Design and Implementation of mobile RFID technology in the CDMA networks

Myunghee Son, Yongjoon Lee, Cheolsig Pyo RFID/USN Research Group, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon, Korea {mhson, yjl, cspyo}@etri.re.kr, http://www.etri.re.kr

Abstract This paper describes the mobile RFID technology for E-business as focusing on design and implementation. Last year, the rate of internet accessible mobile phones in Korea was 89.5% but the rate of utilizing mobile wireless internet was 28%. The packet price in the wireless communication, lack of diversity of contents, and uncomfortable user interface restricts access to the services in the wireless internet. To solve the following problem such as lack of diversity of contents and uncomfortable user interface we propose mobile RFID technology. Until now, many RFID technologies have been developed rapidly in the control of goods in stock and the marketing structure. However we suggest the mobile RFID technology to extend RFID technologies with the high quality mobile environments in Korea. Keywords RFID, mobile, CDMA, wireless, EPC, URN, ODS.

2. 3G wireless and CDMA 1x evolution in Korea

To meet customers various multimedia request, CDMA 1x technology has been developed as shown in the figure 1. In 2005, CDMA 1xEV-DO(1xEvolution Data Only) and CDMA 1xEV-DV(1xEvolution Data and Voice) technologies are available in Korea to support high bandwidth data services.

1. Introduction
In 2004, the rate of internet accessible mobile phones in Korea was 89.5% which was a lot more than of other countries i.e., Japan(87%), China(30.9%), and the Netherlands(19.3%). Moreover, Korea ranked the second place in the world in utilizing mobile wireless internet with 28%, followed by Japan(54%). With the high quality infrastructure and customer expectation, Korea is considered one of world best test-bed for wireless network. In Korea, mobile technology has been developed astonishingly with the great driving force. Along with the increase of mega-pixel camera and camcorder implemented phones, high-resolution phone is becoming more popular in market. Evolution on high-speed wireless network has been demanded by users, operators, suppliers, and content providers as applications need larger bandwidth for better quality of service. On February 3 in 2005, mobile RFID forum was established for 900 MHz range RFID network technology and we have a chance to develop the mobile RFID technology first in the world. The local RFID technology is far behind foreign technology in terms of inventory control so we try to lead the world in this filed of mobile RFID service. The mobile RFID technology is expected to revitalize the wireless internet market. Through this paper we can prove that the mobile RFID technology is quite. We begin by describing the 3G wireless and CDMA 1x evolution in Korea. Section 3 addresses our design and architecture for the mobile RFID service. In the section 4, we present the implementation of our mobile RFID technology. Finally, section 5 concludes the paper.
Figure 1. The CDMA 1x technology evolution path.

When customers start using mobile services in 2005, they use both voice and data services actively. The voice ARPU(Average Revenue Per User) only decreased slightly whereas data ARPU dropped down significantly. This may be due to lack of mobile contents, price of services, and inconvenient user interface.

Figure 2. Voice/data usage change by subscription period (LGT).

Figure 2 shows interesting usage pattern [1]. In this figure, HS6000 is the most expensive terminal with a variety of high-quality features, followed by HS5000 with similar features but lower quality (less resolution in camera and ring tone). It shows that a new customers voice ARPU only decreases slightly while data ARPU decreases significantly 5 month after initial subscription. This implies that new customers try various data services for the first few months

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until they figure out the value of each service and its cost. They eventually stop using services that do not provide adequate value for their cost. Now, the access method on most wireless internet service contents is very similar to wired internet service but the device conditions are very different. As shown in Figure 1, the technology of packet service in the mobile environment has been steadily developed. On the basis of this infrastructure we suggest the mobile RFID technology to activate the mobile data service.

for offering the E-shopping service and to support it five steps are required such as tag recognition, location service, contents service, tracing service, and delivery authentication service.

3. 2. Software Architecture in the mobile phone

3. Design architecture of mobile RFID service

3. 1. E-business scenario
The main target model of mobile RFID service is E-business model focusing on B2C service model. Among various business models we selected the E-shopping service and designed for it. For starting the service, an RFID tag is attached to a poster and it carries EPC code information and the mobile phone equipped RFID reader functions is required in the E-shopping place and the delivery authentication place. To offer the contents information to be mapped the RFID code we developed the contents web server and to locate the contents web server we interoperate the local ODS server. The contents web server and the local ODS server are available to connect via Internet. When someone wants to buy music disks or to buy a performance ticket in advance he uses his mobile phone equipped RFID reader. If someone presses the hot key button only to run the RFID reader function he can access mobile internet service without manipulating inconvenient key any more. After he purchased some items by using the mobile RFID service he can easily trace the item and authenticate the delivered item without helping by another device. Figure 3 shows the mobile RFID service model to be designed

Figure 4. Software Architecture in the phone.

WIPI(Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability) [2] is required to come into force on in Korea in case of mobile phone as from April, 2005 to support interoperability platform for various application software and hardware platform. Therefore we chose WIPI for basic software development platform of mobile phone and the software architecture and the relation between each software functions are shown as Figure 4. The software architecture is composed of REX OS, WIPI HAL API, WIPI Runtime Engine, WIPI C API, phone application, quasi-XML browser parser, and phone GUI. Most functions for mobile RFID technology are designed in the WIPI C API and they are Reader Control, Tag Control, Buffer Control and Filter Control for interfacing with RFID reader and Code Decoder, URN (Uniform Resource Name)

Figure 3. Mobile RFID Service Model.

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Converter, FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) Converter, DNS Resolver and Connect ECS (Etri Contents Server) for communicating with a local ODS server and the ETRI contents web server.

Local ODS Server is a DNS server using UDP port 53 and Contents Server is a Web server using TCP port 80 for HTTP.

4. Mobile RFID service implementation

4. 1. Air-interface and Reader protocol
Air interface is defined as the communication protocol between the RFID reader and the RFID tags attached to items such as goods and catalogues. The frequency band to support the air protocol is allocated at 908.5MHz to 914MHz in Korea to comply with ISO 18000-6 standard [3] for air interface communications at 860MHz to 960MHz. Reader protocol is to communicate between MCU (Micro Control Unit) and RFID reader in the mobile phone and can be distinguished with three commads such as Command, Response, and Notification [4]. Every command has its own code, it is expressed with 8bit in Code field in protocol format and can be divided into six categories, i.e., Reader Control/Management, Tag Read/Write, Tag Lock/Unlock, Tag Revision and Additional Function. Our paper supports ISO 18000-6 Type C only and the payload format is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Reader protocol format.

4. 2. Middleware function
Mobile RFID middleware is implemented by extending WIPI platform to provide RF code related information obtained from RF tag through RFID reader attached on mobile phone. Functions of RFID WIPI C API [5] include RFID Reader Control, Buffer Control, Tag Control, Filtering, and Networking for Code Decoding, URN Conversion, FQDN Conversion, DNS Resolving and Contents Service.WIPI Runtime Engine Software for Mobile RFID Functions is extended to support RFID WIPI C API [5] and RFID HAL API [6]. Functions of RFID HAL API [6] include RFID Reader Control, Buffer Control, Tag Control, Filtering, Networking for configuring IP address of Local ODS server. Figure 4 shows middleware functions and software architectures overall. WIPI platform has been set to minimize the side effect that may occur due to the use of various platforms. Before the mobile phone communicates with legacy networks we have to resolve bit string codes to obtain the URN by Code Decoder and URN Converter sub-functions shown in Figure 4 and the code resolution function is depicted in Figure 6 [7]. To discover a Contents Server we communicate with local ODS server via FQDN Converter and DNS (Domain Name Service) Resolver sub-functions as depicted in Figure 4 [8]. After phone application receives the response message it extracts the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of Contents Server from it. To download browsing information we connect to the Contents Server through Connect ECS sub-function depicted in Figure 4 on the HTTP/TCP/IP protocol stack.
Figure 6. Code resolution flow chart.

4. 3. Local ODS and Contents Server

In case of failure the code resolution by the RFID reader in the mobile phone, the mobile RFID reader send the unknown code to the local ODS to obtain the location of contents server. Local ODS function architecture as shown in Figure 7 consists of the MDM (Multicode Decoding Module), URN/FQDN Converter and DNS Resolver [9]. Operator has to insert contents servers URL information in zone file in the local ODS server to offer the contents servers location.

Figure 7. Local ODS Server functions.

We implemented the local ODS server on Linux system using Java language and the contents server on window 2000 server system using C# and .NET languages.

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The contents server supports B2C (Business 2 Client) services and offers service environments to delivery various contents information to clients. The contents server is able to offer E-shopping services as shown in Figure 3 including delivery authentication service and tracking service. Tracking and authentication services occurs after clients complete their purchases.

5. Conclusions
We describe the mobile RFID service and technologies for E-business as focusing on the design and implementation. The frequency band to support the air protocol is allocated at 908.5MHz to 914MHz by TTA in Korea to comply with ISO 18000-6 for air interface communications at 860MHz to 960MHz. Our mobile phone and RFID reader are running on ARM 7 processor and the interface between them is UART and reader protocol to carry some RFID codes from RFID reader to mobile phone. To offer the mobile RFID service we implemented two types of functions as the phone middleware and they are running on the WIPI which is the standard wireless internet platform. To read RFID tags we implemented four sub-functions such as Reader Control, Tag Control, Buffer Control, and Filter Control and to resolve RFID codes and communicate local ODS server and contents server we developed five sub-functions such as Code Decoder, URN Converter, FQDN Converter, DNS Resolver and Connect ECS sub-functions by WIPI C API and WIPI HAL API. We tested our solutions in the commercial mobile networks and internet networks. The commercial cellular network is the SKT communication infrastructure. We prospect the mobile RFID service will be available in the near distant future after we finish to test it. In case of being implemented it, the rate of internet accessing with mobile RFID phones will be increased more threefold than now. REFERENCES
[1] Youn-Kwan Kim and Byung K. Yi, "3G Wireless and cdma2000 1x Evolution in Korea", IEEE Communications Magazine, April 2005, pp. 36-40. [2] KWISF WIPI 2.0 Specification, 2005. [3] ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 31/WG 4, Information technology automatic identification and data capture techniques-Radio frequency identification for item management-Part6:Parameters for air interface communications at 860MHz to 960MHz, ISO/IEC FDIS 18000-6:2003(E), ANSI, 2003. [4] MRF Forum, Mobile RFID Reader Control Protocol, Sept. 2005. [5] MRF Forum, WIPI C API Standard for Mobile RFID Reader, Sept. 2005. [6] MRF Forum, HAL API Standard for Mobile RFID Reader, Sept. 2005. [7] MRF Forum, WIPI Network APIs for Mobile RFID Services, Sept. 2005. [8] MRF Forum, Format of URN and FQDN for RFID Service, Sept. 2005. [9] MRF Forum, RFID ODS Architecture, Sept. 2005.

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