Improvement of RFID tag detection using smart antenna for tag based school monitoring system

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has attracted much attention due to its variety of applications in different fields e.g. military, sports, security, airline, inventory control, object tracking etc. Comparing to other tracking and detecting system such as barcode or smart card systems, RFID is faster and efficient. In this paper we present an efficient method of RFID tag detection for monitoring school going kids, by implementing smart antenna technology along with providing the updates to their parents. While this is an effective approach for the security and management of school going kids, we have to consider the coverage area and efficient tag detection issues. One important problem in RFID systems is to optimize the power allocation to the tag with respect to their distance from the reader which results in efficient tag detection and distance coverage. In this paper, we proposed an efficient and improved approach to fulfill these requirements for efficient tag detection. Results from mathematical analysis and extensive simulation demonstrate that our scheme shows a significant improvement over the traditional approaches of tag detection and power allocation techniques.

I. Introduction

Our world today revolves around the mercy of internet, smart phones and advanced technologies that has lifted the wall of oblivion and blessed us with 24 7 updates on what is going on around us. In such circumstances, it is obvious that today's parents would like to be aware of their child's whereabouts, especially when they are at their school. Our proposed system is based on keeping this need in mind. It focuses on the security systems implied in schools, specially kindergarten and primary classes to ensure school going kids are safe and sound at the school premises and also helps parents and teachers monitor their kids overall performance at class. We have decided to use RFID as the tracking technology as this field is not much explored and especially not in school level in Bangladesh. RFID is used in supply chain, military, store checkouts, hospitals, inventory management and many other tracking sectors. RFID is comparatively less expensive, easy to maintain, easy to use. Therefore at school levels, RFID monitoring facilities can prove to be hugely convenient and affordable. Our on-going proposal focuses on not only the security of kids through RFID tracking but also feeding the updates of the necessary information to the parents. This also helps build interactions between school faculty and parents on their joined concerns of the student's welfare. In this paper, we have focused on increasing the coverage area of the tag, efficient power allocation and distribution to the tag, by using Smart antenna, which has shown that using Smart antenna can improve performance of the tag detection as well as the system.