Towards collective hyperlocal contextual awareness among heterogeneous RFID systems

Until recently, cases of independently operated radio frequency identification (RFID) deployments occupying a common space could be considered rare. However, the recent emergence of the RAIN Alliance and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is resulting in the proliferation of fixed and mobile infrastructure for the radio-identification of both things and people through standardised passive and active RFID technologies, respectively. Consequently, today, there are everyday situations where independently operated RFID systems are likely to co-exist, both ephemerally and indefinitely. In this paper, we present a mechanism for mutual discovery and the subsequent exchange of structured data among such colocated, and often heterogeneous, systems. The resulting machine-readable real-time representation of the real-world on a human scale is what we call hyperlocal context, an open, standards-based language for the Internet of Things. We argue that hyperlocal context and the presented mechanisms foster efficient crowd-sensing which combines the complementary characteristics of both active and UHF passive RFID systems. The underlying framework has been successfully implemented in open source software with BLE supported and UHF passive RFID integration in progress. Collaboration among the scientific and industrial communities to advance standards for collective context will only become more critical as the proliferation of RFID infrastructure accelerates.