The development of a Wireless Mobile RFID Reader system for real-time tracking based on embedded architecture

The aims of the study is to develop a system that able to overcome the limitations of keeping track inventories on the manufacturing plant. The proposed system is named Wireless Mobile RFID Reader (WiBRED) in order to improve the accuracy and traceability of materials in the industrial warehouse management process. This novel system was developed based on the Waterfall model involving the integration of active and passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and IOIO is a board specially designed to work with Android 1.5 and later device to support wireless communication over a smart phone running on Android operating system. This system was implemented in a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) environment in which its performance was assessed in terms of maximum read range for indoor environment, multi tags communication efficiency, power consumption, and tag collection time. The findings of the assessment showed that maximum read range reach up to 3.5meter for passive wireless communication and 74meter for active wireless communication. Multi tags communication efficiency resulted more than 75% of data received. The duration of tags collection time for 25 tags is 192.5millisecond and the power consumption is 96.611milliampere. Conclusion, WiBRED is capable in improving the monitoring of warehouse management and control the material flow in the manufacturing industry when combining passive RFID and active RFID connected to Android smart phone and can perform in WMN platform. The implications of the findings suggest that this system can be used to improve existing practice of material flow monitoring of manufacturing processes through greater flexibility and mobility in eliminating errors and non-productive labor and delays caused by repetitive re-keying production data.