A framework for rapid development of RFID applications

Abstract

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology is considered to be the next step in the revolution in supply-chain management, retail, and beyond. To derive real benefit from RFID, a RFID application must implement functions to process the enormous event data generated quickly by RFID operations. For this reason, many RFID middleware systems have been developed. Although RFID middleware assists in the management of the flow of event data, developers will be forced to implement systems to derive from simple RFID events meaningful high-level events, which are more actionable knowledge that can be applied. Determining meaningful events requires a context, which typically comes from reference data. In this paper, we propose the contextual event framework (CEF) for rapid development of RFID applications. The solutions and techniques presented in this paper are based on our experience of RFID middleware of the Logistics Information Technology (LIT) project. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.