Ellipsis - RFID life-cycle management software

Ellipsis provides software intelligence to Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) tags. Utilizing the unique characteristics of the Assurance Ecosystem, mobile software agents can relocate in close proximity to RFID tagged items. Once associated with the tag, these agents locate nearby and provide local control, environmentally responsive policy, and permanent data capture & history.

Value Proposition

Because Ellipsis will be deployed on a GRID, it has dramatic cost and performance advantages over competitive RFID middleware software. Ellipsis also brings the capability to scale to dramatic size with sophisticated policy, security and data integrity and a low-cost integration and development model.

• Ellipsis gives clients significant advantages in the following areas:
• Survivability – System adapts to hardware failure
• Global Updates – Entire system is updated globally within minutes
• Policy – Simpler, more intuitive model
• Automation -- System inherently automates based on events rather than simple report generation
• Intra-organizational information flow
• Ease of integration to existing IT applications
• Deployment cost
• Tag/Sensor Agnosticism
  

Ellipsis Innovation

Ellipsis departs from prior approaches in several ways:

• Distributed nature of data and application system
• Forward deployment of logic systems and intelligence into reader environments
• Virtualization of tagged items as software objects
• Provision of local policy at point of read or storage of items
• Use of Services instead of Protocols

Since the RFID tag cannot remember things about its state, its history, and its goals it cannot understand its environment and decide how to react. Mission Assurance’s mobile software agents serve to provide this intelligence and data history. MA Corp. advances RFID software technology from ‘servers’ communicating with ‘protocols’ to mobile services in a GRID computing platform inter-linking dynamically with API’s.

Grid Deployment

Ellipsis automatically installs into a physically dispersed computing Grid. In all the places readers are deployed to capture tagged items, servers are deployed that host the Assurance Ecosystem. Into these industrial areas Ellipsis moves programs that capture and contain data and provide workflows and event-driven responses to local conditions.

Ellipsis deploys these services in the same local environment that the tagged items are read:

• data capture services,
• data communications services,
• work coordination services, and
• event-driven policy-based response services.

This allows local processing of data and rapid response to events. Remote transport of the data is lessened so that bandwidth savings can be realized. But the most import realization is speed in processing of data and matching of data to events that have local significance. Control logic for the industrial environments can be directly realized by these local Æ deployment or else proxies can link to existing control systems. This could include integration with assembly line automation.

Ellipsis is made of mobile remote agent systems that are forward-deployed into supply chain centers near readers. When an EID is read, a local Microservice is launched. It contains:

• the history of the tagged object,
• all the past locations,
• where it is to go,
• how it should respond to choices,
• what the system should do if the item is 'off track'.

This Microservice follows the item about as it moves through the supply chain. When the item is read in a new location, the Microservice moves to that new location. The RIFD tagged item is no longer just type, vendor, and serial number. It has a brain that follows it around. The brain is linked to the RFID tag.

RFID tag agents

Once associated with the tag, mobile agents locate nearby and provide local control, environmentally responsive policy, and permanent data capture & history. A number of advanced features are realized with this approach:

• The tagged item gets security as well as identity. It can provide features such as non-repudiation to location reads and actions taken on the items behalf.
• The tagged item gets flexibility as well as identity. The Microservice can be encoded with policy.
• The tagged item has a history, memory as well as identity.
• The local Microservice lives in a related population of other services. So the tagged item is not alone, it is participating in a physical and business system.
• The Microservice lives within the Assurance Ecosystem virtual object world. Every Microservice in the global ecology can be called to provide extended functionality.

By linking items with history and applying local policy, Ellipsis allows for extensive supply-chain automation and cost-savings.

Ellipsis-Devices [ Ð ] - Device Management for RFID Networks

The core architecture of the Ellipsis product originated as a project by the operator of the largest global Internet and data backbone to enable real-time management of every single router, switch and communications device in their network. An RFID reader is just another network-attached device. No other technology or product in the world can meet the functionality and capacity of the Ellipsis platform for reader management. For example, for the full overlapping facilities coverage of a major retailer, so that the position of all goods can be tracked at all times, it is estimated that thousands to hundreds of thousands of RFID readers will be deployed; this is a serious problem in inventory management, device configuration, and device management that needs a serious, telecom grade solution.

RFID Reader Management with Ð

The physical infrastructure that supports RFID tagging is a network. As such it needs the same management care and support applications as are standard for data networks. A typical RFID deployment will include:

• RFID readers
• Mobile tagged equipment such as carts
• Sensors for environmental monitoring and equipment status
• Computer servers
• Hand-held devices
• Network hubs, routers and switches
• Human identification and location services
• Authorized service personnel

Clearly this is not a management problem solved by simply adding a device driver for each separate type of reader as a supplement to the data collection code. What is needed is an integrated solution that understands reader functions and management. But also it should provide full management of the network environment that supports these readers. For example, when data collection at a reader stops, it should be clear whether it was a reader malfunction, a break in network connection, a server failure, or a routine maintenance drop by a service tech. Ellipsis-Devices will sort through all the network information, diagnose the source of the problem, select the proper repair process, dispatch repair techs, and monitor repair actions.

Ð provides a full management solution for RFID readers that supports:

• Installation and placement tuning of readers
• Automated and manual Test routines
• Pulling reader device inventory and device settings
• Configuring standard settings
• Maintaining these settings against tampering
• Ongoing monitoring of data collection with time sensitive high and low collection threshold alerts
• Alarming on reader status changes
• Alarming on reader damage or loss

Ellipsis-Devices provides management of the full RFID reader network. Ellipsis-Devices is deployed on the same communication base as Ellipsis. While Ellipsis agents collect and correlate data from RFID readers and sensors, Ellipsis-Devices agents configure and monitor the reader and sensor devices. Using the same software and server base allows for cost efficiencies, but more importantly, provides unparalleled efficiency in the correlation of data reads and device status and a cleaner approach to maintaining and repairing the whole system. Ellipsis-Devices and Æ provide further management of the application and server framework that supports these RFID devices.

Importantly, securing RFID deployments means more than securing the data of tag reads. Every aspect of the RFID network must be secured and monitored. This includes the readers, the network, the servers, and the applications for data collection and automation. Just as these need to be monitored for malfunction, so they need to be secured against intrusion and monitored on an ongoing basis. Ellipsis-Devices and Æ (deployed in conjunction with compatible, state-of-the art infrastructure management applications) provides for a fully secure infrastructure proofed against tampering and responsively self-healing when exposed to accident or sabotage.

Advanced features of Ellipsis-Devices facilitate the effortless continued management of a full RFID deployment:

• Adding fresh software for any new reader device takes only a short time
• Users can buy and manage any device wanted, even bleeding edge technology, allowing heterogeneous reader/sensor deployments
• All readers are discovered and their settings saved
• Configuring a new reader installation is automatic – plug and work
• Ellipsis-Devices detects changes to reader parameter settings and automatically reverts to the approved configuration – unless the change was authorized or the Command excluded from protection.
• Ellipsis-Devices responds in the proper context of time, place and businesses goals and as these vary the policy response varies
• Ellipsis-Devices intercepts alarms and often fixes problems before they are even noticed, while keeping administrators informed of all conditions and changes
• Any authorized staff could subscribe to whatever event was of interest to them and have it delivered to whichever network appliance they use to connect to the network.
• All the network equipment, the equipment parts and the settings will be found and saved in inventory
• One command can start a new reader network up from scratch, deploying the data collection, automation, reader and application management applications and configuring all the RFID equipment.