Discovery Services-Enabling RFID Traceability in EPCglobal Networks

The EPCglobal consortium defines standards to enable data sharing of electronic product code related information within and between enterprises, which typically comprises events of RFID readers as well as product information about the tagged products. An EPCglobal network consists of nodes, each of which may have complex data usage and sharing policies and have a need to collaborate in order to extract full value from the network. The Discovery Services is the key step in enabling creation and adoption of this network of possibly heterogeneous enterprise systems. This work focuses on providing a first implementation of a simple, scalable infrastructure for building Discovery Services. The demonstration illustrates the interplay of three elements of an EPCglobal network: Discovery Services, EPC Information Services (EPCIS), and an application that uses Discovery Services to query EPCIS, which are hosted on multiple EPCIS servers. The application tracks the freshness of avocados across a food supply chain and allows the rerouting of products that are unsatisfactory. The standardization of Discovery Services by EPCglobal is still pending.