RFID-based Distributed Memory for Mobile Applications

The goal of our work is to give a user equipped with an RFID-enabled mobile handset (mobile phone, PDA, laptop. . . ) the ability to know the contents of distant passive RFID tags, without physically moving to them and without using a Wireless Area Network. The existing architectural patterns involving passive tags do not meet simultaneously all of these requirements. Our RFID-based distributed memory does. By associating vector clocks to tags, we replicate a view of this memory on each tag and each handset, and disseminate updates between all of the replicas. Thus a user can locally query the replica hold by their mobile handset without physically moving to a tag. We have developed a pervasive game as an application example. Using data collected during real game sessions, we evaluate the performance of our distributed memory. Then we discuss staleness and scalability issues. We conclude and give perspectives of our work.