RFID enabled traceability networks: A survey

The emergence of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology brings significant social and economic benefits. As a non line of sight technology, RFID provides an effective way to record movements of objects within a networked RFID system formed by a set of distributed and collaborating parties. A trail of such recorded movements is the foundation for enabling traceability applications. While traceability is a critical aspect of majority of RFID applications, realizing traceability for these applications brings many fundamental research and development issues. In this paper, we assess the requirements for developing traceability applications that use networked RFID technology at their core. We propose a set of criteria for analyzing and comparing the current existing techniques including system architectures and data models. We also outline some research opportunities in the design and development of traceability applications.