists and practitioners alike