APPLICATION OF RFID BASED MATERIAL TRACKING BY AUTOMATIC SELF ASSIGNING OF PHYSICAL LOCATION OF THE TAGS IN CLOSED STORES FOR EASY TRACEABILITY OF MATERIALS

ABSTRACT Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is notably recognized as an evolving and widely used technology since last few years. RFID had been in use many areas like inventory tracking, asset management and material handling etc.in both closed and semi closed stores and also in open yard applications. Organizations all over the world are adapting this technology to maintain optimum inventory and also to facilitate easy tracking/locating of assets in shorter time with less human effort and involvement. Owing to technology related to RFID, it is susceptible and will not yield desirable results particularly in metallic environment. However, the recent developments and few field trial deployments have proved it to be working more consistently even in metallic environment by the use of active and semi-active RFID tags. Different methods of reading tags using fixed and handheld readers are being adapted as per the design configuration of the RFID system. The replacement of tags/material, relocation or un-authorized shifting of tagged material within the store is yet another problem which needs to be addressed scientifically i.e. at any point of time the user must be able to trace the required tagged material within short time and with minimum effort. A novel idea is presented in this paper which uses the important feature called Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) value available in the typical RFID based inventory tracking system.