Otedama: A Relocatable RFID Information Repository Architecture

Shigeya SUZUKI  Rodney VAN METER  Osamu NAKAMURA  Jun MURAI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems   Vol.E93-D   No.11   pp.2922-2931
Publication Date: 2010/11/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1361
DOI: 10.1587/transinf.E93.D.2922
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Architectures, Protocols, and Applications for the Future Internet)
Category: 
Keyword: 
RFID,  middleware,  intelligent storage,  reactive agent,  

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Summary: 
We present a novel RFID middleware architecture, Otedama, which makes use of a unique property of RFID information to improve performance. RFID tags are bound to items. New information related to an RFID tag is generated at the site where the ID exists, and the entity most interested in the history and the item itself is in close proximity to the RFID tag. To exploit this property, we propose a scheme which bundles information related to a specific ID into one object and moves that bundle to a nearby server as the RFID tag moves from place to place. By using this scheme, information is always accessible by querying a system near the physical location of the tag, providing better query performance. Additionally, the volume of records that must be kept by a repository manager is reduced, because the relocation naturally migrates data away as physical objects move. We show the effectiveness of this architecture by analyzing data from a major retailer, finding that information retrieval performance will be six times better, and the cost of search is possibly several times cheaper.