2019 1st International Conference on Advances in Information Technology

IoT based Smart Attendance Monitoring System

using RFID
Unnati Koppikar[1], Shobha Hiremath[2], Akshata Shiralkar[3] , Akshata Rajoor[4] , V. P. Baligar [5]
1
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
4
[email protected], [email protected]
School of Computer Science and Engineering
KLE Technological University, Hubli

Abstract— Most of the institutional authorities are communicate [2]. For demonstrating the results, the system is
troubled with the cumbersome method of maintaining built using RFID card reader module of the model RC522
manual attendance of their employees. The manual RFID card reader and RFID cards/tags [3].
process of signing on a paper is prolonged and insecure.
An efficient attendance monitoring system needs to be The RFID system consists of RFID tag (or card) and RFID
enforced at such places. Radio Frequency Identification reader. The tag (or card) has a unique ID which is initially
(RFID) based attendance system provides us with a stored in the database before assigning it to the user. The user
solution that caters to issues like proxy attendance. This has to place the tag at a specific distance from the RFID reader
paper describes the design of an RFID based attendance so as to log the attendance. The tag consists of a microchip
monitoring system which uniquely identifies each that helps to store unique sequence number that is useful in
employee/student based on their RFID tag which is identifying objects. The microchip includes micro circuitry
attached to their ID card. This makes the mechanism of and an embedded silicon chip. The tag has a rewritable and
recording the attendance effortless, quicker and protected permanent memory which can be repeatedly programmed by
as compared to conventional method. This system is multiple times.
designed to be used at different educational institutions,
corporate offices, government offices etc. The proposed The RFID reader is the most fundamental part of the RFID
system consist of both hardware and software components system. The RFID reader used in detection has a maximum
based on IoT Technology. The hardware component range of around 5cm above the reader and operates at
consists of RC522 RFID card reader and RFID tags/cards. frequency of 125 kHz and 12V power supply. RFID tag (or
The software component consists of the Web-based GUI card) is used to exchange data with the RFID reader using the
for viewing the employee’s or student’s attendance, which radio waves where the tag is made up of the antenna which
is hosted on a web server and which stores the data in a receives the radio waves and the other component is an
database server. The employees or students just need to integrated circuit which is mainly to process and store the
place their RFID card or tag on the reader and their data. It reads the raw data from the tag and transmits it to the
attendance will be recorded for the day. Also, the middle-ware for processing. Tags at varying frequencies are
attendance recorded will be more accurate as the system is interrogated by the reader. The reader is further connected to
synced with a real-time clock. the computer for processing the data this can be done via a
USB connector or any wireless connection. This type of
simple system where scanning of the tag towards the reader
Index Terms—RFID, IoT, RC522, Attendance makes the work quite easier and improves the rate of error.
Monitoring. Also, the long procedure of attendance is cut short to a single
move/step.

I. INTRODUCTION The smart attendance management system removes the

traditional way of registering the attendance [4]. It also
Attendance plays a very important role in any organization.
provides a secure, error-free method of attendance
Attendance in many organizations, college and schools are
management. The administrators can be at ease by employing
paper-based. When paper-based attendance is considered, the
such a smart attendance system. The system is best suited for
chances of error are high. Using technology this issue can be
managing the attendance of employees. It can also be used to
solved and the papers can be avoided in this process. There are
record attendance for students at their hostels.
many technologies that support to solve this issue. But best
among them is RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) [1] as
the names suggest it uses the radio waves to identify and track
the object or individual. The communication with respect to
RFID is wireless using an electromagnetic and electrostatic
coupling, where a radio frequency of spectrum is used to
978-1-7281-3241-9/19/$31.00 © 2019 IEEE 193
 2019 1st International Conference on Advances in Information Technology

II. MOTIVATION H. K. Nguyen, et al., has proposed their work in the paper
The traditional way for marking and maintaining attendance titled "RFID-based attendance management system" [8]. The
has several drawbacks such as it’s difficult to maintain authors have developed an automated attendance management
manual records, proxy attendance may be marked etc. system that can be put into use at any gatherings such as
Tracking and tracing attendance becomes harder. The IoT conferences, exhibitions, training courses, etc. and can be
technology based attendance system such as sensors; scaled from small to large venues depending on the need. The
biometric based attendance system reduced human system is developed using RFID based on the mobile
involvement and errors. Every organization whether it is an communication and IT technologies. The system collects
educational institution or any organization has to maintain a records and processes data on participants of any conference
proper attendance of students, employees for effective or events. The system is designed to generate real-time
functioning of the organization. By designing a user-friendly consolidated reports on attendance, the number of attendees of
IoT based attendance management system, the the event and a record about the participants during the event.
employees/students can record their attendance with ease. This can be done for a specific distance from the event, and
This would improve the accuracy of attendance records and during an extended period of time. MRF24WB0MA Module is
also saves the valuable time of the students and employees. used for the development.

III. RELATED WORK Van-Dung Hoang, et al., has proposed their work titled “A
solution based on combination of RFID tags and facial
Smart Attendance Management is a solution to one of the recognition for monitoring systems” [9]. The authors have
most challenging and long standing problems in management contributed to present a solution based on combination of
of employee or student’s attendance. For IoT based Smart facial recognition and RFID (radio frequency identification)
Attendance Management, there are several attempts made by tags for the office’s surveillance monitoring system (SMS).
many researchers in this direction. The SMS is built based on two main techniques to building
smart systems which consist of face recognition technology
A. Kassem, et al., has proposed their work titled “An RFID and RFID tag recognition which will enable the admin to
Attendance and Monitoring System for University monitor employee attendance when they are enter or leave the
Applications” [5]. The authors have proposed a system office. The authors have used the deep neural network for
basically focuses on the factors such as reliability, time saving employing the face recognition module. The system is
and easy control. A prototype is defined using RFID system connected to the SQL Server database at the backend to store
where the reader and tag are considered. Here the attempt is and retrieve employee's information that will help in
made to modify the RFID so as to setup the complete monitoring and managing the employee's attendance. They
application on a large scale. The application has three modules have used MFRC522 as the RFID card Reader. The face
Student, Faculty and Administrator. The implementation is recognition accuracy was calculated to be 95.22%
only applicable for a small scale setup.
Mahesh Sutar, et al., has proposed their work titled “Smart
Sumita Nainan, et al., has proposed their work titled “RFID Attendance System Using RFID In IOT” [10]. The authors have
Technology Based Attendance Management System” [6] .In the thrown light to the issue of monitoring and recording
paper the author describes the distinctive components of RFID attendance manually. An effort is made to solve regular
technology and highlights the core competencies such as lecture attendance monitoring problem by using the RFID
scalability and security. A deep study towards the feasibility technology. They have included SMS feature which will
and practicality of RFID technology is carried out. The intimate the parents if the student has attended the classes for
outcomes are identified as the key benefits of RFID the day. An SMS alert is sent to the parent incase the student
technology where the main focus is to improve the efficiency is absent for the day. This saves the time from recording the
at lower cost. attendance manually and also prevents the students from
bunking the classes. The system is implemented using RFID
T.S. Lim, et al., has proposed their work titled “RFID Based card readers.
Attendance System” [7]. The authors through this paper
attempts to focus on the issue of student irregular attendance. Norakmar Arbain, et al., have proposed their work titled
The proposed system tends to implemented in schools, “LAS: Web-based Laboratory Attendance System by
colleges and universities. The system used RFID system to integrating RFID-ARDUINO Technology” [11]. The authors
complete the system which uses a real time clock which helps have discussed about the issues faced while managing
to gain accurate results. The proposed system is connected to student’s attendance in laboratories session especially when
the computer using RS232 (USB) to store the data into the the sessions are conducted in parallel. As this process is time
database. The data is viewed using software called consuming the authors has proposed a web based RFID-
HyperTerminal. The system tends to be vital and customer ARDUINO system which also helps them to manage student's
oriented, with physical advantages as light weight, compact experiment marks. The designed website caters to
design and portable. administrator, staff and student's needs. The system allows the
staff to monitor attendance and to enter marks while the
students have the facility to view these details.

978-1-7281-3241-9/19/$31.00 © 2019 IEEE 194

 2019 1st International Conference on Advances in Information Technology

Md. Sajid Akbar, et al., have proposed their work titled

“Face Recognition and RFID Verified Attendance System”
[12]
, The authors have proposed a system which incorporates
student's attendance monitoring system with face recognition
along with RFID card reader. This system keeps track of all
the registered students and registers their attendance as the
student enters or leaves the class room by recognizing each
individual student's face and simultaneously verifying by the
RFID. Thus they have been successful in eliminating the
manual effort.

IV. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

A. Block Design

Fig 4.1: System’s Block Design

To build a Smart IoT based Attendance Management

System there is a need to integrate different hardware
components such as RFID Card Reader with the Arduino
UNO which in turn needs to be connected with the Computer
through which data communication and data handling takes
place. The LED lights are used to signal the users of the Fig 4.2: Process Flow Diagram
Success or Failure Scenarios when their card is made to sense
against the card reader. RFID Tags or RFID Cards are used to The user must be registered in the system for the Smart
read the user’s data. These tags may contain an RFID number Attendance Monitoring system to identify the user. The
which is read and recorded by the system. The RFID tags or user’s information may be stored in the RFID card or
card can contain user’s information such as student-id or tag. Once the user swipes the card against the RFID card
employee-id, user name, department etc. Thus the Smart reader, The Card reader senses the RFID card/tag
Attendance Management System is build by basic blocks as number stored on it. This card number is searched in the
shown in the Fig 4.1 which comprises of both the software and database, if the user is found the user’s login time is
the hardware component. noted and a green LED light glows to indicate the user’s
login time is recorded by the system. If the user was not
B. Process Flow authenticated, i.e. the user’s information is not stored in
the local database the user is not authenticated by the
The Fig 4.2 describes the flow of the logging in the
system and hence is not authorized and this is indicated
attendance through the system that is built using RFID
when a red LED light glows.
technology.
Only if the user has a valid login time recorded against
the user’s RFID number the user log out time can be
recorded once the user leaves the organization and
swipes the card again. Once again a green LED light
glows to indicate the user’s logout time is recorded by
the system.

978-1-7281-3241-9/19/$31.00 © 2019 IEEE 195

 2019 1st International Conference on Advances in Information Technology

C. Circuit Diagram
To begin with implementation, Arduino UNO is
connected to MFRC522. Once the connection is set up,
the library for The RFID module is downloaded and
configured to the Arduino UNO.

Following is the Pin Configuration for the

Implementation Setup.

Fig 4.4: User Interface for the IoT System

Fig 4.3: Circuit Diagram Connection

D. Working Principle of RFID Module

Radio-frequency identification module (RFID) contains
electromagnetic fields to identify and track card attached to Fig 4.5: User Interface to View Attendance Logged
objects. RFID works on a principle called Automatic
Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) technology. The
card contains electronically stored information which is
read by a nearby RFID reader's interrogating radio waves.
There are two types of tags available which are Active tag
and Passive tag. The Active tags have a power source (such
as a battery) and capable to operate at hundreds of meters
while the passive tags have no battery and it draws it from
the reader itself. When a RFID tag placed in the proximity
of the RFID reader then the information is read by the
reader. The information read by the reader through the
Arduino module is further processed to fetch the desired
information.
E. Graphical User Interface for Attendance Monitoring
The system is designed for the Administrator of any Fig 4.6: User Interface to Add Student Details
organization to monitor the presence of students or
employees of their organization. By deploying such a web The student’s can register themselves through the User
application on servers or cloud, the administrators can Interface provided. The students can scan the RFID card to
access this data from anywhere and at any time. This makes know the RFID card number, along with the card details
our IoT system more user-friendly and convenient to use. student details such as Name, University Seat Number etc can
be recorded as shown in Fig 4.6. Further when the student’s
Following are screenshots of the screens designed for the log their attendance daily by flashing their RFID cards in front
user interface of the Smart Attendance Monitoring System. of the card reading module. The attendance gets recorded
which can be fetched by the Administrator to view the details
of time when the student has entered the institution as shown
in Fig 4.5. Also there is a facility provided for the Admin to
notify the student’s parents who reach late or remain absent
for the day. There was a provision to add the employee details

978-1-7281-3241-9/19/$31.00 © 2019 IEEE 196

 2019 1st International Conference on Advances in Information Technology

and monitor them.

[3] A. Digital and R. Technology, “Classic RFID module products,”
V. RESULTS no.April, 2008.
The experimental results show that, the proposed system
designed for attendance management, has provided [4] D. Mane, “Importance and Analysis of RFID in Attendance
significant results in managing attendance through RFID System,” International Journal of Emerging Science and Engineering
system, it has revolutionized the method of registering the (IJESE) no. 9, pp. 90–92, 2013.
attendance. The web GUI provided gives better clarity of
the attendance registered and also helps in generating [5] A. Kassem, M.Hamad, Z. Chalhoub, and S. EI Dahdaah, “An
reports as and when needed. The striking feature of the RFID Attendance and Monitoring System for University
Applications”, 17th IEEE International Conference on Electronics,
smart IoT based attendance monitoring system is that, the
Circuits and Systems-2010
administrator can access this data, anytime and anywhere.
This helps the administrator to have a control over the [6] Sumita Nainan, Romin Parekh, Tanvi Shah, “RFID Technology
attendance management without the need of being Based Attendance ManagementSystem”, IJCSI International Journal
physically present at the location. of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 10 -January 2013
The proposed system is tested with different RFID cards
and RFID tags and is successful in recognizing the RFID [7] T.S. Lim, S.C. Sim and M.M. Mansor, “RFID Based Attendance
cards that are registered. The system is tested for all the System”, IEEE Symposium on Industrial Electronics and
conditions with two RFID numbers. Following test cases Applications (ISIEA 2009), October 4-6, 2009, Kuala Lumpur,
Malay-2009
were subjected to the system and the results obtained were
noted. [8] H. K. Nguyen, M. T. Chew, “RFID-Based Attendance
Management System”, 2nd Workshop on Recent Trends in
Table 4.1: Summary of Testing Telecommunications Research (RTTR)-2017
# Test Case Expected Result
[9] Van-Dung Hoang ,Van-Dat Dang , Tien-Thanh Nguyen, Diem-
Description Outcome Phuc Tran, “A solution based on Combination of RFID tags and
1 Tag1-Registered Tag 1- Pass PASS facial recognition for monitoring systems”, 5th NAFOSTED
Tag2- Not Registered Tag 2 - Fail Conference on Information and Computer Science (NICS) – 2018
2 Tag1- Not Registered Tag 1- Fail PASS
Tag2- Registered Tag 2 - Pass [10] Mahesh Sutar, Mahesh Patil, Sachin Waghmare, “Smart
3 Tag1-Registered Tag 1- Pass PASS Attendance System Using RFID In IOT”, International Journal of
Tag2- Registered Tag 2 - Pass Advanced Research in Computer Engineering & Technology
(IJARCET) Volume 5, Issue 4-April 2016
4 Tag1- Not Registered Tag 1- Fail PASS
Tag2- Not Registered Tag 2 - Fail [11] Norakmar Arbain, Noor Firdaus Nordin, Naimah Mat Isa,
Shuria Saaidin, “LAS: Web-based Laboratory Attendance System by
integrating RFID-ARDUINO Technology”, 2nd International
VI. CONCLUSION Conference on Electrical, Electronics and System Engineering
(ICEESE), 2014
Through the proposed IoT based smart attendance system
using RFID the existing manual system of registering the [12] Md. Sajid Akbar, Pronob Sarker, Ahmad Tamim Mansoor, Abu
attendance can be transformed into an efficient and error-free Musa Al Ashray, Jia Uddin, “Face Recognition and RFID Verified
attendance management system. By employing this system Attendance System”, 2018 International Conference on Computing,
information can be conveyed without a hitch. The proposed Electronics & Communications Engineering (iCCECE), 2018
system will be of great help in schools, colleges and any
organizations to monitor their students or employees.
Although there are different methods of managing the
student’s or employee’s attendance, the proposed system is
easy to handle and very convenient for any organization. The
proposed system is time-saving, user-friendly and reliable to
use.

REFERENCES
[1] K. Domdouzis, B. Kumar, and C. Anumba, “Radio-Frequency
Identification (RFID) applications: A brief introduction,”
ScienceDirect: Adv. Eng. Informatics, vol. 21, pp. 350–355,

[2] D. Dressen, “Considerations for RFID technology selection,”

Atmel Appl. J., pp. 45–47, 2004.

978-1-7281-3241-9/19/$31.00 © 2019 IEEE 197