Extending the EPCIS with Building Automation Systems: A New Information System for the Internet of Things

Abstract

Electronic Product Code Information System (EPCIS) has been a well-known information system for tracking and monitoring physical objects' life-cycle using RFID technology. However, in the Internet of Things (IoT) context, physical objects are supposed to be equipped with computing and sensing capability. Thus, people are interested not only in objects' life-cycle but also their contextual data. This emerging issue poses a new functional requirement on the traditional EPCIS such that, objects' contextual data should also be managed along with their life-cycle. Meanwhile, one of the most important IoT application lays in Building Automation Systems where smart devices are connected and automated without human intervention. These devices usually generate a large volume of data in a daily basis and thus, designing a proper data warehousing for this use case becomes a challenge. This paper aims at adding a data capturing interface to the traditional EPCIS so that it can support objects' data storage and retrieval, thus seamlessly adds significant support for Building Automation Systems application. The extended system, which is called Smart Thing Information System (STIS), exploits the oBIX standard and CoAP protocol to capture the data send from the smart devices and provides an additional lightweight query interface also based on CoAP. The system's applicability has been verified through a practical global-wide test bed between Korea and Austria.