Choosing the right RFID-based architectural pattern
Résumé
When designing the architecture of an RFID-based application, its system architect has to be aware of the different architectural pattern which are available: centralized, semi-distributed, distributed, and RFID-based Distributed Shared Memory (RFID-based DSM). Moreover she must know their respective qualities. If she does not pay attention to these architectures and their qualities, she may choose an architecture which does not match optimally the application requirements. In this chapter, we list different aspects of three architecture qualities which are influenced by RFID technology: functionality, scalability, and cost. Then we analyze each architecture according to these aspects. We give existing examples of each architecture. Finally we provide guidelines for choosing the right architectural pattern. Centralized architectural pattern is the best choice if application requires the best level for all aspects of functionality attribute. But this pattern does not fit if we cannot use a global network or if the number of simultaneous tag reads is important. If this pattern does not fit, we propose instructions to choose between semi-distributed architectural pattern, distributed pattern, RFID-based DSM, or mixing of distributed pattern and RFID-based DSM