Research report submitted to the School of Economic and Business Sciences, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, 2013. / In recent years, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology has transformed from being unknown to mainstream applications that help facilitate the managing of manufactured goods and materials. Its information storage capacity as well as its ability to transfer information through contactless means without line-of-sight translates to significant advantages to deliver various benefits for retailers and their clients in the retail settings. However, up until now RFID technology has gained very little momentum and the status of adoption particularly of retail organisations in South Africa is unknown. To fill this research gap, an exploratory study that draws on the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) framework was employed to provide a deeper understanding of South African retailers’ perceptions of RFID adoption. Five interviewees representing their respective organisations participated in the study. The findings suggested that the adoption level is very low and only one organisation from the sample used had done a pilot project. The results also indicated that cost, standardisation and government support influenced the adoption of the technology. Complexity and technology competence were not considered to have any influence in the adoption of the technology. Competitive pressure was not deemed influential if the technology was not embedded in the whole supply chain, a somewhat surprising result. There were no anticipated impacts on the employees if this technology was implemented. Methodological and practical implications are also discussed.

Mok, King Keung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-79). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.1 / Contents --- p.5 / List of Figures --- p.7 / List of Tables --- p.10 / Acknowledgments --- p.11 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.12 / Chapter 1.1. --- Low Power Design --- p.12 / Chapter 1.2. --- Power Consumption in Conventional CMOS Logic --- p.13 / Chapter 1.2.1. --- Dynamic Power --- p.13 / Chapter 1.2.2. --- Short-Circuit Power --- p.15 / Chapter 1.2.3. --- Leakage Power --- p.17 / Chapter 1.2.4. --- Static Power --- p.19 / Chapter 1.3. --- Smart Card / RFID --- p.21 / Chapter 1.3.1. --- Applications --- p.21 / Chapter 1.3.2. --- Operating Principle --- p.22 / Chapter 1.3.3. --- Conventional Architecture --- p.23 / Chapter 2. --- Adiabatic Logic --- p.25 / Chapter 2.1. --- Adiabatic Switching --- p.25 / Chapter 2.2. --- Energy Recovery --- p.27 / Chapter 2.3. --- Adiabatic Quasi-Static CMOS Logic --- p.29 / Chapter 2.3.1. --- Logic Structure --- p.29 / Chapter 2.3.2. --- Clocking Scheme --- p.31 / Chapter 2.3.3. --- Flip-flop --- p.33 / Chapter 2.3.4. --- Layout Techniques --- p.38 / Chapter 3. --- Adiabatic RFID --- p.41 / Chapter 3.1. --- System Architecture --- p.41 / Chapter 3.2. --- Circuit Design --- p.42 / Chapter 3.2.1. --- Voltage Limiter --- p.43 / Chapter 3.2.2. --- Substrate Bias Generation Circuit --- p.45 / Chapter 3.2.3. --- Ring Oscillator --- p.46 / Chapter 3.2.4. --- ROM and Control Logic --- p.48 / Chapter 3.2.5. --- Load Modulator --- p.52 / Chapter 3.2.6. --- Experimental Results --- p.53 / Chapter 4. --- Adiabatic Smart Card --- p.59 / Chapter 4.1. --- System Architecture --- p.59 / Chapter 4.2. --- Circuit Design --- p.61 / Chapter 4.2.1. --- ASK Demodulator --- p.61 / Chapter 4.2.2. --- Clock Recovery Circuit --- p.63 / Chapter 4.3. --- Experimental Results --- p.67 / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion --- p.74 / Chapter 6. --- Future Works --- p.76 / Reference --- p.77 / Appendix --- p.80

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-164).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Localization and motion control (navigation) are two major tasks for a successful mobile robot navigation. The motion controller determines the appropriate action for the robot’s actuator based on its current state in an operating environment. A robot recognizes its environment through some sensors and executes physical actions through actuation mechanisms. However, sensory information is noisy and hence actions generated based on this information may be non-deterministic. Therefore, a mobile robot provides actions to its actuators with a certain degree of uncertainty. Moreover, when no prior knowledge of the environment is available, the problem becomes even more difficult, as the robot has to build a map of its surroundings as it moves to determine the position. Skilled navigation of a differential drive mobile robot (DDMR) requires solving these tasks in conjunction, since they are inter-dependent. Having resolved these tasks, mobile robots can be employed in many contexts in indoor and outdoor environments such as delivering payloads in a dynamic environment, building safety, security, building measurement, research, and driving on highways. This dissertation exploits the use of the emerging Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology for the design and implementation of cost-effective and modular control techniques for navigating a mobile robot in an indoor environment. A successful realization of this process has been addressed with three separate navigation modules. The first module is devoted to the development of an indoor navigation system with a customized RFID reader. This navigation system is mainly pioneered by mounting a multiple antenna RFID reader on the robot and placing the RFID tags in three dimensional workspace, where the tags’ orthogonal position on the ground define the desired positions that the robot is supposed to reach. The robot generates control actions based on the information provided by the RFID reader for it to navigate those pre-defined points. On the contrary, the second and third navigation modules employ custom-made RFID tags (instead of the RFID reader) which are attached at different locations in the navigation environment (on the ceiling of an indoor office, or on posts, for instance). The robot’s controller generates appropriate control actions for it’s actuators based on the information provided by the RFID tags in order to reach target positions or to track pre-defined trajectory in the environment. All three navigation modules were shown to have the ability to guide a mobile robot in a highly reverberant environment with variant degrees of accuracy.

In this thesis, we propose the method to design tag antennas, which are suitable for radio frequency identification system. The fact that the tag antennas design comes with single layer printed circuit board can achieve cost down of the antennas. For the tag antennas, the aim is to design the RFID tag antenna operating in 860¡V960 MHz which are suitable for both the near- and far-field operations worldwide. The method we use to design tag antenna is the dual loop form with Bow-tie antenna, and we focus on the impedance conjugate matching between the RFID strap and antenna to increase impedance bandwidth and improve reading performance. We can adjust parameter to be suitable for different RFID strap in the design framework. The dual loop structure carries out power coupling efficiently in the near field and can allow the RFID strap to work even in the weak EM wave. According to the result of power coupling simulation, we analyze and discuss which factor will affect the reliability of the identification. Such reliability will help to build RFID system.

Since the inception of the backscatter-radio technology, this field has continually evolved. As a result, this technology is used for a multitude of applications like personnel identification, logistics and assets management and military purposes etc. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology works in several ISM-frequency bands. This work pertains to the design and development of an RF tag that uses 5.8 GHz ISM band for backscatter. This frequency band has many inherent advantages like higher gain antennas, smaller sized tags, increased immunity to conductive object losses, and larger RF bandwidth. The objective of this research is design and prototype development of an RF tag capable of sensing acceleration, angular motion, and shock experienced by an object on which it is installed. The sensed information is modulated onto an incident continuous wave (CW) and backscattered to the reader. Literature research suggested that such work has not been done previously using an RFID platform. The challenges include integration of the sensor, antenna and other electronics to efficiently backscatter the information to the receiver, designing a suitable planar antenna, realtime backscattering of the sensed information, and low power consumption. As a further step, it is required to design and integrate two antennas on RF tag to simultaneously backscatter the same information; and to measure and compare its effect with single antenna tag. The sensed impact/shock and rotational movement information from the inertial sensors (accelerometer and gyroscope) was backscattered instantly and displayed on the custom developed graphical user interface. The development of GUI was not part of this project and was developed by another lab member. RF Tags with single and dual antenna configurations were designed and tested. It was observed that by increasing the number of antennas higher read range can be achieved. Moreover, by doubling the antennas the radar cross-section for the tag was approximately doubled.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2003. / "MBA professional report"--Cover. Thesis advisor(s): Ira Lewis, Keebom Kang, Nicholas Dew. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-75). Also available online.

Logistics plays a more and more important role in manufacturing company to sharp competitive in today’s supply chain integration. As the end of logistics in manufacturer, container loading intellectualization has attracted more and more focuses. Harmonious coordination between planning and execution ground high performance of the container loading. Several challenges exist in business operations. Firstly, container loading planning is time-consuming. Several case-based constraints exist in the optimization defined by different customers and the Customs. Secondly, execution driven by container loading is inefficient. Operators may use unclear or unreadable paper-based guidance during execution which is inconvenient to handle. Besides, due to various situations, shipping documentations are complex. Afterwards Order-picking, a critical part in executions, is a costly activity. Thirdly, coordination during whole container loading process is another challenge. Information sharing between planning and execution is delayed and inaccurate. The whole procedure usually cannot be monitored by managers in a remote office. Problems cannot be addressed without timely provision of data. This research targets to establish a smart container loading platform based on real life practices and constraints. Unlike common warehouse operation, warehouse executions are driven by container loading. To overcome the challenges, an integrated solution is proposed with three main parts. The first one is to establish RFID-enabled real-time smart environment where device-level data is collected timely with bidirectional communications under Wi-Fi occasionally connected situation. Secondly, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is applied in rule-based computation and heterogeneous information sources integration. In rule-based computation, constraint is computed and wrapped as rule. It is a kind of service which is restored in service repository according to its properties. Under different cases, several rules are addressed and invoked in a specified sequence to realize different business logics. And the platform should communicate with heterogeneous sources within short time. Systems wrap application programming interfaces (API) as web services which can be invoked flexibly at any time. Data fetch process is divided into several threads which extract data concurrently. Thirdly, container loading optimal model is provided based on practical constraints. Based on various rules, shipments are clustered as groups before loading. To load containers more equally, heuristic algorithm is provided with reducing container capacity continuously until other constraints are violated or more shipment groups are separated. Four contributions have been made in this study. Firstly, a five-layer system architecture is proposed for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) applications especially in occasionally connected network environment, rule-based computations, and efficient data exchanges. Secondly, several practical constraints of loading planning are addressed and a heuristic algorithm is designed. Shipments can be equally loaded while satisfying most conflicted constraints. Thirdly, a solution for auto-ID enabled warehouse execution is provided. The solution is driven by container loading equipped with real-time information capturing and processing. Fourthly, a guidance can be refereed for real life implementations in SME. The guidance summarizes system customization procedures with reengineered resources. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

To survive and thrive in the customer-oriented global market, retail companies have to make persistent efforts to provide customers with satisfactory shopping experience enriched by leisure process, interaction for merchandise information and personalised assistance. In traditional retail stores, customers’ needs cannot be fully satisfied due to difficulties in locating target products, out-of-stocks, a lack of professional assistance for product selection, and long waiting for payments. The relative visibility and traceability of individual items provided by the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is helpful for enhancement of customer shopping experience (CSE). However, current RFID applications for retail business tend to be limited to inventory control and replenishment, with few implementations for CSE enhancement based on collection and analysis of real-time RFID data. To mitigate these limitations, this research project develops RFID applications for real-time collection and analysis of customer shopping behaviour (CSB) data in retail stores. Artificial intelligence (AI) is incorporated for data analysis to facilitate business decision-making and proactive individual marketing. Accordingly, an item-level RFID-based customer shopping experience enhancement (IRCSEE) system is developed to provide customers with leisure shopping process, interaction for merchandise information and personalised guidance for enhancement of CSE in apparel retail stores. The IRCSEE system incorporates RFID hardware devices installed in an apparel retail store to interrogate RFID-tagged apparel items to obtain data for subsequent sales processing and analysis. It is characterised with a programmable data format for unique identification of individual apparel items, together with a suite of software modules to control the RFID hardware devices at different locations of the apparel retail store for real-time collection of product information and CSB data. Moreover, an innovative fuzzy screening (FS) algorithm of AI techniques is developed to analyse the RFID-collected CSB data and the corresponding product information for generation of apparel collocation recommendations to provide customers with intelligent and personalised assistances in product selection. The algorithm considers not only the static fashion expertise, but also the dynamic customer preferences for collocation, such that the recommendations are more effective and adaptive for enhancement of CSE in the fast-changing apparel retail industry. The IRCSEE system is validated in an emulated RFID-based apparel retail store. Experimental results demonstrate that with appropriate RFID hardware settings, the proposed system is effective to help enhance CSE in apparel retail stores by providing customers with leisure shopping process, interaction for merchandise information and personalised apparel collocations. Furthermore, the approaches for collecting real-time CSB by RFID technology and analysing such data by AI techniques can be conveniently adapted for many other products to improve retail business management in general. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy