Service organization and discovery for facilitating RFID network manageability and usability via WinRFID middleware

A radio frequency identification (RFID) network is a heterogeneous environment in which various hardware devices (RFID readers, sensors, and computers etc) and software components co-exist. Achieving resource manageability and usability in an RFID network is a challenge because of the diversity and complexity of the resources within the network. Service organization and discovery is an effective way to manage resources in a network. However, current research efforts have not addressed the characteristics of RFID network and are mostly focusing on either hardware device or software components discovery. In this paper, we present a service discovery architecture extended from existing service discovery protocols. Service organization, service discovery, service description and exchange format are discussed.