Real-time management and processing of RFID events based on a new RFID middleware architecture

Abstract

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a contemporary technology that enables the identification of objects and facilitates the transmission of additional information, making it possible to achieve real-time object tracking in a mobile object network and to report information on the object's current state at each step. RFID devices continuously generate large amounts of data, and collecting, filtering, and consolidating these data are therefore crucial tasks, which characterize RFID data management by a set of challenges. However, one of the greatest challenges in this field is managing large volumes of data in complex applications, where real-time operation is vital, given that the volume and speed of RFID data often exceed the capacity of the existing technological infrastructure. The aim of this study is to propose an RFID middleware that manages both the RFID hardware network and the large amounts of data that are captured, in order to process and transmit the collected data under the right conditions for ultimate use by an information system. This new RFID middleware architecture, named BTMiddleware combines complex event processing (CEP) with a MongoDB database to offer large-volume data streaming, processing, and storage in real time, as well as better interoperability thanks to the use of the JavaScript object notation (JSON) format for data presentation.