Software architecture and framework to develop NFC-based applications

Abstract

Applications are employing Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to interact with physical objects by using NFC tags. The architecture to implement these kinds of applications varies according to non-functional requirements such as the physical environment where the application is running, the flexibility to adapt the information to be manipulated through physical objects, etc. To cope with these challenges, this paper proposes a Model-driven Architecture (MDA) where designers are able to model the configuration of the system according to NFC based system requirements. Through a model-to-text transformation process, the MDA also provides developers with templates of source code for the applications that support the system. The proposed MDA process defines a Platform Independent Model (PIM) which supports a Domain Specific Language (DSL) implemented as an Eclipse platform plugin that provides designers with a graphical model editor, and a model to text transformation, to generate the source code templates using the Acceleo transformation language. The paper also presents the Albacete Photo Gallery case of study to illustrate the modelling process. The main benefit of the proposal is that it allows developers to create mixed environments where the availability and flexibility of NFC based interaction systems can be easily configured, extended and maintained.