Universal Physical Access Control System

With the recent rapid increase in the number of physical facilities and structures that need to be protected by restricting physical access to them, there has been an explosion in the number and type of physical access control systems being deployed to protect them. However, these systems are quite different from each other and there is no common standard that provides for interoperability between the various systems. The number and types of access devices being employed has grown steadily, but the systems in which they are being used are physically and technologically incompatible with each other. Consequently, there is renewed interest within the research community in developing a common universal system providing physical resource access protection regardless of the type of physical resource and where it is located. In this article we propose the Universal Physical Access Control System (UPACS) which provides a universal framework for controlling access to physical resources. It provides for the use of a wide variety of access devices and allows for both onsite and remote access. We show how it can be used to control access to any type of resource, including homes, vehicles and public infrastructure such as street lights and traffic lights and industrial infrastructure such as power plants. We also show how it can be implemented regardless of the location of the owner of the physical resource and the location of the resource relative to its users.