advantages of the proposed system l

advantages of the proposed system lies in its scalability: distributing
the data in one or fewcentral database andmany local databases
permits the elimination of redundant or duplicate data and guarantees
speed, security, reliability and efficiency of the proposed
system. An additional feature of the system that adds to its novelty
is the encoded information stored on the rewritable RFID tag: in
cases of an animal being lost, essential information (more than the
owner’s address and contact information, e.g. ethology/behavior or
other) can be directly retrieved on the spot by an RFID reader.
It seems that it is still too early to determine if such solutions will
finally prevail or competing technologies, such as near field communication
which have already started to find theirway intomobile
devices, will jump into the game. In any case, the platform that has
been presented in this paper can be deployed, even if different identification
technologies are used, since the database and the mobile
device platforms will remain the same, with the substitution of the
corresponding medium access layer.
Finally, the enhancement of the platform with location tracing
information through the use of GPS modules (already inherently
available in some mobile devices) can provide the platform with
extended capability for animal tracing and the support for advanced
use case scenarios: muster roll of animals in a farm, or enhanced
vaccination scenarios with direct reporting about the time, place
and vaccinations from the veterinarian with direct communication
with a central database systemare amongthese. The research group
that has implemented the platform is investigating these scenarios
in a future enhancement.