An Application Framework for Efficient, Reliable and Secure Access to Memory Spot

Memory Spot is a microchip developed by HP Labs at Bristol. Compared to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices, Smart Cards and other Near-Field Communication (NFC) devices, this chip provides much larger storage capacity, faster data transfer rate, and smaller physical dimensions. The chip is normally passive and is energized by an external reader/writer over the Radio Frequency (RF) channel. The same RF channel enables data communication between the reader/writer and the powered chip. Memory spot potentially opens up a wide range of new consumer-oriented and enterprise service-oriented applications. This paper presents an application framework to help develop these memory spot related applications, by providing common functionalities across different applications, such as data synchronization, application management and application-device interaction. In general, these applications are involved with arbitrarily complex application data types, including database and data schema. Further, in a disconnected and cross-organization environment, these applications require efficient, reliable and secure access and update of data to memory spot. Our application framework addresses these requirements, different from other frameworks that focus on RFID, Smart Cards and other NFC devices. To demonstrate the innovative applications enabled by memory spot and the application framework, we have prototyped the warranty spot application, which aims to significantly reduce computer-related warranty fraud, by having a memory spot permanently attached to each computer.