201O 2nd International Conforence on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

Mobile Ubiquitous Attendance Monitoring System using Wireless Sensor Networks

I-ChingHsu Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering

National Formosa University 64, Wenhua Rd., Huwei Township, Yunlin County 632, Taiwan

yiiching.shue@gmail.com, hsuic@nfu.edu.tw

Abstract-The rapid development of the wireless sensor

networks has led to various mobile devices to access diverse Web-based applications. Existing mobile ubiquitous computing environment is the technical complexity and the lack of usability of the services offered to developers. This study

addresses these issues developing a scalable wireless communication architecture for dealing with attendance monitoring applications in mobile ubiquitous computing. The wireless communication architecture is composed of ZigBee

Sensor Network, Mobile Transfer, Middleware Web Server, and Mobile Client. To demonstrate the feasibility of the infrastructure, a Mobile Ubiquitous Employee Attendance Monitoring System (MUEAMS) is implemented with ZigBee

devices to offer real time dynamic monitor for employee presence.

Keywords- Mobile Ubiquitous; ZigBee; Wireless Sensor Networks

I. INTRODUCTION

These days, the Internet has greatly changed our way of sharing resources and information. The ubiquitous computing [1] is recognized as the next generation of Internet developments. The main feature of ubiquitous computing is that they provide an environment with "disappeared computer", where people can interact with neighboring objects [2]. Ubiquitous computing can support a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information [3-5], such as users' personal information (e.g., user identity, user preference, user profile), the environment information (e.g., user's location, time, surrounding devices), the users' activity (e.g., current location, activity type, the sequence of activity). Lots of contextual information about users is collected through sensors embedded in the ubiquitous environment.

Automatic attendance monitoring is an import part of any attendance management information system, such as Employee Attendance Systems, Learning Management Systems, Course Management Systems, and Student Attendance Systems. This study presents a scalable architecture to integrate wireless sensor networks and mobile ubiquitous technologies for dealing with attendance monitoring application in mobile ubiquitous computing environments. Furthermore, the proposed architecture was intended to be able to accommodate for other possible

applications. We have investigated several wireless technologies of sensor networking for automatic attendance monitoring. There are some standard techniques, including ZigBee [6], Bluetooth, wireless LAN, etc. A short comparison of those technologies is described in Table 1.

ZigBee Bluetooth Wi-Fi

Operating Band(Hz) 2AG 2AG 2AG

/915M1868M

Battery life(day) More than 1-7 1-5

1000

Bandwidth(kb/s) 20-250 720 11000

Range(m) 70-300 10 100

Network node Over 64000 7 32

Table 1. Compansons of different wIreless communIcatIOn protocols

This paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly reviews some existing mobile ubiquitous computing applications. Section 3 describes a scalable wireless communication architecture. In Section 4, we implemented the MUEAMS to demonstrate the mobile ubiquitous computing application. Finally, summary and concluding remarks are included.

II. RELATED WORKS

Wireless sensor networks techniques [7-15] have been widely used in different domains, but still are limited to small scale environments due to the lack of a uniformly standard for integrating heterogeneous environments. A variety of wireless sensor networks have been developed for various application domains, such as mobile applications[8, 15] , context-aware applications [11, 14], monitoring applications[7, 8, 12, 13], and healthcare systems [9].

The Web 2.0 [16] technologies provide a medium for the sharing and exchange of resources. These resources, such as Web feed and Web API, allow web developers to take advantage of these resources to enrich their own applications or produce new integrated solutions by integrating resources. Many Internet companies have enabled easy access to the

978-1-4244-6370-11$26.00 © 2010 IEEE V4-533

20i 0 2nd international Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

web resources that they provide. Anyone can create a new integrated mobile ubiquitous application with these resources. When an application combines resources from different websites to produce a new web application it is called a Web 2.0 Mashup [17]. Social Web 2.0 technologies enables the development of mobile ubiquitous module easy to integrate the various Web standards to facilitate the sharing and exchange of ubiquitous resources including ubiquitous information and Ubiquitous services. It facilitates the massive ubiquitous resources to store up by the XML-based pattern in the Ubiquitous Web [18].

III. A SCALABLE WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

ARCHITECTURE FOR ATTENDANCE MONITORING

ApPLICATIONS

The main components of our proposed wireless communication architecture include: the ZigBee Sensor Network, Mobile Transfer, Middleware Web Server, and Mobile Client. The general architecture for attendance monitoring applications is depicted in Figure 1.

A. Zigbee Sensor Network Zigbee Sensor Network supports for low rate control

network with the advantages of low complex, low cost, and low consumption. The study argues that the classic attendance monitoring system can be improved in ZigBee trend by mobile ubiquitous computing. The ZigBee Sensor Network is composed of at least one ZigBee dongle and

88 Itablet Pc l InoteboOk l

multiple ZigBee tags. Each ZigBee tag has a unique ID ties to an entity for identification. The ZigBee dongle servers as a ZigBee tag reader as well as the attendance information transceiver.

B. Middleware Web Server Middleware Web Server is a Web server that provides

the function of dynamic attendance information transcoding and data repository. It uses XML-based documents and web services technologies to facilitate context-aware information reusability. This middleware comprises Transcoding Engine and Data Repository. The former offers a generalized solution to support the transcoding of heterogeneous information, while the latter corresponds to device profiles and attendance records.

C. Mobile Transfer Mobile Transfer serves as an attendance information

broker for accessing of the Zigbee Sensor Network. It consists of information collector and information transformer. The information collector receives the attendance monitoring information from Zigbee Sensor Network through Bluetooth communication. The information transformer listens to the consumer's request to acquire the attendance information form information collector, and then converts the attendance information into a XML-based document to response to consumer.

Transcoding

""' .. +-.....j Engine

Data Device

Repository Profile

Middlewa.·e 'Veb Server

Attendance

Database

Mobile Device Information

Transfonner

---- � ZigBee Sensor

Network ZigBee Illtemet (Web Services)

Information

Collector

............. � ........ "i�: --0'" '" "

Bluetooth .... ..... �

3.5G,Wi-Fi - .. > Mobile T.�1Dsfe.·

cf '0

Figure 1. The wireless attendance monitoring architecture

D. Mobile Device Mobile Device interacts with the Middleware Web

Server through wireless connections to retrieve the attendance information. Various mobile devices, including personal digital assistants (PDA), smart phone, tablet PC, and notebook, are increasingly becoming connected to the

Internet. The same attendance information needs to be rendered differently on different mobile devices. By considering the physical and performance constraints on a client device, such as screen size, memory size, and connection bandwidth, the attendance information rendering is automatically converting heterogeneous markup-based

V4-534

20i 0 2nd international Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

documents (in fonnats such as XHTML, RSS, WML ,and VoiceXML) into the desired XML-based fonnat, which can be understood by a specific mobile device.

IV. MOBILE UBIQUITOUS EMPLOYEE ATTENDANCE

MONITORING SYSTEM

This study developed a Mobile Ubiquitous Employee Attendance Monitoring System (MUEAMS) based on the wireless communication architecture to demonstrate how mobile ubiquitous technologies could enhance added value of classic attendance monitoring system. The dataflow­oriented architecture of MUEAMS is depicted in Figure 2. The devices relevant to MUEAMS are described in Table 2. In the MUEAMS, employee attendance records are collected through the IP-Link 3200, transferred and stored into the ASUS P320 and then provided to the ASUS TS300E5 through Internet. A sample client was built using Java Server Page (JSP) and AJAX to query the ASUS TS300E5, and display the employee attendance infonnation in real-time.

4. RSS

,..- ' . _.

4. XHT:tvIL

Device Description

IP-Link 3200 The IP-Link 3200 is a ZigBee dongle (ZigBee that supports both the new ZigBee dongle) protocol and custom mesh

networking solutions. The IP-Link 3200 can use Bluetooth to wireless communicate with Mobile Transfer.

IP-Link Tag The IP-Link Tag is a wireless (ZigBee Tag) location tracking tag based on ZigBee

network. Each IP-Link Tag has a unique ID ties to an employee for identification.

ASUS P320 It is a PDA that serves as a Mobile (Mobile Transfer for retrieving real time

Transfer) attendance infonnation from ZigBee Sensor Network.

ASUS It is a PC server that serves as a TS300E5 Middleware Web Server to provide (Middleware the function of dynamic employee Web Server) attendance infonnation generation

and transcoding. HP iPAQ 212 It is a PDA that displays employee (Mobile Client) attendance infonnation using RSS

reader. MSI Ul OOPlus It is a small notebook that displays (Mobile Client) employee attendance infonnation.

Table 2. Devices in the MUEAMS

.----------, Middlew:u-e

Web Senrel'

3.XML Data Device EmI)loyee

AU endance Database

Empk1yee: Ha·Yau Wang. Ihe ftrsl roll call pubO.ate: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09 01 00 GUT

-- GUID:IAI$.AlD013'wqOOl status: presence

HPiPAQ 212

MSI UlOOPlus

Mobile Client

time: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09 00 00 GUT

ZigBee Dongle 10 : IPLink32QO-123 Conlexl.aware Uiddleware: ASUS TS3(JOE5

...

ZigBee

Intemet

..... � -- � -'- �

E!!E=::3 ...... tc:=3

0

ASUS P320

Mobile Transfer

---- � Bluetooth ••..•..•• � 3.5G,Wi-Fi - .. >

\V eb Selvices

Repository Profile

ZigBee

SensOl' NetwOI'k ;

:.t, .

� � IF-Link Tag

1. � / �

�

� �...

IF-Link Tag

�:-----, k .... .... .... .... IF-Link Tag

IF-Link 3:200 .... ....

k IF-Link Tag

Figure 2. The architecture ofMUEAMS

V4-535

2010 2nd International Conforence on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

The following steps explain the message flow illustrated in Figure 2:

1. Each employee has an IP-Link Tag associated with a unique ID as the employee identification. IP-Link Tag sends employee attendance infonnation to the IP-Link 3200 through ZigBee network.

2. IP-Link 3200 receives the employee attendance infonnation and then sends them to ASUS P320 by Bluetooth wireless communication. The ASUS P320 parses the employee attendance infonnation to filter the available infonnation.

3. The ASUS P320 accomplishes the following tasks: 3.1 It parses the employee attendance infonnation to

filter the available infonnation. 3.2 It encodes the employee attendance infonnation to

an XML-based document, as shown in Figure. 3. 3.3 It sends the XML-based document to ASUS

TS300E. 4. The various devices, such as mobile PDA or

notebook, can send a request to ASUS TS300E5 with the employee ID to browse the employee attendance records. The XML-based attendance document can be converted to various XML-based documents, such as XHTML or RSS document (shown as Figure 4.), to display in mobile PDA (HP iPAQ 212) and notebook (MSI UI00Plus), respectively.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Utf-8" ?> <rss version="2.0" > <channel>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Utf-8" ?> <attendance id="20090806> <employee id="AID02123"> <name>Ha-Yau Wang<lname> </employee> <department id="MIS002"> <title>Computer Center<ltitle> <Manager>Dar-Wan Hsu<lteacher> <room>CMI-l 00-2W </room> </course> <record id="MIS:AID02123:wq:001 "> <rollcall>frrst<lrollcall> <status>presence<lstatus> <time>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:00:00 GMT<time> <sensor> IPLink3200-123<1sensor> <middleware> ASUS TS300E5</middleware> </record>

</attendance> Figure 3. Partial code of XML attendance

infonnation

<title>Mobile Ubiquitous Employee Attendance Monitoring System</title> <link>http://140.130.34.206I?source=rss<llink> <description>The attendance records of employee ID AID02123</description> <language>English</1anguage> <pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:05:02 GMT<lpubDate> <copyright>Copyright 1995 - 2010 China Times Inc.<lcopyrlght> <category>context</category> <generator>ASUS TS300E5</generator> <ttl> 1 O</ttl>

<item> <title>Employee: Ha-Yau Wang, the frrst roll call <ltitle> <link>http://140.130.34.206/2009Ctil200908060001.jsp<llink> <pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:01:00 GMT<lpubDate> <guid>MIS:AIDO 13 :wq:OO 1 <lguid> <subject>employee attendance record<lsubject> <description> <![CDATA[The frrst roll call -<br>status: <b>presence</b> <br>time: <b>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:00:00 GMT</b> <br>ZigBee Dongle ID : <b> IPLink3200-123</b> <br>Context-aware Middleware: <b> ASUS TS300E5</b> ]]><1 description> <litem>

<lrss> Figure 4. Partial code of RSS attendance infonnation

V4-536

2010 2nd International Conforence on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

To provide mobile ubiquitous computing services automatically for users, they need to use users' contextual information, such as users' personal information (e.g., user identity, user preference, user profile), the environment information (e.g., user's location, time, surrounding devices), the users' activity (e.g., current location, activity type, the sequence of activity). Lots of contextual information about users are collected through sensors embedded in the environment.

This study presents a scalable architecture to integrate wireless sensor networks and mobile technologies for dealing with attendance monitoring application in mobile ubiquitous computing environments. The wireless communication architecture is composed of ZigBee Sensor Network, Mobile Transfer, Middleware Web Server, and Mobile Client. The main advantage of this architecture is that it doesn't require costly equipment or deployment. It can be achieved in a short time and low cost. To demonstrate the feasibility of the architecture, a Mobile Ubiquitous Employee Attendance Monitoring System (MUEAMS) is implemented with ZigBee and Mobile devices to offer real time dynamic monitor for employee presence.

Context-awareness is a very important feature for mobile ubiquitous computing to enhance current attendance monitoring systems by fmding right context information and right context services in the right place at the right time. One future work is to investigate how to integrate Semantic Web [19-20] and Web 2.0 [16] technologies into context-aware information to facilitate the implementation of intelligent mobile ubiquitous applications.

REFERENCES

[1] Weiser, M., Some computer science issues in ubiquitous computing. CACM, 1993. 36(7).

[2] Weiser, M., The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, 1991. 265(3): p. 94-104.

[3] Dey, A.K. and G.D. Abowd, Toward a better understanding of context and context-awareness. 1999.

[4] Martin, S., et aI., A context-aware application based on ubiquitous location, in The 2nd International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies. 2008. p. 83-88.

[5] Schilit, B.N. and M.M. Theimer, Disseminating active map information to mobile hosts. IEEE Network, 1994. 8(5): p. 22-32.

[6] ZIGBEE SPECIFICATION [cited Aug. 10, 2009]; Available from: http://www.zigbee.orglProductslTechnicaiDocumentsDownload/tabid 1237IDefault.aspx.

[7] Li, Y., Z. Wang, and Y. Song, Wireless sensor network design for wildfire monitoring, in Proceedings of the World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation. 2006. p. 109-113.

[8] YU, C.-b., et aI., A study of mobile service monitoring system based on wireless sensor network. Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications, 2008. 15: p. 103-106.

[9] Rajasekaran, M.P., S. Radhakrishnan, and P. Subbaraj, Elderly patient monitoring system using a wireless sensor network. Telemedicine and e-Health,2009. 15(1): p. 73-79.

[10] Monowar, M.M., M.O. Rahman, and C.S. Hong, Multipath congestion control for heterogeneous traffic in wireless sensor network, in International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology. 2008. p. 1711-1715.

[11] Chen, Y.-Y., et aI., Development of a novel bidirectional control telecare system over a wireless sensor network and the internet, in Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference. 2008. p. 907-913.

[12] Jafer, E. and K. Arshak, The use of PEIPVDF pressure and temperature sensors in smart wireless sensor network system developed for environmental monitoring. Sensor Letters, 2008. 6(4): p. 477-489.

[13] Wu, Y., M. Lin, and I. Wassell, Wireless sensor network: Water distribution monitoring system, in Radio and Wireless Symposium. 2008. p. 775-778.

[14] Lee, Y.-D. and W.-Y. Chung, Wireless sensor network based wearable smart shirt for ubiquitous health and activity monitoring. Sensors and Actuators, 2009. 140(2): p. 390-395.

[15] Johansen, T.A., I. Jrstad, and D.v. Thanh, Identity Management in Mobile Ubiquitous Environments, in Internet Monitoring and Protection. 2008, IEEE Computer Society. p. 178-183

[16] O'Reilly, T. What Is Web 2.0. 2005. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tirn/news/2005/09/30/what­is-web-20.htrnl.

[17] Murugesan, S., Understanding Web 2.0. IEEE IT Professional" 2007. 9(4): p. 34-41.

[18] Sanchez-Loro, X., et aI., Ubiquitous web access: Collaborative optimization and dynamic content negotiation, in 2008 International Conference on Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering. 2008.

[19] Hsu, I.-C., SXRS: An XLink-based Recommender System using Semantic Web technologies Expert Systems with Applications, 2009. 36: p. 3795-3804.

[20] Hsu, I.-C., Y.K. Tzeng, and D.-C. Huang, OWL-L: An OWL-Based Language for Web Resources Links. Computer Standards & Interfaces, 2009. 31(4): p. 846-855.

V4-537