An extensible and ubiquitous RFID management framework over next-generation network

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an enabling technology for a variety of applications in nextgeneration network (NGN). Although several RFID management frameworks are proposed in the literature, they have limitations in terms of service extension. In this paper, we propose an extensible RFID management framework called SIP-based RFID management system (SRMS), which can support various RFID applications. SRMS employs session initiation protocol (SIP), which is an Internet standard protocol adopted in NGN for session management and mobility support. SRMS enhances the existing SIP architecture by introducing a surrogate user agent (SUA) and an SRMS name server (SNS). The SUA performs SIP signaling on behalf of RFID tags with limited capabilities, whereas the SNS provides name resolution services. To illustrate the extensibility of SRMS, we demonstrate two representative application scenarios. Compared with the existing RFID management frameworks, SRMS has advantages of service extensibility and reusability. Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.