DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PORTABLE RFID FOR ATTENDANCE SYSTEM

By

SALEEM ULLA

SHARIFF USN 1BI07EC083

TECHNICAL SEMINAR ON

Attendance is an important aspect in every education institution and workplace.

Most universities are still using the paper based attendance system.

This Seminar topic discusses ‘A portable RFID based attendance system’ to replace the current method of attendance taking.

The use of RFID technology enables the university management to avoid attendance forms from damages such as tear, lost, and misplaced.

IDEA BEHIND PORTABLE RFID ATTENDANCE SYTEM

Introduction What is RFID? History of RFID How RFID works? Applications of RFID DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT Conclusion References

CONTENTS

Nowadays, due to the easy availability of almost all information on the internet these days, students are less motivated to attend the lecture.

This topic discusses how we can simplify attendance recorded system by using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.

This paper describes an ongoing project for recording examination attendance using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

The project is carried out to test in a university, where the system which is named Portable Examination Attendance System (PEAS) is integrated with the existing system for record extraction.

The use of RFID technology enables the university management to avoid attendance forms from damages such as tear, lost, and misplaced.

This paper describes about the design and development of PEAS in terms of hardware technology and software.

INTRODUCTION

What is RFID?Technology similar in theory to bar code identification. With RFID, the electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the RF portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is used to transmit signals. An RFID system consists of an antenna and a transceiver, which read the radio frequency and transfer the information to a processing device, and a transponder, or tag, which is an integrated circuit containing the RF circuitry and information to be transmitted.

Components of RFID system

The electromagnetic energy is the source of energy of RFID.

The Thing which is also known as the Great Seal Bug is a technology used by the USSR to spy on the USA conversation at the U.S Ambassadors Moscow Residential Office, is considered to be the predecessor of RFID technology because it uses passive techniques to transfer signals, being energized and activated by electromagnetic waves from an outside source.

It was invented by Lon Theremin and consists of a tiny capacitive membrane connected to a small quarter wavelength antenna.

It uses no electric power supply or active electronic components to operate.

History of RFID

In 1973, Martin Cordullo patented his Transponder Apparatus and System which resembles the modern RFID technology, a passive radio transponder with memory.

This is followed by the first patent that associated to abbreviation of RFID that was granted to Charles Warlton.

Most RFID technology consists of a reader and tag

History of RFID

The Radio Frequency Identification is an enabling technology, which means it doesn't provide much value on its own, but it enables companies to develop applications that create value.

There is a lot of application can do using RFID such as

1. Asset tracking2. Manufacturing3. Retailing4. Payment system5. Security and access control.

Applications of RFID

The smart cards were invented with security and portability in mind. The ability to communicate with other systems gives the smart card the ability to be used as an IDcard, payment card, SIM card for mobile phones, credit card, and retail loyalty program card.

the smartcards can be divided into two types: whether contact or contactless.

Smart Card

The contact card must be inserted into a smart

card reader. It has a small chip on the front pane of the

card. When the card is inserted into a smart card reader, the

reader makes a contact with electrical connectors allowing

the transfer of data to and from the chip

Smart Card- contact card

the contactless card only needs to be passed within 10 cm of the reader to perform a transaction by using the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.

An RFID technology is a non-touch recognition system that transmits and processes the information on events and environments using a wireless frequency and small chips.

Smart Card- contactless card

Typical RFID systems are made up of 2 major components, i.e. the readers and the tags. The reader, which is also called the interrogator, sends and receives radio frequency data to and from the tags via antennas.

A reader may have multiple antennas that are responsible for sending and receiving the radio waves.

The tag or transponder is made up of the microchip that stores the data, an antenna, and a carrier to which the chip and antenna are mounted.

The tag antenna is the conductive element that enables the tag to send and receive data. For passive card, lower frequency is about 135 kHz and high-frequency 13.56 MHz.

The tags usually have a coiled antenna that couples with the coiled antenna of the reader to form a magnetic field. Then, the RF energy from the reader antenna is harvested by the antenna and used to power up the microchip, which then changes the electrical load on the antenna to reflect back its own signals.

How RFID works?

Passive RFID technology is based on the simple idea that an electronic circuit or tag , powered intermittently through radiation from a distance, can transmitinformation in air that can be read by a reader located at a distance. These tagsare nothing but plain antennae bonded to a silicon chip kept inside a plastic orglass case.

PEAS consist of software and hardware as illustrated in Figure 1. In overall, the contact less card using the RFID is used to identify unique items using radio waves.

In this project, PEAS is developed and implemented on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

The System overview

In Figure 1, the three small boxes on the left arehardware, while the big box on the right contains software.

Hardware set was setup without hard programming. But, for the software, all functions need to be programmed.

This paper does not intend to discuss about software design in detail, but more on the hardware design. Next section discusses about the hardware design and development.

The system development was focused separately in terms of

i) Hardware Design ii) Software Development

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Locating RFID tags (Figure 3) is the basic building block of an RFID-based communication system.

It consists of integrated circuit devices containing the RF circuitry and information to be transmitted via air interface when interrogated.

There are two types of tags; passive and active which reflect to the power source.

Active tags which work using internal energy source, i.e. battery can have longer read and response range than passive ones and tend to be more reliable because it does not need a continuous radio signal to power . But it imposes more cost to the manufacturers.

As a result, passive tags are more commonly invited for deploying RFID systems in spite of their vulnerabilities.

RFID Tag

Mobile RFID readers are user-friendly devices which are capable of being interrogators to transmit radio energy to tags and to listen to the tags’ responses.

Using produced energy in an electro-magnetic coupling, tags would be able to compute pre-defined processing logics and to respond to pre-defined data containing tag’s identification code and add initial information.

Mobile readers can be designed to read in the mode of either only a particular kind of tags or different kinds of tags at a single time.

RFID Reader

PDA used in PEAS is HP iPAQ hx2000 series Pocket PC(Figure).

The PDA acts as the storage medium and the application.

The card reader is plugged at the charger port for communication connection.

In addition, the database was designed to read and show the content of the reader on the screen.

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)

Modules of PEAS

IMPLEMENTATION

Main screen

login page is used to authenticate the authorized person

Figure . Login page

Prior to attendance recording, examination officer need to provide course information to link with the Student Course Registration Portal (Figure ).

The purpose of course information is to ensure the number of students registered in the Course Registration System and the current attendance is equal.

Thus, any absent students can be identified.

A sample of records tracking is illustrated in next slide

Course Information

Figure . Course Information

Tracking record

This study finds that integration of mobile device with software for recording examination attendance is sufficient.

In a pilot test, it was found that it reduces time, manpower, long-term cost (of printing and paper), and eases the examination procedures.

In future, PEAS will be implemented in a larger scale to determine its robustness, i.e. whether it can work stably with large number of data.

Besides, the GUI will be redesigned by implementing usercentered design method, and need further user evaluation so that it can be commercialized.

CONCLUSION

Design and Development of Portable RFID for Attendance System

Mohd Helmy Abd Wahab, Ariffin Abdul Mutalib , Herdawatie

Abdul Kadir, Mohamad Farhan Mohamad Mohsin ,

978-1-4244-5651-2/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE RFID Based Attendance System

MC’ OSWEL JAMIN SIBIN ,UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA , April 2010

A Smart RFID System

1Min Chen, 2Runhe Huang, 3Yan Zhang, 4 Han-Chieh Chao Smart Attendance System by using RFID

M. K. Yeop Sabri, M. Z. A. Abdul Aziz, M. S. R. Mohd Shah, M. F. Abd Kadir,

1-4244-1435-0/07/$25.00©2007 IEEE Wikipedia – RFID, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rfid

REFERENCES

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