2008 International Conference on Advanced Computer Theory and Engineering

Smart Home Mobile RFID-based Internet-Of-Things Systems and Services

Mohsen Darianian, Martin Peter Michael
Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland
Mohsen.Darianian@nokia.com
Martinpeter.Michael@nokia.com
The third solution is equipping the home residents
with handheld mobile RFID (MRFID) readers which
can be carried around to different rooms. When a home
resident enters a room, the mobile RFID reader reads
the RFID tag information in its coverage range. The
information is shown on the mobile reader display and
transferred to the home monitoring system.
At present NFC (Near Field Communication)
mobile phones like Nokia 6131 and 6212 are on the
market which can be used for one-by-one tag reading.
But they work only with reading distances up to 5cm
[7]. In addition there are RFID UHF mobile readers
with distances up to 2m [5]. But they are currently still
too large, heavy and consume too much power
compared to the smart mobile devices of today and are
not very stylish for home environment and therefore
not suitable for resilient long day usage. Another issue
is that people would prefer to carry around only one
mobile device, which includes phone and RFID reader
capabilities.
This paper introduces a concept to overcome the
mentioned limitations of mobile RFID reader solutions
using a very low cost, so-called RF Energy
Generator at the room or appliance level as the
transmission power source for mobile RFID readers.
Chapter 2 describes the system architecture of a
master-slave fixed and mobile RFID readers in the
home environment. Chapter 3 introduces architecture
and workflow of home services using the mentioned
concept in chapter 2. Some example smart home
applications are described in the chapter 4.

Abstract
Smart homes can apply new Internet-Of-Things
concepts along with RFID technologies for creating
ubiquitous services. This paper introduces a novel
read-out method for a hierarchical wireless masterslave RFID reader architecture of multi standard NFC
(Near Field Communication) and UHF (Ultra High
Frequency) technologies to build a smart home service
system that benefits in terms of cost, energy
consumption and complexity. Various smart home
service use cases such as washing programs, cooking,
shopping and elderly health care are described as
examples that make use of this system.

1. Introduction
Internet of Things (IOT) is a concept [1] that
visualizes bringing the internet even to dummy things
in smart spaces like future home. By bringing the
internet to dummy things, new services can be created
and be used by things, devices and humans. To make
the dummy things smart things, IOT report suggests
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as one of the
enabler technologies.
A RFID identification system is built based on a
RFID reader, plurality of tags and a back-end system
using network connectivity like WLAN [2] [3]. RFID
reader can read the identification information from the
tags and exchange it with the back-end system for
further processing.
There are a few architectural solutions in the market
for using identification technologies at home. The first
solution is to equip the appliance with a fixed RFID
reader to identify the tags around the appliances. But
the fixed RFID readers like UHF (Ultra High
Frequency) standard are bulky and expensive for
appliance level deployment [4] [5]. The second
solution is to use a multi antenna RFID reader for
several appliances with a dedicated antenna for each
one [6]. This solution reduces the cost of individual
appliance-level RFID readers. But it is not very stylish
and needs quite cost-intensive cable installation and
maintenance.
978-0-7695-3489-3/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICACTE.2008.180

2. Smart Home Master-Slave RFID System

Architecture
This paper introduces a RFID reader system
architecture for a home comprised of several readers in
master slave architecture. Figure 1 a) and b) illustrate
the architecture for the smart home environment. The
communication protocol between the readers and tags
is based on RFID standard protocols like UHF.
The system consists of following reader
components.
1)
Master Reader (MR)
116

The master reader is a conventional powerful fixed

reader with a direct fixed or wireless connection to the
smart home server. It carries out the reader services
demanded by the smart home system. It initiates a read
process in the slave reader and wakes up any passive
tags for power-up or any other service initiation. In
addition, it collects the item-level information and
forwards it to the back-end for further processing. Any
type of MRFID reader entering its range can be
connected directly or via slave readers. A MR can
communicate with other MRs in the smart home. It can
also work as a proxy between the MRFID reader and
local or remote server systems for information service
provisioning.

SR

SR

Slave Readers SR

Tags

Figure 2 shows the high level architecture of the

service communication between the reader system
components and smart home internal and external
servers.
The identification process is initiated by the smart
spaces identification service application towards the
RFID reader system (step (1) in figure 2). The master
reader takes the responsibility and wakes up the slave
readers and tags in its radio range (step (2)). The slave
readers proceed in the same way (step (3)) and wake
up the tags in their range, if those are not yet woken up
through the master readers first wake-up call. The
slave readers and the tags send their identification
information to the master reader (step (4)), which
collects and removes the redundant information and
sends it finally to the smart spaces object server for
further processing (step (5)). The duplicated redundant
information from the tags is used later for faulttolerance and localization of the tags. The slave reader
could theoretically take more responsibility in tag
information processing. But the intelligence in the
slave readers is determined by the cost and complexity
restrictions. In addition, the system can support RFID
services initiated from mobile devices with and without
embedded RFID reader capabilities. There are four
possibilities:
1) RFID reader services for smart mobile phones
To some extent smart mobile phones can be used to
access RFID tag information. The mobile phone needs
to use a wireless connectivity like WLAN to
communicate with the smart spaces RFID master-slave
reader system. The mobile phone sends queries about
e.g. item of interest to the master-slave RFID reader
system which provides the required information about
the items.
2) Conventional way of MRFID reader and tag
interaction
In this method the user is equipped with a mobile
RFID reader and wants to know some information
about a specific item through direct touch as is the case
today. This method works very well for short operation
times, but in complex search services with multiple
tags it can be very time and power consuming, as
mentioned earlier.
3) MRFID reader and tag communication through
master or slave reader
3.1) Master or slave reader as a proxy between
MRFID reader and tags
In this method the MRFID reader communicates
with the tags using master-slave system as a proxy.
The MRFID reader sends e.g. a search profile to the
master-slave reader. The master-slave reader wakes up

Host link

Master Reader MR

3. RFID Reader Service Communication

T
T

Mobile Reader

Figure 1) a: RFID Master-Slave Architecture;

b: Room and Appliance level
2) A number of Slave Readers (SR)
SRs are very simplified readers acting as relays for
capturing tag ID information tags which are not
reachable by the direct radio transmission of the master
reader. SRs could be integrated in the home appliances.
In addition location of SRs can be used for localization
of the tags, when the physical location of the slave
reader is known to the system.
3) Mobile RFID (MRFID) Reader
Conventional MRFID readers are supposed to have
functionalities such as waking up the passive tags,
initiating the reading/writing process, tag and reader
collision management and communication with local
or remote servers [4]. All these are very power hungry
processes. Depending on human movement or reading
distance, bigger reading window sizes are needed to
achieve a 100% detection of the tags, which implies
longer active operation time for the MRFID reader. In
the proposed architecture, the master-slave reader act
as so named RF Energy Generator and energizes tags
for wake up and operation[8]. Therefore the MRFID
reader always faces tags which are powered up and
wakened by the slave or master readers. Thus the
MRFID reader acts as a passive reader and does not
need any wake up procedure to initiate.

117

the right tags in the proximity of MRFID reader or

navigates to the location of the item of interest. In the
first case (item in proximity) the items answer and the
MRFID reader consumes the information in the listen
mode. The advantage in this case is the possibility to
avoid power consuming multiple tag collision
processes to be initiated from the mobile reader.
Another benefit is the possibility of delegation of the
mobile reader wake-up procedure to the master-slave
readers.
Slave Reader

Home
Server

Master
Reader

Tagged Items Slave Reader

Mobile
Tag/Reader
Slave Reader

First Wake-Up Call

External
Object
Server

Information
Server

Service 1
Initiation

4. Smart Home NFC and RFID Services

Second Wake- 3
Up Call
Item Code
20.5.01.800
25.5.01.800

Tag/Slave Reader
Identification

5 Item Code

Mobile Reader First Wake-Up Call

6
Second
7 Wake-Up Call

Mobile Reader and Shelf

Reader/Tag Communication

Item Code
Item Code 8

Smart home services can be based on NFC, RFID or

both.
Service 1: NFC services
The NFC services can be used for the applications
like shopping and care of elderly people (medication
and presence). In shopping the user creates charts for
items of interest and plugs them into the home
appliances like fridge, shelves etc. The user visits the
fridge or shelves and controls the availability of e.g.
cooking items. In case of missing items these are
loaded from the chart of items attached to the
appliance. The charts are an array of NFC tags attached
to an A4 paper or plastic cover. On the top of the
plastic cover an A4 paper with printed picture of items
is fixed (figure 3). The pictures are exactly located
above the NFC tags. The user touches one of the
pictures with the NFC phone and the shopping
application adds the item to the shopping list.
Service 2: RFID based services
In this case the control of item stack is much easier,
because the UHF readers can read multiple tags
simultaneously. The user opens the fridge or shelves
and reads with one touch all items. The shopping
application controls the stack list with the cooking
recipe and generates automatically a shopping list.
Service 3: RFID and NFC combined services
In this case the mobile reader has the capabilities to
read RFID and NFC tags at the same time or in
different time periods. The multiple tags read
capability of the RFID reader can cause some
confusion in selecting items of interest at the moment
that matters. This solution helps to find the potential
location of the items. In this case items are associated
to their location by an e.g. shelf NFC tag. The mobile
NFC reader reads the ID of the shelf before putting
items inside. Every item is read from the NFC reader
while placing it on the shelf. The application associates

20.5.01.800

4 Item Code

Slave Reader ID

20.5.01.800

20.5.01.800

Mobile Reader Tag ID

2.4.12.400

9
11

Item Code 12

Item Code

Second
Wake-Up Call

Mobile Reader
Code 10

Tagged Mobile Reader

Communication

Mobile Reader Server

Query and Response

20.5.01.800

20.5.01.800

Mobile Reader Query

13

URL Query

URL Query

2.4.12.800.local

2.4.12.800.local

URL Response

URL Response

Mobile Reader External Query

URL Response

Mobile Reader External Response

Information Response

URL Query
2.4.12.800.extern.org

URL Response
http://book-print.com/content.txt

14

Information Request
15 Set HTTP/1.1 http://book-print.com/content.txt

Mobile Reader External Information Query

Information Response
16

In the optimal case the MRFID reader is equipped

with a device identification tag, which is identified
from the master-slave reader system automatically.
For example, if a mobile reader with identification tag
enters a shopping section, it will be detected from the
section (master or slave) readers (Step (9)). This
feature allows additional services such as localization
or navigation of user of MRFID reader in the smart
spaces (chapter 3). The steps 10-12 are similar to the
steps 5, 7 and 8 of previous method.
In all of these methods the MRFID reader can query
additional information from the smart spaces local,
external object server or any other information servers
(steps (13) to (16) in Figure 2).

HTTP/1.1 OK 300 @#%$!)@$$

Information Response

Figure 2) RFID Basic Service Architecture

3.2) Master or slave reader as power source
This method is similar to 3.1 but the main
difference
is that the master-slave system acts only as RF energy
source for wake-up and operation of the tags [8].
Otherwise the communication between MRFID reader
and tags is as usual.
In cases 3.1 and 3.2 the master-slave and MRFID
need to synchronize their communication [8]. So the
MRFID reader sends only the first wake-up signal
(step (6)). The master-slave reader continues with the
second wake-up call to the tags synchronic to the first
wake-up signal of the MRFID reader (step (7)). The
tags send their ID information (step (8)). The MRFID
consumes the information in listen mode.
4) Tagged MRFID reader for automatic
identification and navigation.

118

washing a MRFID reader can be used in this use case

too.

the shelf and items IDs together. Later during a search

service the RFID reader can read all items at once and
the application can localize the read items using the
location context from previous steps.

5.3 Healthcare, medication and tele-monitoring

Elderly people or patients returning back from the
hospital need specific medication and disease
management programs at home. They need to use the
introduced RFID reader system for program process
control.
The scenario begins with a daily disease and
medication checkup starting healthcare and medication
use case. In this example the use case uses the solution
with an external RF energy generator (figure 4). The
MRFID powers up the room RF energy generator (1).
The RF energy generator wakes up the tags in it range
(2). The MRFID listen to the tags response (3).

Figure 3) Fridge item chart with NFC tags

5. Smart Home Service Use Cases

5.1 Washing
In this use case clothes are attached with RFID tags
to represent information about color, material and a
suitable washing program. The smart home washing
system comprises of a master RFID reader and slave
readers in clean cloth shelves, dirty clothes container
boxes and in washing machine. Home washing control
application monitors the amount of clothes in the area
of every RFID reader and alarms automatically, if the
amount of clothes has been reached above a threshold
level, it would propose an energy aware washing
program. While the washing machine is loading, the
reader checks compatibility of clothes the user puts
into the machine. In addition, the control application
monitors continuously whether some dirty clothes are
still left for washing and inform..
Another possibility is using the introduced MRFID
reader with an external RF energy generator as a costoptimized solution which is carried by the user from
one appliance to the next to collect the required
information.
Another possibility is using the introduced MRFID
reader with external RF energy generator as cost
optimized solution which carried by user from one
appliance to next one to collect the required
information.

Figure 4) Home recovery and medication

safety using external RF Energy Generator
Figure 5 depicts a home tele-monitoring use case
using the introduced RFID system. The use case
captures the patient information and disease status and
communicates this with the hospital personnel for
update of the medication diary.
Step 1: System initialization and information
capturing
The user starts the RFID monitoring use case. The
RFID reader system e.g. the MRFID reader wakes up
the tags for information exchange according to one of
the RFID reader methods described in chapter 2 and 3.
The MRFID reader queries about the tagged persons
and medicines for identification.
Step 2: Medication prescription
The patient and medication information is sent to
the hospital. The physician analyses the status of the
patient using the profile and medication database.
Step 3: Medication diary
The physician defines based on the disease status
and medication prescription a new medication diary
using the world wide medication database.
Step 4: Medication update
The physician sends the medication diary to his/her
own mobile, the hospital server and patient home
server or mobile device. This can be done online or
offline depending on the physicians decision. The

5.2 Cooking
The cooking use case uses RFID identification and
internet services. Based on the resilient preferences and
other requirements like wellness and healthcare it
proposes a set of food recipes. The slave readers in
fridge, shelves and in the oven communicate with a
master reader in the kitchen. The application client
interacts with the server asking for the latest item stack
situation to propose a shopping list. Similar to the

119

method increases indirectly MRFID readers reading

range, which is another restriction of mobile
RFID/UHF readers.
The system has been used for smart home use case
services like cooking, shopping, washing and home
tele-monitoring. This system used multiple RFID
technologies in the same application. Exemplary
services of NFC (Near Field Communication) and
RFID/UHF combined which increased the performance
of the system significantly.
The introduced system needs the user to select
between the RFID/UHF and NFC communication
manually. Further research is needed to integrate a
multi standard reader and tag supporting both
standards. Another research area is tag emulation from
the reader. Today NFC readers can emulate tags which
allow other readers in the space to identify each other.
This feature is not supported yet by the RFID/UHF
readers.

diary synchronization can be done by SMS, email or

using web based client-server application.
Local
Database
Hospital
Information
Server
ID

IDs
Measurement
Parameters
Initialization

Profile

World w ide
Medication
Database
Medicine
Profile

Mobile
Client
Context
Service

Mobile
Client
Diary
Service

Medication
Prescription

Medication
Diary

Local
Database
Hospital
Information
Server
SMS
Email

Physician
Mobile
Client
Medication
Update

Medication
Consumption

Figure 5) Home Tele-Visit RFID based

monitoring
Step 5: Medicine consumption
The patient mobile device takes care of the
medication and alarms about the new medication diary
and assists the patient during the consumption. The
patient uses a chart printed out based on the new
medication diary. Whenever the patient follows one
medication step s/he touches the corresponding RFID
or NFC tag in the chart. This information is controlled
from the mobile client application for the next run of
medication.
All these applications work based on the same
scheme
introduced
in
chapter
3
service
communication. The software layer is based on a
client-server architecture using https protocol and
WLAN/GPRS connectivity.

References
[1]
[2]

[3]

6. Conclusion

[4]

This paper introduced how to apply an advanced

power and cost efficient read-out method for RFID
reader architecture for smart home applications and
services. This system solves the serious power
consumption problem of current mobile RFID readers
for technologies like RFID/UHF (Ultra High
Frequency). Mobile RFID (MRFID) reader devices
delegates the most power expensive service processes
like tag energizing to the smart home reader system or
to so named RF Energy Generator. So the reading
distance is determined from the home reader system
not from the MRFID RF energy source. Therefore this

[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

120

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