An active product state tracking architecture in logistics sensor networks

Sensor technologies are being introduced as a means to collect the accurate and online information of products in logistics networks. Products with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags can guarantee timely product location visibility. Also, additional sensors can measure location dependent attributes such as temperature and humidity. Representative product centric approaches such as EPC Network and the Dialog system make it possible to secure the item level product information automatically and fast. However, they leave room for more advanced services, especially for active product state tracking service that monitors the locations and attributes of products in a timely manner and triggers exception handling when the constraints associated with the product states are violated. Using state transition model, temporal data model, and publish/subscribe model, this paper proposes an active product state tracking system architecture which is able to track products even when they are enclosed in a box, a pallet, or a container. A simulation based experiment is provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed system.