RFID: A 7 Point Plan to Ensure Privacy

This paper gives an overview of consumer fears associated with the introduction of RFID technology. It analyses the motivation and technical viability of these fears and derives suggestions for privacyfriendly technology design. The analysis shows that all consumer fears currently debated are essentially justified, because from a technical perspective they can all be implemented in the short- or mid-term. A 7-point plan of technological measures is presented that should be taken into consideration and developed further by standardization bodies, researchers and governments in order to impede potential abuses of the technology in the long term

Inter-organizational Integration of Smart Objects: White Spots in the Solution Landscape

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) has sparked considerable efforts in research and development over the past decade.Much of these efforts were driven by applications of RFID technology for monitoring the flow of goods and prominent earlyadopters such as Wal-Mart and Metro Group. Also, the global standards organization GS1 provided a number of wellrecognized specifications that are tailored to monitor objects across organizations.Development of the IoT has certainly benefited from the strong demand for monitoring goods in business applications.However, the dominance of these application scenarios and corresponding standards comes at the risk of neglectingrequirements from other domains. In this paper, we review the focus of existing works. Our contribution is twofold. (1) Usinga systematic literature review, we analyze existing research contributions and identify underrepresented areas. (2) We discussselected approaches in detail and highlight open issues in the covered functionality. The aim of our work is to raise awarenessfor open potentials in the IoT service domain and to direct future research and developments

Architectural Patterns for RFID Applications in Manufacturing

When applying RFID in production, it needs to be integrated into the used IT systems. However, till today system designers cannot rely on a standard solution for integrating RFID technology in manufacturing software systems. Each manufacturer has to deal with the same challenges: No consolidated findings on how to integrate RFID into the IT infrastructure exist. The consequence is that each IT department has to develop a solution from scratch. In order to give well-founded design guidelines for embedding RFID into the company’s IT infrastructure, we conducted seven in-depth case studies of the state-of-the-art in manufacturing IT infrastructures. Our findings allowed us to specify architectural patterns for common RFID applications in manufacturing. With our work we support system designers in choosing the appropriate architecture for different RFID applications and design goals. We present our solutions in form of architectural patterns that enable manufacturing IT systems to benefit from RFID

Managing application-level QoS for IoT stream queries in hazardous outdoor environments

While most IoT projects focus on well-controlled environments, this paper focuses on IoT applications in the wild, i.e., rugged outdoor environments. Hazard warnings in outdoor monitoring solutions require reliable pattern detection mechanisms, while data may be streamed from a variety of sensors with intermittent communication. This paper introduces the Morepork system for managing application-level Quality of Service in stream queries for rugged IoT environments. It conceptually treats errors as first class citizens and quantifies the impact on application level. We present a proof of concept implementation, which uses real-world data from New Zealand forestry workers

IT Infrastructures in Manufacturing: Insights from Seven Case Studies

IT solutions in manufacturing support the execution as well as the monitoring of production operations. Fast reaction to exceptions, detailed documentation of operations, and the detection of inefficiencies in the production are among the benefits of a tight IT integration of shop-floor processes. Several dedicated software solutions and standards exist for the manufacturing domain. However, each manufacturer must tailor the IT to the special requirements of its processes and infrastructure. We found that real-world installations show considerable variations. In this paper we present the results of seven case studies on IT infrastructures in manufacturing. For each case we portray the employed architecture and the main factor that influenced the design. From this analysis we derive reoccurring patterns on the structure of IT solutions in manufacturing and relate them to existing standards. Our results provide system architects with guidance for picking the right architectural choices in different manufacturing environments

RFID in the Cloud: A Service for High-Speed Data Access in Distributed Value Chains

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is emerging as an important technology for exchanging information about physical objects along distributed value chains. The influential standardization organization EPCglobal has released standards for RFID-based data exchange that follow the data-on-network paradigm. Here, the business-relevant object data is provided by network services, whereas RFID tags are only used to carry a reference number for data retrieval via the Internet. However, as we show in this paper, this paradigm can result in long response times for data access. We present experiments that explore what factors impact the response times and identify obstacles in current architectures. Based on these analyses, we designed a cloud-based service that realizes high-speed data access for data-on-network solutions. We further present simulation experiments analyzing the benefits of our cloud-based concept with regards to fast RFID-data access and reduced infrastructure cost through scale effects

Benchmarking Big Data Technologies for Energy Procurement Efficiency

The electrical power industry is undergoing radical change due to the push for renewable energy that makes energy supply less predictable. Smart meters along with analytics software can grant insights into customer-specific consumption and thereby enable a better match between the demand and supply side for an electric utility. However, the vast amount of allocatable smart metering data and complexity of analytics pose challenges to database system. We address the implementation of an analytics ap-proach to optimize customer portfolios, eventually preventing excess energy procurement. Using real-world and simulated data, we test the suitability of big data approaches as well as traditional relational database technology. Furthermore, we present solutions based on big data platforms and demonstrate their cost effectiveness and performance. Our findings suggest economic feasibility of big data solutions for large utilities. Small and medium-sized utilities are advised to invest in more cost-effective solutions such as cluster-based systems