The use of RFID tag which identifies a thing and an object will be expanded with progress of ubiquitous society, and it is necessary to study how to construct RFID network system as a social infrastructure like the Internet. First, this paper proposes the virtualization method of RFID tag network system to enable the same physical RFID network system to be used by multiple different service systems. The system virtualization not only reduces the system cost but also can dramatically reduce the installation space of physical readers and the operation cost. It is proposed that all equipments in the RFID network system except RFID tag could be shared with the conventional virtual technologies. Then, this paper proposes the conditional tag ID processing and the efficient tag ID transmission method which can greatly reduce the processing time and processing load in RFID tag Infrastructure network The conditional tag ID processing allows that tag ID is valid only at a certain time zone of day or in a certain area. The efficient tag ID transmission method uses the virtual network address of the service center as a part of the ID of an RF tag, which allows the direct ID forwarding to the service center.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is generic term for technologies employing radio waves for identifying objects. The advance in the information society is expanding the use of RFID tags [1]- [11]. RFID-based services are expected to become as essential to our lives as the Internet [2]. To bring this to reality, it is necessary to construct an RFID tag network system as a social infrastructure like electrical power, gas and water systems, which provides RFID tag service economically, safely and stably to enterprises, governmental organizations and people. Many efforts have been made to provide RFID tag services economically. For example, a common RFID tag network specification has been developed by standards bodies, such as EPC Global [12], [13] and Ubiquitous ID Center [13]. Universal readers that can support a variety of radio frequencies and interfaces have become available [13]. However, a universal RFID tag network system is yet to be developed.
The virtualization of RFID tag network system, which enables the same physical network system to be used by multiple different service systems, could be a promising technique to construct RFID network as a social infrastructure like the Internet. This virtualization not only reduces the system cost but also can dramatically reduce the installation space of physical readers and the operation cost. It is also expected that the RFID tag infrastructure network could offer the advanced features, which had not been offered in the conventional RFID tag network, in order to improve user convenience more than before. For example, it could useful to introduce the conditional tag ID processing in which tag ID is valid only at a certain time zone of day or in a certain area. This feature can eliminate the unnecessary processing at the server center and secure security.
Moreover, the types and volume of the identifiers (IDs) which need to be processed is likely to increase rapidly in an RFID network, compared to an existing network. Looking ahead to the widespread use of IDs for real time control in the future, it is clear that there will be a strong requirement for a reduction in the processing time related to the ID and in the processing load. This paper assumes the EPC Global network architecture [12], and proposes the system virtualization method for RFID tag infrastructure network. This paper also proposes the conditional tag ID processing and the efficient tag ID transmission method for RFID tag infrastructure network. Section 2 discusses the basic concept of system virtualization of RFID tag network system for RFID tag infrastructure network, and proposes that all equipments in the RFID network system except RFID tag can be shared with the conventional virtual technologies for servers or networks. The association mechanism of a physical RFID tag and virtual reader is proposed. Section 3 proposes the conditional tag ID processing method which improves user convenience in RFID tag infrastructure network. Section 4 proposes the efficient tag ID transmission method that uses the virtual network address of the service center as a part of the ID of an RF tag, so allowing direct forwarding to the service center. Section 5 gives the conclusions. This paper is an extension of the study in [17], [18].
A conventional RFID tag network has been built independently for each company or for each service system, as illustrated in Figure 1. This is based on the EPCglobal network architecture [9]. If an RFID tag network system is to become a social infrastructure, it is necessary to allow multiple service systems to share it. Sharing of an RFID tag network system can be achieved in two alternative ways:
-Method I: Break usage time of RFID tag network system into timeslots and allocate different timeslots to different service systems.
-Method II: Create, in each device, virtual elements, each for a specific service system.
This section proposes to adopt Method II because it is not realistic in Method I to allocate a fix timeslot to each application system.
Many technologies had been proposed for creating virtual networks or virtual systems [14], [15], and can be applied to the devices and network of an RFID tag network system. The universal reader which can read various types of RFID tags had been also proposed [13]. However, the method how to virtualize RFID tag, the construction method of virtual RFID tag network system by combining multiple virtual elements, the association mechanism of multiple virtual elements, and conditional tag ID processing function in shared RFID tag network system, had not been studied yet. The contribution of this paper is to provide the appropriate mechanisms to those issues.
First, it is proposed to use a different physical RFID tag for each service system. It is not appropriate to create virtual RFID tags because only one RFID tag is attached to each object, : elements which are newly created for service system B by the instruction of system m
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