Embedded Design Exploration of EPCglobal Architecture

This paper addresses the embedded design issues of the EPCglobal Architecture aiming at providing RFID-based solutions. Some problems related to its porting on the embedded systems field have been analyzed. These problems concern the role of the operating system adopted by the embedded system, the SW architecture implementation (Single-Thread or Multi-Thread) to satisfy the EPCglobal Architecture constraints and the HS/SW partitioning alternatives. Moreover, the paper provides an embedded solution, called eEPC. The proposed design alternatives exploration allows to evaluate which eEPC implementation, running on different HW/SW platforms, better satisfies the multiple tag readings and processing architectural constraints. Its effectiveness has been evaluated on a real application where products information is automatically put in relation to user's medical data to retrieve information able to improve the quality of life.