This thesis deals with RFID tags design. It comprises an overview of the RDIF technology while focusing upon the passive tags in UHF band. The CST Microwave studio software has been used for draft simulations. The resulting tags have been subjected to parameter measuring – the reflection coefficient, the minimum capacity needed to switch on the tag, the maximum reading distance. The influence of the proximity of metal objects and other materials has also been examined.

The master’s thesis is focused on the UHF RFID reader EXIN-1 signal processing. The first part describes the concept of the EXIN-1 front end, its basic testing and possible communication interfaces for reader control and for receiving and transmitting baseband signals. The second part of this work is aimed to a simple description of EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 UHF RFID Protocol, especially to used modulations and codings. In the last part, a block connection between the front end and an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller discovery board is designed. The microcontroller is used for generating of all required signals and also for receiving incoming signals and processing them for identification numbers of RFID cards (tags), which are in the reading range of the reader. A decoding algorithm is designed in MATLAB software and implemented to the selected microcontroller. Obtained identification data are displayed on an LCD display and also sent to a PC through a serial communication.

This diploma thesis contains description and realization of smart home system SmartFlat. In the first part of the thesis is analysis of issue and listing of most common variants of home systems with examples. Further into the thesis is the description of parts of system SmartFlat, hardware solution of main unit and there are also explained core software functions of the system. At the end of this thesis are commented results of debugging and testing with real peripheral devices. Conclusion at the end includes brief summary of diploma thesis and commentary of achieved results.

Automatic identification system is a prominent technology used in warehouses to give managers real time information of their products and assistance to warehouse employees in keeping an accurate inventory record. This kind of assistance is needed as an inaccurate inventory leads to profit loss due to misplacement or other mistakes. This project cooperated with an organization called Stora Enso specifically one of their forest nursery to find a solution to improve their inventory management system. Their current inventory system is a manual process which leads to mistakes occurring that affects the inventory accuracy. This thesis project evaluates automatic identification systems to observe if the technology is a possible solution and aims to answer the research question ”What are the significant impacts an automatic identification system has on an inventory management system?”. From the automatic identification evaluation one system is picked for further evaluation and due to its advantages radio frequency identification (RFID) is picked. To evaluate RFID in a warehouse setting a discrete-event simulation was created that simulates the forest nursery’s warehouse. The simulation is then used to evaluate the impact of different RFID implementations and their respective cost. The simulation results show that just a simple RFID implementation can improve inventory accuracy and remove some of the mistakes a manual system has with a relatively low direct cost. It also shows that a full RFID implementation that gives full visibility of a warehouse can almost remove inventory mistakes however the cost analysis shows that it requires a large investment.

Background: Lindbytvätten is a textile laundry company that today uses a barcode system for handling and tracking their garments. A part of the era of digitalisation has been that more and more textile laundry companies have implemented RFID systems at their facilities and in their articles. The CEO of Lindbytvätten is aware of this development but has never had the various advantages and disadvantages clearly presented to him, and how such a system could be implemented at their particular facility. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of implementing RFID as a system for labeling textiles in the textile laundry business. Furthermore, a decision model is developed that serves as a basis for Lindbytvätten in their considerations regarding RFID implementation. Methodology: This is a study with a qualitative research strategy. The study's research design is a case study where an individual company is in focus as a study object. A total of five respondents from four different companies participated in semi-structured interviews. Findings: The study found 14 advantages and four general disadvantages of RFID systems in the laundry industry. For a successful implementation of RFID, the researchers found critical success factors such as the ability to look beyond the internal business and understand customers' need for transparency and information sharing. In addition, the ability to work closely with the RFID supplier, and evaluation of older business- and IT-systems are two success factors. Lastly, five steps are presented that, based on Lindbytvätten's conditions, need to be taken when implementing a RFID-system at their facility. Contributions: This study has redefined general advantages and disadvantages of RFID to advantages and disadvantages for textile laundry. Furthermore, how critical success factors can be used for RFID in textile laundry have been discussed. Finally, as a decision support for Lindbytvätten, a step by step implementation approach is presented as well as aspects to consider for RFID implementation in textile laundry.

This project has studied if RFID technology can be used to measure the thickness of shotcrete applied to walls, such as in tunnel construction. An RFID tag can be placed on the wall before the shotcrete is applied. When the RFID reader contacts the tag through the shotcrete the loss in signal strength can be measured. The goal was to analyse how the loss in signal strength through the medium related to the thickness of the shotcrete.   Several tests with RFID tags cast into shotcrete has been performed. The results show that shotcrete is far too inhomogeneous for the measurements to convey meaningful information about the thickness. RFID is not recommended to be used for measuring shotcrete thickness.

This thesis describe utilization of contactless identification technology in the retail environment. Describe projecting of goods register system. Its goal is to introduce to utilized technologies and methods. The model of system is described in both hardware and sofware level. Aplication is demonstrating usability with ordinary operations like inventory check or statistics.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Currently, one of the main problems is that “time” is becoming more important, which will cause people to perform multiple tasks every day because of a hectic lifestyle, and with it the issue of lost articles. and poorly placed also increases significantly. Although there have been initiatives by some small companies to offer solutions characterized by the use of positioning technologies, these have not achieved the desired success. That is why, in this research, a scheme for the design, evaluation and implementation and marketing of a product with RFID technology with location and alert functions in the absence of proximity to solve the aforementioned problem has been proposed. The scheme and the product were validated through focus tools, surveys and scenario analysis. Likewise, the components of the business model of the scheme allow to reach the demand.

The emergence of Online Social Networking service which have introduced new paradigms of sharing have changed the way people interact with each other. They provide an easy and creative way to connect with people. As a result there are all kinds of people like working professionals, students, businessmen and many more who participate actively in such networks. Social Networking services are also turning out to be a medium for promoting small scale business, books, events etc. Apart from this there is substantial literature which suggests that social connections can be created, maintained and strengthened through computer mediated channels of communication with special importance being given to the role of internet in maintaining social relations. Thus the social networking services build digital connections among people who are socially connected. Though the users can leverage a host of applications/services like messaging, chatting, file sharing, discussions in groups, activities etc from these online social networking applications, there is no relevance given to the context/location of a user in the existing setup. With the technology moving from personal computers to hand held and intelligent devices with embedded technology and connectivity there is a rise in the development of pervasive computing applications which provide easy access to required information and applications through a class of ubiquitous equipment that operate when and where needed. This adds value to the existing infrastructure by providing services which are “anytime and anywhere”. Social networking applications hold a vast amount of personal data that can be used to improve the experience of users in the physical space. With the changing environment of users and also that of the people in their social network a system with a capability of examining the environment and providing highly personalized services to the user is highly desirable. Thus the work described in this document will project a social networking service that gives significance to the location of a user. In other words we will see how social networking services can migrate from networked personal computers to more ubiquitous hand held devices like PDA’s, Smart Phones which would involve the location information of the physical space in order to make social experiences more meaningful. The primary goals of this work are:- 1.To develop a social network service and deploy it to a select set of users and monitor the level of interaction. 2.Propose an architecture which could be used to implement location awareness in the social network service developed. 3.Develop a prototype and provide a “proof of concept” of the architecture and the system designed. 4.Survey privacy issues that are of great importance in such systems. This work will produce a framework and perception of designing a social networking service that is location aware. The resulting system will be deployed to a set of users’ in order to understand the usage pattern of such systems. This would give a good picture of how such systems would be perceived and compared to the existing online social network services that are insensitive to the change in location of its users.

We evaluate SQUASH, a new MAC for RFID, in hardware and software. A smaller hardware design for SQUASH is proposed which also reduces latency. Area and latency in hardware are reduced further with a new variant we call permuted SQUASH. We explore SQUASH on embedded microprocessors and propose a method to choose the optimal partial product ordering to reduce latency.