RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION (RFID)-BASED STUDENTS ATTENDANCE

MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

INTRODUCTION

The existing conventional attendance system requires students to manually sign the attendance

sheet every time they attend a class. As common as it seems, such system lacks automation, where

a number of problems may arise. This includes the time unnecessarily consumed by the students

to find and sign their name on the attendance sheet; some students may mistakenly or purposely

sign another student's name. Also the attendance sheet may get misplaced. Having a system that

can automatically capture student's attendance by flashing their student card at the RFID reader

can really save all the mentioned troubles. This is the main motive of our system and in addition

having an online system accessible anywhere and anytime can greatly help the lecturers to keep

track of their students' attendance. Looking at a bigger picture, deploying the system throughout

the academic faculty will benefit the academic management as students' attendance to classes is

one of the key factor in improving the quality of teaching and monitoring their students'

performance. Besides, this system provides valuable online facilities for easy record maintenance

offered not only to lecturers but also to related academic management staffs especially for the

purpose of students' progress monitoring

The emergence of electronic paradigm for learning compared to traditional method and

availability of almost all information on the information superhighway(Internet), nowadays have

caused students to be less motivated to come to the lecture rooms than ever before. Laziness on

the part of students, nonchalance to school work, extra social activities that have no importance in

aiding the objectives of the institution and a lot more, may prevent students from attending lectures.

Sequel to these, lecturers and administrators in most developing countries have had to come up

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with ways to ensure a healthy participation from students, and make sure that the student-lecturer

interactive relationship is kept intact. This in some cases have come in simple forms like roll calls,

while in more interesting cases, can be formats like surprise quizzes, extra credit in class, etc.

These strategies are however time consuming, stressful and laborious because the valuable lecture

time that could otherwise been used for lectures is dedicated to student attendance taking and

sometimes not accurate. In addition to all these challenges, the attendances are recorded manually

by the tutor and therefore are prone to personal errors. There arises a need for a more efficient and

effective method of solving this problem. A technology that can solve this problem and even do

more is the RFID technology. RFID is an automated identification and data collection technology,

that ensures more accurate and timely data entry. RFID is not actually a new technology; it only

quickly gained more attention recently because of its current low cost and advances in other

computing fields that open up more application areas. RFID combines radio frequency and

microchip technologies to create a smart system that can be used to identify, monitor, secure and

do object inventory. At their simplest, RFID systems use tiny chips called ―tags that contain and

transmit some piece of identifying information to an RFID reader, a device that in turn can

interface with computers . The ability of RFID systems to deliver precise and accurate data about

tagged items will improve efficiency and bring other benefits to business community and

consumers alike in the not distant future. The application of RFID Technology to student course

attendance monitoring problem especially in developing countries in our proposition will lead to

elimination or reduction of the quality time wasted during manual collection of attendance,

creation of a student database management system that is not prone to errors or being manipulated

by anyone and above all aids in better management of classroom statistics for allocation of

attendance scores in the final grading of student performance in a particular course.

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In this project, RFID system used to record student attendance automatically. This project will

used student ID card as RFID tag and a RFID reader. This RFID system will be integrate with

software. This method is more effective to prevent problem in process getting attendance

manually.

1.2 MOTIVATION OF STUDY

i. Some of the problems identified with the current manual system of the students attendance

management system, The time unnecessarily consumed by the students to find and sign their name

on the attendance sheet

ii. At the moment, most of the attendance system that are being used still are being written a piece

of paper. For classes, tutorial and laboratory session the student still have to sign the signature on

the attendance sheet. This method is not flexible because the risk losing the attendance data is very

high. If the attendance sheet is missing, The attendance data will be lost. Other than that, unethincal

problem may be occurring such as cheating in signature.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE WORK

i. It will provide a well-structured and analyzed report of the pattern of student attendance and time

management, which can further help in allocating and using the human resources in an

organization to the maximum possible benefit.

ii. It to simplify the process of collecting class attendance whereby the RFID reader automatically

triggered the tags and verify the triggered data in databases.

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iii. It is capable of eliminating time wasted during manual collection of attendance and an

opportunity for the educational administrators to capture face-to-face classroom statistics for

allocation of appropriate attendance scores and for further managerial decisions.

1.4 SCOPE / LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The scope of this work is to develop an Attendance management System designed for student

attendance record system of federal polytechnic ile oluji that will improve how attendance

management is done by using RFID as a form authentication for proof of attending a class. The

system will be a window based application developed using Microsoft Visual Basic.net as the

preferred programming language for building the user interface and Microsoft Access for database

design. It does not cover other aspects of biometric.

1.5 CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE

At the end of the project a RFID based on student attendance management would have be

developed.

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 CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

INTRODUCTION

Student Attendance Using RFID System is automatic record of student attendance develops

especially for university.

2.1 RFID MODULE

History of RFID It’s generally said that the roots of radio frequency identification technology can

be traced back to World War II. The Germans, Japanese, Americans and British were all using

radar which had been discovered in 1935 by Scottish physicist Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt

to warn of approaching planes while they were still miles away. The problem was there was no

way to identify which planes belonged to the enemy and which were a country’s own pilots

returning from a mission. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) research and discovery began in

earnest in the 1970s. RFID is commonly used to transmit and receive information without wires.

RFID readers and tags communicate through a distance using radio waves. There are a lot of

advantages in RFID system, included their price, size, memory capacity and their capability. The

pure memory-based RFID chip without a co-processor is cheap, and its footprint is small and

usually use in car immobilizer applications where the IC has to fit in a tiny glass tube buried in the

key. RFID fast processing speed is also essential. Advances in radar and RF communications

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systems continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Scientists and academics in the United States,

Europe and Japan did research and presented papers explaining how RF energy could be used to

identify objects remotely. Companies began commercializing anti-theft systems that used radio

waves to determine whether an item had been paid for or not. Electronic article surveillance tags,

which are still used in packaging today, have a 1-bit tag. The bit is either on or off. If someone

pays for the item, the bit is turned off, and a person can leave the store. But if the person doesn't

pay and tries to walk out of the store, readers at the door detect the tag and sound an alarm. The

First RFID Patents Mario W. Cardullo claims to have received the first U.S. patent for an active

RFID tag with rewritable memory on January 23, 1973. That same year, Charles Walton, a

California entrepreneur, received a patent for a passive transponder used to unlock a door without

a key. A card with an embedded 9 transponder communicated a signal to a reader near the door.

When the reader detected a valid identity number stored within the RFID tag, the reader unlocked

the door. Walton licensed the technology to Schlage Lock of San Francisco, a lock maker, and

other companies. Later, companies developed a low-frequency (125 kHz) system, featuring

smaller transponders. A transponder encapsulated in glass could be injected under the cows’ skin.

This system is still used in cows around the world today. Lowfrequency transponders were also

put in cards and used to control the access to buildings. Over time, companies commercialized 125

kHz systems and then moved up the radio spectrum to high frequency (13.56 MHz), which was

unregulated and unused in most parts of the world. High frequency offered greater range and faster

data transfer rates. Companies, particularly those in Europe, began using it to track reusable

containers and other assets. Today, 13.56 MHz RFID systems are used for access control, payment

systems (Mobile Speedpass) and contactless smart cards. They’re also used as an anti-theft device

in cars. A reader in the steering column reads the passive RFID tag in the plastic housing around

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the key. If it doesn’t get the ID number it is programmed to look for, the car won't start. In the

early 1990s, IBM engineers developed and patented an ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID system.

UHF offered longer read range (up to 20 feet under good conditions) and faster data transfer. IBM

did some early pilots with Wal-Mart, but never commercialized this technology. When it ran into

financial trouble in the mid-1990s, IBM sold its patents to Intermec, a bar code systems provider.

Intermec RFID systems have been installed in numerous different applications, from warehouse

tracking to farming. But the technology was expensive at the time due to the low volume of sales

and the lack of open, international standards.

2.2 RFID Reader

The RFID reader sends a pulse of radio energy to the tag and listens for the tag’s response. The

tag detects this energy and sends back a response that contains the tag’s serial number and possibly

other information as well. In simple RFID systems, the reader’s pulse of energy functioned as an

on-off switch; in more sophisticated systems, the reader’s RF signal can contain commands to the

tag, instructions to read or write memory that the tag contains, and even passwords. Historically,

RFID reader were designed to read only a particular king of tag, but so-called multimode readers

that can read many different kinds of tags are becoming increasingly popular. RFID readers are

usually on, continually transmitting radio energy and awaiting any tags that enter their field of

operation. However, for some applications, this is unnecessary and could be undesirable in battery-

powered devices that need to conserve energy. Thus, It is possible to configure an RFID reader so

that it sends the radio pulse only in response to an external event. For example, most electronic

toll collection systems have the reader constantly powered up so that every passing car will be

recorded. On the other hand, RFID scanners used in veterinarian’s offices are frequently equipped

with triggers and power up the only when the trigger is pulled. Like the tag themselves, RFID

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readers come in many size. The largest readers might consist of a desktop personal computer with

a special card through shielded cable. Such A reader would typically have a network connection

as well so that it could report tags that it reads to other computers. The smallest readers are the size

of a postage stamp and are designed to be embedded in mobile telephones. [4] 11 Nowadays lot

of RFID reader sold with multiple brands such as Mifare, Hitachi, and Philip. Because of the major

application used in worldwide, many systems require the simultaneous use of more than one

operating frequency. Most systems available on the world market at present operate at one of the

following frequencies or frequency ranges: below 135 kHz (125 kHz, 134.2kHz for example),

13.56MHz, UHF (860/960 MHz), 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz. The operating and control characteristics

are different for each of these frequencies, and therefore each of them is more appropriate for

certain types of application or certain countries.

2.3 RFID Tag

The tag, also known as the transponder (derived from the terms transmitter and responder), holds

the data that is transmitted to the reader when the tag is interrogated by the reader. The most

common tags today consist of an Integrated Circuit with memory, essentially a microprocessor

chip. Other tags are chipless and have no onboard Integrated circuit. Chipless tags are more

effective in applications where simpler range of functions is all that is required; although they can

help achieve more accuracy and better detection range, at potentially lower cost than their

Integrated Circuit-based counterparts. From here on out, we will use the term tag to mean

Integrated Circuit-based tag. We will refer to chipless tags explicitly, when needed. [5] RFID tags

come in two general varieties which are passive and active tag. Passive tags require no internal

power source, thus being pure passive devices (they are only active when a reader is nearby to

power them), whereas active tags require a power source, usually a small battery