14-02-2013, 09:57 AM
Web-based Student Attendance System using RFID Technology
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Abstract
This paper describes the development of a student
attendance system based on Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) technology. 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 of automation, where a number of problems may arise. This
include the time unnecessarily consumed by the students to find
and sign their name on the attendance sheet, some students may
mistakenly or purposely signed another student’s name and the
attendance sheet may got lost. 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.
INTRODUCTION
The most common means of tracking student attendance in
the classroom is by enforcing the students to manually sign the
attendance sheet, which is normally passed around the classroom
while the lecturer is conducting the lecture. There are numerous
disadvantages of using such system. For instance, lecturers with a
large class may find the hassle of having the attendance sheet
being passed around the class and the manual signing of
attendance by students are burdensome and most likely distract
them from teaching and getting full attention from the students
[1]. Besides, as the attendance sheet is passed around the class,
some students may accidentally or purposely sign another
student's name. The first case leads to a student missing out their
name, while the latter leads to a false attendance record. Another
issue of having the attendance record in a hardcopy form is that a
lecturer may lose the attendance sheet [2]. As a consequence of
that, lecturer can no longer trace the students overall attendance
record throughout the particular semester.
SYSTEM DESIGN
The web-based student attendance system using Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) technology promotes semiautomated
recording of student attendance, developed
especially for the university. In drawing the system design, a
number of web-based methods and frameworks have been
reviewed and referred [6-7]. Some comparisons performed on
the different technologies being used in the similar systems
were also learnt [8]. Related research on the systemdevelopment
and testing were also reviewed to provide
guidance in customizing and evaluating the process, while
learning the disciplined approach in designing the proposed
system [9-13].
Our proposed system consists of three main modules
namely the RFID reader module, Data Reporter module and
Web server module. Those modules are integrated together in
order to allow its full functionality. Each module carries its
own functions and special features. The general process flow
is illustrated in Figure 1, where all of these components are
involved and operational.
RFID Reader and Tag
RFID reader is the device capable of reading and retrieving
information stored inside the RFID tags. There are two types of
RFID reader, which are the active and passive RFID readers.
Active RFID reader can detect an active RFID tag while passive
RFID reader can only detect passive RFID tag at a few
centimeters away from the reader. The RFID reader being used in
the system is a low cost reader for reading passive RFID tags. It
operates at 0~ 400C temperatures, 20~80% of humidity, 125 kHz
frequency and 12V power supply [7]. The effective detection
range of the reader is around 5-8cm.
Each RFID tag has a unique serial number or ID. There are
three types of RFID tags which are active, semi-passive and
passive. The main difference between these RFID tags is that
active and semi-passive RFID tags require internal battery while
passive RFID tags do not use any internal battery. Adapted to our
scope of work, the student cards being used to identify each
individual student are the RFID cards that consist of passive
RFID tag, which do not require internal battery [6]. When such
cards are passed through the field generated by a compatible
Reader, they transmit information back to the Reader [7]. Figure
3 illustrates how data transmission is performed between an RFID
reader and a student card.
Web Development
The web application was initially developed on a local host
that runs the XAMPP server. Having such web server hosted
on the local host allows the PHP scripts to be developed and
locally tested and debugged. Besides the web server, a
database server is also run on the local host allowing the
scripts’ connectivity with the database. The database design
will be briefly described next.
MySQL Database
The web -based Student Attendance system is connected
directly to a MySQL database. In general, there are four main
tables created to store the collected data. A table called the
Log table is used to store all users’ logging data that include
the check-in date and time, paired with the student ID. These
data are initially captured by the Data Reporter component
from the RFID reader, which are then submitted to the Data
Collector, which is responsible in storing the data onto the
database. The User table is another table in the database that is
used to record the students’ details that include their profile
information such as name, address, email, phone number and
etc. Courses information such as the course code, scheduled
class venue, start and end time class are loaded into the
Timetable table. Meanwhile the analyzed students’ attendance
information is recorded in the Attendance database. A set of
pre-defined SQL queries are written into common functions
allowing easy data insertions, update and retrievals for webpage
displaying purpose.
CONCLUSION
The developed Web-Based Student Attendance System
using Radio Frequency Identification technology will
significantly improve the current manual process of student
attendance recording and tracking system, especially in a
university or school environment. The system promotes a
semi-automated approach in capturing the student attendance,
i.e. by having the students to flash their student cards to the
RFID reader.
In addition, a number of other advantages are gained by
having an online web-based system, acting as a central
repository of student attendance record. Firstly all processes of
managing the student attendance record are performed online,
allowing administrators and lecturers to view or modify the
users’ data through any computer via the web browser, as long
as they are connected to the Internet. This way, no specific
software installation is required. The captured student
attendance data are also processed and analyze automatically
with less risk of data loss, compared to a manual filing
approach.