RFID AND GSM BASED ACCESS CONTROL

SYSTEM FOR ARMOURIES

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.0 BACKGROUND STUDY

Innovations in electronics have caused rapid changes in human lifestyles the desire to safeguard properties;
this necessitated the Electronic systems to be implemented in small, medium and large scale industries and are now
widely used. Electronics is being applied in most, if not all industries, companies and organisations operations.
Systems have now been employed to safeguard and make life easier for people. Systems can now be employed
which monitor and control the access to valuable properties. Examples of electronic systems that have made life
easier are intruder alarm systems, air conditioners, smoke alarms etc. As electronics has become an inevitable
component in life the industries, companies and organisations are beginning to be filled and furnished with electrical
and electronic systems which are employed to perform different tasks for example monitoring, controlling,
switching, detecting and alerting in case of any abnormalities. However in this project l am much interested in the
security of national weapons, that is controlling access to the places were these weapons are kept. As we all know
that security of every nation lies in the hands of its army. Secret, safety and security hold the strength of the army.
There is great need for information security in army. Moreover, the armouries (where weapons are kept) needs great
access control because fatal defensive equipment is kept there, hence security to the national weapons is of
paramount importance. Any intrusion by unauthorised personnel in the weapon zone would cause a grave damage to
the nation. For example, the use of nuclear weapons in any way would kill billions of innocent people within a short
period of time. Hence there is need for tight security within these premises.

The Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), Air force of Zimbabwe (AFZ), Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and
other security companies also have serious security concerns at their armouries. The recent reports where guns are
stolen from armouries are a serious threat to national security and there is great need to improve security at these
armouries .Currently security within these armouries are being enforced using armed human guards who will be on
standby 24 hours and this does not offer 100% tight security since a human being is subject to fatigue, stress, or
might have some sort of partnership with the intruder and he or she allows the intruder to steal. Lastly the armed
guard can be disarmed and his weapon can be used in robberies. Hence there is a great need to design and
implement a system which uses less human interface and also controls the access in the armouries where only
authorized personal has access to these highly classified premises.

Based on modern technologies, with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and GSM (Global System for
Mobile communication) interfacing central control system and database, a security system must be implemented in
armouries. This system will bring a new level of usability, intelligence and effectiveness to security in armouries.
The project considers the interfacing of different components with electrical, wireless and communicative
capabilities and giving the ZNA control over the entire system through a central control system. In contrast to
current generation security systems which lack many features to enable pre-emptive security, This system will have
a database which logs the activities at the armouries, whenever someone access or tries to access the armouries and
the duty officer will be alerted via GSM of these activities. Since mobile phone is now the most common electronic
device that is possessed by almost every human being on earth. From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone
subscriptions grew from zero to over 7 billion, penetrating 100% of the global population – Wikipedia, the mobile
phone uses wireless technologies to communicate with devices around it with the most common technologies being
infrared, Bluetooth and GSM. Infrared in mobile phones can communicate with devices over a distance of about 1
metre, Bluetooth can communicate with devices within a range of up to 100 metres and GSM has no boundaries as
long as the device is in a place with cellular networks. GSM is the most common used communication technology in
mobile phones. Nowadays even some home appliances like televisions and computers now also allow for
communication using the GSM platform. GSM allows transmission of text, graphics and sound between mobile
devices.

The system uses contactless smart cards to limit the entries of unwanted persons. The tags has information
stored in it which when come in the field of the RFID reader it immediately read the information stored in the card.
The reader recognise the information stored in it. If the reader has the information about the card it will allow the
card user to enter and if the reader does not find information in the tag in its memory it will not allow the user to
enter and he or she is regarded as an intruder and an alarm is raised to alert the duty officer that there is someone
trying to break-in the armoury. Radio frequency identification is one of the most exciting technology that
revolutionize the working practice by increasing efficiency and it is presented as replacement of barcodes, however
the technology has greater potential such as individual serial numbers for each item and possibly to read these
numbers at some distance. RFID is a technology adopted in security field, business fields and also in medical fields.

Although targeted for the armouries, this system can also be used in any organisation which employ a sizeable
number of employees and require high security like banks, hospital labs and other institutions.

1.1 Problem Definition

Technology has advanced so much in the last decade or two that it has made life more efficient and
comfortable. The comfort of being able to monitor and control access to only authorised personal to any particular
premise has become imperative as it saves to provide maximum security and money. Therefore there arises a need to
do so in a systematic manner which l have tried to implement with this system which monitors and control access to
the armouries using the RFID and GSM. Moreover, recent reports of guns and other weapons being stolen at
armouries necessitated the need to improve security and access control to these areas. This is not only a problem to
these security organisations but is a matter of national security since these guns and weapons can be used in armed
robberies, assassinations on government officials. From experience I was once robbed at gum point on my way to
SA, this shows that there is a loophole in the security of weapons in Zimbabwe. The security of the nation is at risk
if a solution to all these problems are not rectified as soon as possible.

1.2 PROJECT SOLUTION

Designing and implementation of a security system that uses current technologies such as RFID (Radio
frequency identification) which is a technology that incorporates the use of electromagnetic or electrostatic spectrum
to identify an object, animal or a person. The system shall include RFID reader and tags with each user being
assigned an R tag and password which will be entered via a keypad. If the tag and password does not match, the user
shall be denied access to the armoury. Each tag used shall be logged into a database for future reference if there is a
breaking and an SMS with the name of the user will be sent to the duty officer mobile phone via GS

1.4 AIM

To design and implement an armoury access control system which is RFID and GSM based.

1.4 OBJECTIVES

 To design a data base and interface it with a microcontroller via the UART.
  To interfacing the hardware and software components so that they can effectively communicate with each
other to produce the output as requested by the program.

 To write software that produces the requested output that corresponds to the instruction given by software
and so to capture the evidence of the intruder using the PRI sensors

1.5 SCOPE OF STUDY

This project is subjected to a few scopes and guidelines listed to ensure that the project is conducted within its
intended boundary and to ensure that the project heads in the right direction to achieve its intended objectives. The
scope is divided into two the hardware and the software. The hardware includes the interfacing of the GSM, RFID,
PIC 16F877A and developing the computer data base. Developing serial communication using the UART. While the
software includes a PIC compiler to build program for the PIC16F877A for example using Proteus or MPLAB. To
write C programs into the PIC16f877A using Micro C and to study more on how to develop a database.