The Internet of Things: Connecting Objects

Chapter 6

RFID Deployment for Location and Mobility Management on the Internet ¹

6.1. Introduction

Although RFID has a history of more than 50 years in the field of wireless communications, it is only the last decade that it has received considerable attention for becoming a useful general purpose technology in different applications. Actually, RFID was initially used as an automatic identification (ID) system consisting of two basic components: a reader and a tag [WAN 06]. The reader is able to read the IDs of tags in its vicinity by running a simple link-layer protocol over the wireless channel. RFID tags can be either active or passive, depending on whether they are powered by battery or not. Passive tags are prevalent in supply chain management as they do not need a battery to operate. They are cheaper than active tags. This makes their lifetime long and cost-negligible. The low cost of passive tags, the non-line-of-sight requirement, simultaneous reading of multiple tags and reduced sensitivity regarding user orientation has motivated the academia and industry to explore its potentials in more intelligent applications [BAU 05].

As described in Chapter 5, RFID technology is mainly used for identification and tracking applications. In this chapter we study whether RFID technology can be used to enhance network functionalities by combining this technology with existing ones, such as WiFi or any other connecting technology. We investigate RFID deployment for the purpose of two ...