RFID technology is increasingly being used in modern production environments to autonomously control logistics or production processes or to perform maintenance-free measurements in hard-to-reach places or on moving parts, as well as to provide wireless transfer with no internal source of energy.

However, users usually face considerable implementation time and costs when integrating new RFID components into existing or yet to be established process environments. Because in some cases RFID components such as readers and identification and sensor transponders differ considerably according to manufacturer, frequency band used, protocol, or interface, they cannot be readily combined with each other. To change this, Fraunhofer IPMS has developed a middleware, known as the ROAD server. This is the first middleware of this type to implement the OPC-UA (Unified Architecture Open Platform Communication) AutoID-companion specification, a standard for manufacturer-independent communication in automation technology, which enables universal interoperability of industrial bus systems and protocols. “Our ROAD server works like an universal adapter,” explains Prof. Dirk Reichelt, Fraunhofer IPMS Team Leader. “It ensures that any readers and tags for various LF, HF, UHF and NFC frequency ranges are integrated via a standard interface in process systems and are able to communicate with each other. This is especially interesting for users who want to record various parameters such as temperature, humidity, light or pressure with sensor transponders.”

Development was especially focused on the convenient incorporation of modern sensor transponders. Designed for MS Windows platforms, the middleware recognizes the reader and transponder type and autonomously chooses a suitable controller, which allows the user to access the transponder as well as ID, memory, and measured values readouts over a standard interface.