Title: Enhancing convenience and situation-aware intelligence of smart home services using passive RFID and intelligent controls

Authors: Hung-Yu Chien, Chin-Feng Lee, Shih-Bin Liu, Tzong-Chen Wu

Addresses: Department of Information Management, National Chi-Nan University, 470 University road, PuLi, NanTou, Taiwan. ' Department of Information Management, Chaoyang University of Technology, 168, Jifong East Road, Wufong, Taichung 41349, Taiwan. ' Department of Information Management, National Chi-Nan University, 470 University road, PuLi, NanTou, Taiwan. ' Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, #43, Sec.4, Keelung Rd., Taipei 106, Taiwan; Taiwan Information Security Center (TWISC), National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, #43, Sec.4, Keelung Rd., Taipei 106, Taiwan

Abstract: Smart home services have been quite popular for some time and many kinds of technologies can be applied to enhance smart home services. Conventionally, active radio frequency identification (RFID) has been widely used in smart home services to identify users, and there was less consideration for intelligence in these services. However, it is inconvenient and costly for users, as carrying active tags requires battery recharging, is costly and can be bulky. Distinct user preferences and complex situations call for more system intelligence. A new approach is to utilise passive RFID like (EPC Gen 2 and MIFARE) as these have several advantages. This includes no battery requirement, low cost, light-weight sizes, moderate storage, and a moderate reading range. In this paper, we design an intelligent smart home system that integrates passive RFID and a smart engine along with other technologies to enhance the cost-effectiveness, convenience, safety, comfort and intelligence of smart home services. Prototyping and field-testing demonstrate that the proper application of passive RFIDs (like Gen 2 and MIFARE) and intelligent controls into existing smart home services improves the services in several aspects.

Keywords: smart homes; Zigbee; radio frequency identification; passive RFID; authentication; safety; comfort; EPCglobal; convenience; situation-aware intelligence; intelligent control; smart home services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIPT.2010.035387

International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, 2010 Vol.5 No.3, pp.166 - 173

Published online: 28 Sep 2010 *

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