Design of a service-oriented middleware for making the global RFID system

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) systems are aimed to enable all physical objects to enter the virtual world. For this goal, existing distributed RFID systems must be integrated into the global RFID system. In this paper, we propose a service-oriented middleware framework for constructing the global RFID system. The proposed architecture is based on the Grid services for ease-of-interoperation among RFID systems. Thus, we can separate readers and middleware from the application logics. It means that the RFID system and its components can be used for many other applications beyond the physical distribution management. Also, it supports coordination and remote accesses by using the ExposedService as a representative of a local RFID system. The ExposedService provides a common interface to the local system, so that any authorized application can access the RFID system and its components with the uniform manner. Consequently, by using such a service-oriented middleware, several RFID systems can work cooperatively and they also support remote access to the local resources. Simulation results also show its possibility in the aspect of the performance.