DEPCAS: An industrial approach to RFID middleware

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) middleware refers to software that connects RFID devices to enterprise information systems. In a generic definition, RFID middleware makes sense to RFID reads and allows employing auto identification like a main data source inside information, production or management systems. Several trends are proposed to solve RFID middleware: ad-hoc systems, open-source EPCGlobal standards implementation or proprietary RFID middleware. In this paper we present a different and alternative solution to this problem: DEPCAS(Data EPC Acquisition System). DEPCAS approach corresponds with new software architecture to solve RFID middleware and it is based on SCADA (Supervisory, Control and Data Acquisition) modern software architecture. The key ideas in this RFID middleware are to be configurable and customizable in every of the modules that take part of the software architecture. The paper includes a comparative analysis of DEPCAS and SCADA architectures to probe the adequacy of adapting a well-known and conventional solution valid for classical industrial applications to solve the recent challenges arising in the RFID environments. Implementation details of the current version of DEPCAS are also described in this work.