See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/316897553

Integration of RFID, Wireless Sensor Networks, and Data Mining in an e-

Pedigree Food Traceability System

Article  in  Journal of Food Engineering · May 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008

CITATIONS READS

51 720

7 authors, including:

Ganjar Alfian Jaeho Lee

Dongguk University Dongguk University
39 PUBLICATIONS   480 CITATIONS    17 PUBLICATIONS   76 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Umar Farooq Muhammad Fazal Ijaz

Dongguk University Sejong University
5 PUBLICATIONS   86 CITATIONS    21 PUBLICATIONS   201 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Natural Language Processing for Industrial Strategic Technology Development Program by the Ministry of Trade, Korea View project

Customer Relationship Management Analysis in Education View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Muhammad Fazal Ijaz on 22 October 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Food Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an

e-pedigree food traceability system
Ganjar Alfian a, *, Jongtae Rhee b, Hyejung Ahn b, Jaeho Lee a, Umar Farooq b,
Muhammad Fazal Ijaz b, M. Alex Syaekhoni b
a
u-SCM Research Center, Nano Information Technology Academy, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, South Korea
b
Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Due to the growing customer health awareness, food quality and safety has gained considerable atten-
Received 5 October 2016 tion. Therefore, consumer demand for complete visibility of food quality and history along the supply
Received in revised form chain has significantly increased. This study proposes an e-pedigree food traceability system, utilizing
1 May 2017
radio frequency identification technology to track and trace product location and wireless sensor
Accepted 9 May 2017
Available online xxx
network to collect temperature and humidity during storage and transportation. Missing sensor data
may occur in real cases, as sensor data are lost or corrupted due to many reasons. The proposed system
utilizes data mining techniques to predict missing sensor data. The proposed system was tested for
Keywords:
e-pedigree
kimchi supply chain in Korea, and showed significant benefit to managers as well as customers by
Traceability providing real-time location as well as complete temperature and humidity history. The multilayer
RFID perceptron model provided the best prediction accuracy for missing sensor data compared to other
WSN models. The proposed e-pedigree food traceability system will help managers optimize food distribution
Data mining while also increasing customer satisfaction, as it can monitor product freshness.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Food quality and safety has gained much attention, due to
growing consumer health awareness. Therefore, food industry
quality assurance and standards must be considered (Trieneken
and Zuurbier, 2008). It is essential for food industry to improve
quality assurance, food product integrity, food safety guarantees,
and associated transparency along the complete food supply chain.
Track and trace systems are required that enable efficient recall on
the chain level when necessary and on pro-actively monitor quality
along the supply chain (Beulens et al., 2005). A traceability system
has been implemented for the food supply chain, providing track
and trace for the complete food information in an efficient and
trustworthy manner, thereby guaranteeing food quality and safety
(Aung and Chang, 2014a; Dabbene et al., 2013; Regattieri et al.,
2007; Parren ~ o-Marchante et al., 2014). Temperature is the most
critical factor affecting perishable food safety and quality. There-
fore, temperature monitoring system is required to monitor
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ganjar@dongguk.edu (G. Alfian).
perishable food quality in the supply chain (Aung and Chang,
2014b; Thakur and Foras, 2015).
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a well-known and
widely adopted auto-identification technology that can be used
within traceability systems to track and monitor objects, particu-
larly in various supply chains. RFID has been implemented suc-
cessfully for real-time monitoring and decision support system for
perishable products (Abad et al., 2009; Barge et al., 2014; Feng et al.,
2013; Mainetti et al., 2013; Thakur et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2010;
Voulodimos et al., 2010). In addition, the use of wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) for temperature monitoring is crucial to monitor
perishable food product quality in the supply chain (Aung and
Chang, 2014b). By integrating RFID and WSN, the system can not
only track and trace products, but can also provide environmental
condition information, such as temperature and humidity. How-
ever, it can be expected that some sensor data are lost or corrupted
due to many reasons in any real case, such as hardware or network
problems (Gruenwald et al., 2007). Data mining techniques can be
used to estimate missing sensor data.
This study proposes an e-pedigree food traceability system,
based on the integration of the RFID, WSN, and data mining tech-
nique. An electronic pedigree (e-pedigree) is an audit trail that

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
0260-8774/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
2 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11
records the path and ownership of a product as it moves along the
supply chain. In this study, the purpose of e-pedigree imple-
mentation is to avoid counterfeiting and distribution of low-quality
food products along the supply chain. Data mining technique is
adopted to predict missing sensor data along the supply chain in
order to ensure a complete product history. The integration of these
three technologies (RFID, WSN, and data mining) assures the
quality and safety of agriculture food products throughout the
complete supply chain, so that the consumer can check and verify
the food product quality.
2. Literature review
2.1. Food quality monitoring
Traceability aspects have become recognized as essential tools
for guaranteeing food safety and quality (Aung and Chang, 2014a;
Dabbene et al., 2013). Traceability systems assist the assurance of
food safety and quality as well as consumer confidence. They pro-
vide tracking and tracing functionality along the complete supply
chain, ensuring safer food supplies and connecting the producers
and consumers in a transparent way. By integrating RFID into the
traceability system, manufacturers are able to trace the product
along the chain with great precision and can apply possible re-call
strategies very rapidly if necessary (Regattieri et al., 2007).
Most foods are perishable and temperature is the most critical
factor affecting the safety and quality of perishable foods during the
journey from producers to consumers. Therefore, keeping foods at
their safe temperature throughout the entire supply chain is one of
the core functionalities of food supply chain systems or cold chain
systems. In recent years, WSNs have been increasingly applied for
environmental monitoring, particularly in the food industry (Aung
and Chang, 2014b). Research has shown that WSN based temper-
ature control and management is crucial in ensuring that perish-
ables delivered to consumers are in good condition and safe to eat.
An electronic product code information services (EPCIS) based
online system for time-temperature monitoring in the cold meat
chain has also been proposed (Thakur and Foras, 2015). The pro-
posed EPCIS system was tested during transportation of chilled
lamb products, using RFID based temperature sensors to record
product temperature. The results showed that the monitoring
system could optimize the performance of the whole food supply
chain by reducing losses caused by quality deterioration due to
temperature variations.
The current study proposes an integrated traceability system
based on RFID, WSN and data mining technique for the kimchi
supply chain in Korea. Kimchi is a traditional Korean food prepared
by fermenting vegetables and added spices for a certain period at
ambient temperature. There are many types of kimchi, depending
of the main ingredient, region, and preparation methods. Among
them, baechu kimchi is currently the most popular and commonly
used in Korea, and is generally made by lactic acid bacteria (LAB)
fermentation of baechu cabbage, radish, green onion, red pepper
powder, garlic, ginger, and fermented seafood (jeotgal) (Park et al.,
2014). In the Korean kimchi industry, consumer concerns over food
quality and safety is increasing. Lee et al. (2012) showed that the
manufacturing process needs to be standardized, because quality
can be inconsistent. Recent studies have suggested that to solve
these safety problems, food safety assurance systems should be
applied to the food supply chain, such as the implementation of
RFID based traceability systems.
2.2. RFID and wireless sensor network integration
A WSN consists of sensor nodes with sensing, processing, and
Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
communication capabilities. The sensor nodes collect environ-
mental information, e.g. temperature and humidity, transform it
into digital format and transfer it autonomously through the
gateway to a base station, where it is stored. Due to their mobility,
low cost and computing power, smartphones can be used as gate-
ways to gather sensor data and send it to the base station (server).
The mobile health system, for example, utilizes smartphone gate-
ways, which gather the sensors information via Bluetooth and
retransmit them to a remote server through a Wi-Fi link (Moro n
et al., 2014). Smartphones have also become a useful tool in agri-
culture to assist diverse farming tasks, such as analyzing farmer
working patterns (Sharma et al., 2013) and detecting tractor roll-
over (Liu and Koc, 2013).
RFID is a system that transmits the identity, in the form of a
unique serial number, of an object or person wirelessly, using radio
waves. RFID is designed to enable readers to capture data on tags
(emit radio waves and receive signals back from the tag) and
transmit it to a computer system, without requiring a person to be
involved. Wang et al. (2010) developed a real-time monitoring and
online decision support system based on RFID and a sensor
network to improve the delivery system for perishable products.
The traceability system uses radio frequency (RF) technologies to
track food products in the food supply chain. The use of RFID tags in
the traceability system provides efficiency compared to barcodes
and paper labels. RFID based traceability systems have been
implemented in many areas, such as the aquaculture supply chain
(Parren ~ o-Marchante et al., 2014), dairy product (Barge et al., 2014),
food (Thakur et al., 2010), fresh fish logistics (Abad et al., 2009),
fresh vegetables (Mainetti et al., 2013), and animal or beef (Feng
et al., 2013; Voulodimos et al., 2010).
Integration of RFID and WSN provides continuous monitoring of
data throughout the food supply chain, which assures the retailer
that requirements are met throughout product delivery and stor-
age, such as maintaining the required temperature and humidity.
Three types of RFID and WSN integration have been proposed.
Ruzzelli et al. (2007) proposed integrating RFID tags with sensor
nodes. The proposed approach was to attach RFID tags to each
sensor node, which was also provided with RFID reader capability.
Alternatively, Zhang and Wang, 2006 proposed that the integrated
smart nodes could be considered as sensor nodes and used as RFID
readers, extending their sensing capabilities. Zhang and Wang,
2006 also proposed a mixed architecture system where the RFID
tags and sensor nodes were physically distinct and independent
devices, but coexisted in an integrated network and were inte-
grated logically. The current study, proposes the mixed architecture
system since this type of integration is cost effective, with no need
to design special hardware, for many business applications.
2.3. Electronic pedigree
Electronic pedigree is a new data sharing approach, providing an
audit trail that records the path and ownership of a product as it
moves along the supply chain. The e-pedigree document contains
useful product and transaction records with digital signatures to
guarantee authenticity. According to the EPCglobal Pedigree
Ratified Standard (2007), the e-pedigree is structured in different
layers, initialPedigree, shippedPedigree, and receivedPedigree, which
are appended as the product moves along the supply chain. In the
first stage, initialPedigree is created with basic product information
(e.g. producer’s name, product name, and serial number), and item
information (e.g. lot number, harvest date, expiration date, quan-
tity). When the product is shipped to the next supply chain partner,
shippedPedigree is added, containing information such as the
sender name, receiver name, transaction information (purchase
order number, sender address, and recipient address) and sender
 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11
signature. After this step, the shipper’s signature cannot be
changed. Once the receiving party confirms receipt of the product,
receivedPedigree is generated, including the receiver’s transaction
information and signature. After this stage, receivedPedigree and
receiver’s signature are secured, and cannot be altered.
2.4. Data mining for sensor data
In WSNs, sensors continuously send their data to servers
through a gateway. However, due to hardware and networking
problems, such as battery power loss, random local interferences,
and high bit error rate of wireless transmission, some sensor data
are lost or corrupted. Re-querying data is not efficient, as it may
further reduce battery power, and is not guaranteed to provide the
original reading. Hence, efficiently process queries that need to
access missing sensor readings, it is crucial that missing stream
values can be estimated (Gruenwald et al., 2007). Data mining can
extract knowledge from existing data, and can be utilized to esti-
mate missing values. In healthcare, most sensor data mining fo-
cuses on anomaly detection, prediction, and decision making
(Banaee et al., 2013). However, prediction techniques to predict
subject stress levels have also been proposed (Silva et al., 2013; Sun
et al., 2012), and the predictive algorithm provides high prediction
accuracy.
This study proposes the neural network based multilayer per-
ceptron (MLP) data mining technique to predict missing tempera-
ture and humidity sensor data. MLP consists of input, hidden, and
output layers. The backpropagation neural network learning algo-
rithm performs learning on a multilayer perceptron. During the
learning phase, inputs are fed forward from the input layer and
through the hidden layers, providing an output, which differs from
the known target output for an untrained network. The training
process consists of estimating weights to minimize these differ-
ences between network outputs and actual data. The deviations are
propagated backwards through the network and weights adjusted
to reduce error. Network design is a trial-and-error process and
may affect the trained network accuracy. Cross-validation tech-
niques for accuracy estimation can be used to decide when an
acceptable network has been found. The advantages of neural
networks are high tolerance for noisy data as well as their ability to
classify patterns they were not trained upon. However, on major
disadvantage is the difficulty to understand network structure by
humans. Detailed explanations of MLP are given elsewhere (see
Han et al., 2011).
3. Methodology
3.1. System design
A simplified kimchi supply chain including producer, trans-
porter, distributor, and customer is considered in this study.
Combining RFID, WSN, and data mining techniques into the e-
pedigree system, we can not only track and trace the product across
the complete supply chain, but we can also monitor the complete
environmental history, such as temperature and humidity of agri-
culture food products. Data mining provides additional function-
ality to predict missing sensor data, which commonly occur due to
hardware or network communication problems.
Fig. 1(a) shows the proposed e-pedigree food traceability system
architecture. Product (kimchi) is produced by the kimchi factory
(producer) and kept in cold storage. The producer has a strict policy
on how long the product can be kept in cold storage. When the
product is ready to be delivered, the transporter shifts the product
to the distribution center, where the product is kept in cold storage
again. The product is then delivered by transporter to the
Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
3
customers. In the case study, the product is delivered to a school
canteen to be prepared as a side dish for student lunches. During
storage, the product is kept at least less than 10
C to reduce haz-
ards; improve taste; and reduce salt, which is added to extend the
safe storage period (Lee et al., 2012).
Fig. 1(a) shows EPC/RFID event and sensor data flow between
different supply chain partners. The supply chain partners capture
the EPC/RFID data (product information) using RFID readers and
store it in the EPCIS database (DB). Temperature and humidity data
are captured by sensor, and sent via a gateway then stored in the
sensor DB. For the case of the transporter, the driver or other
employee captures EPC/RFID data using a handheld RFID reader. A
web service receives the EPC or sensor data from the reader or
gateway and stores it in the DB. Data mining is used to predict any
missing sensor data.
We used the mixed architecture model, as the RFID reader and
sensor node are independent. Oracle was used for the EPCIS DB and
MySQL for the Sensor DB. The e-pedigree food traceability system is
a web based application, developed in the PHP Programming Lan-
guage, and gathers the complete product information (EPC and
Sensor data) from the two DBs. This combination creates a com-
plete product pedigree, i.e., product information, location, process
details, temperature, humidity, etc.
To capture EPC/RFID data, RFID and handheld readers were
utilized in this study; the detail architecture can be seen in Fig. 1(b).
To gather the tag information, RFID readers consisted of antenna,
laptop, and was installed at the entry/exit gate of the producer and/
or distributor cold storage. A capturing application was developed,
based on Java Programming Language, and installed in the RFID
reader laptop. The transporter used handheld reader which con-
sists of dongle reader and an android Smartphone device. An
android app was developed for the handheld reader to receive the
RFID data, generate EPC data and pedigree, and sent it to the EPCIS
repository. The proposed e-pedigree approach for the food trace-
ability system allows different supply chain partners to create
different product information (pedigree) based on their capability.
We defined the capability of each supply chain partner when
creating the pedigree document, as shown in Table 1.
The WSN based sensor monitoring system was installed in each
room in the kimchi supply chain, such as the producer’s, truck
(transporter), and distributor’s cold storage; the detail architecture
can be seen in Fig. 1(c). The WSN based sensor monitoring system
consisted of the sensor and android smartphone (including sensor
monitoring system app). In this part, the smartphone works as a
gateway, gathering the information from the sensors and retrans-
mitting them every 1 min to a remote server through a Wi-Fi link.
Thus, the real-time temperature and humidity inside the cold
storage will be stored in the Sensor DB and can be seen in the
proposed e-pedigree food traceability system.
3.2. System implementation
Inside the kimchi producer, freshly produced kimchi was packed
and put into a kimchi box at the production line, and passive RFID
tags were attached to the kimchi boxes. The card-type passive tags
were made from PVC with dimensions 86  54  1.8 mm. They
operated at 902e928 MHz with EPC Gen2 (ISO 18000-6c) protocol.
We utilized a commercial RFID reader, ALR-9900 þ RFID Reader,
and installed it in the entry/exit gate of the factory cold storage. The
ALR-9900 þ is an enterprise reader, which allows users to monitor
or read multiple tags simultaneously at large distances. Thus, it is
suitable for traceability systems in supply chains. The reader
included two antennas, universal power supply, and software de-
velopers kit. It used TCP/IP protocol, allowing simple data
communication between the reader and computer through an
4 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11

(a)

(b) (c)

Fig. 1. (a) Proposed e-pedigree food traceability system architecture, (b) RFID and handheld reader to read RFID tag, (c) sensor reads temperature-humidity from cold storage.

Table 1
Pedigree information.

Pedigree Name Input Parameters Explanation Created by

initialPedigree Product info, producer info, harvest
date, expiry date, and producer
address (current location)
shippedPedigree Transaction info, sender info,
receiver info, sender signature and
sender address (current location).
receivedPedigree Transaction info, sender info,
receiver info, receiver signature and
receiver address (current location).
Generated by the producer at the first time a product passes through the reader in the entry gate Producer
of producer storage. Once the complete EPC and initial pedigree data are gathered, it will be
stored in the EPCIS database.
Generated when the product is shipped to the supply chain partner. The complete EPC and Producer,
shipped pedigree data are gathered when the products pass through the reader at exit gate of transporter,
cold storage. It also includes previous pedigree information, and the digital signature is added to distributor
authenticate product information.
Generated when the product is received from the upstream supply chain partner. The complete Transporter,
EPC and received pedigree data are gathered when the products pass through the reader at the distributor,
entry gate of cold storage. It also includes previous pedigree information, and the digital customer
signature is added to authenticate the product information.

Ethernet cable. The weight was 1.5 kg and dimensions were
20.3  17.8  4.1 cm. Power was supplied from an AC-DC Power
Converter 100e240 VAC, 50/60 Hz. The reader supported RFID Tag
Protocols EPC Gen2; ISO 18000-6c, and frequency 916e920.8 MHz.
Since the reader provided a java application programming interface
(API), we developed a capturing application in Java to receive RFID
data from the reader.
The kimchi boxes were stacked on the pallet, shifted by forklift
to producer cold storage, passing through the RFID antenna. When
the kimchi boxes pass through the RFID antenna, the RFID reader
captured the tags and sent them to the computer. The capturing
application installed on the computer/laptop received the tag in-
formation, generated the product initialPedigree, and sent it to the
server through the internet connection. We developed a web

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11 5

service using PHP and EPCIS DB using Oracle. The web service
received the EPC data from the reader and stored it to the EPCIS DB.
The RFID reader can be installed in other locations following this
scenario, such as at the producer’s exit gate, distributor’s entry and/
or exit gates. Fig. 2 shows kimchi boxes being moved from truck
storage to distributor cold storage. In this scenario, the RFID reader
reads the tags attached to the kimchi boxes at the distributor entry
gate.
During the RFID tag capturing process, the capturing application
received the tag data before sending it to the server database. Fig. 3
shows the Java based capturing application running on the com-
puter/laptop. The list of RFID tags is shown on the left side of the
panel, with EPC document and additional pedigree data displayed
in the center and right panels, respectively. Once the product Fig. 3. RFID capturing application on computer/laptop.
pedigree is correct and complete, the pedigrees were sent to the
server through the internet connection and stored in the Server DB.
The ALR-9900 þ RFID Reader is not suitable for flexible use, such
as for truck drivers. Therefore, we used a dongle reader with a
developed android application. This study used the Arete Pop
Dongle UHF Reader, a small RFID reader for short-range (up to 1 m,
depending on the RFID tags used) that can be used with smart-
phones (compatible with most iOS and Android devices). It weighs
30 g, with dimensions 51  50  15 mm, and has a built-in battery,
360 mAh, that provides up to 2 h continuous use. The battery can be
recharged through a standard 5 pin micro USB. The device utilizes
RFID Chip PHYCHIPS PR9200 with EPC Gen2 (ISO 18000-6c) pro-
tocol and works with frequency 917.1e923.3 MHz in Korea. The
device communicates with the smartphone through the head-
phones (3.5 mm) jack, reading the RFID data and forwarding to the
smartphone. The dongle reader provides the android API, and we
developed an android app, handheld reader, to receive the RFID
data from the dongle reader and send it to web service through the
cellphone Wi-Fi link. Before departing, the driver uses the hand-
held reader to read the tags. Once the product information is cor-
rect, the driver sends the product pedigrees to the server by
pressing the “send” button in the android screen. Fig. 4(a) shows
and example of the handheld reader in operation. (a) (b)
For the WSN based sensor monitoring system, the temperature
Fig. 4. (a) Handheld reader to read RFID tags when loading on the truck, (b) WSN
based sensor monitoring system reading temperature and humidity.

Fig. 2. RFID Reader capturing RFID tags from kimchi boxes (RFID antennas are the
white boards near the left edge of the image).
and humidity sensor was used as the sensor node, with an android
smartphone as the gateway. The commercial temperature and
humidity sensor Smart Temp Checker FTC-001 was used in this
study. The Smart TEMP Checker is a small semiconductor sensor
measuring temperature and humidity, designed for individual
smartphone use. Smart Temp Checker plugs into the smartphone
headphone jack, and is compatible with Android & iOS. It has ultra-
low power consumption and mini sensor, weighs 6 g, and is
32.5 mm long. The sensor has a built-in battery which can measure
continuously up to 250 h, and the error for temperature and hu-
midity are ±0.5
C and ±2.5%, respectively. We developed an
android app, sensor monitoring app, using the supplied API to
integrate data communication between the sensor and smart-
phone, and continuously receive temperature and humidity data
from the sensor. The smartphone acts as an information gateway,
gathering information from the sensor via the audio port and
retransmitting to the remote server through a Wi-Fi link. The web
service receives the sensor data and stores it in the Sensor DB.
Fig. 4(b) shows the system assembled with an example screen.
Installing the WSN based sensor monitoring system in different
locations, e.g. producer, transporter, and distributor cold storage,
the complete temperature and humidity data for each location in
the supply chain can be captured.

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
6 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11

3.3. Data mining for missing sensor data Table 2

Example of original sensor data.

During transportation, the WSN based sensor monitoring sys- Input Output
tem may not be able to send sensor data to the server due to Recorded date time Temperature (
C) Humidity (%)
hardware or network communication problems, causing missing
22/06/2016 16:56:00 3.1 66.6
sensor data, as shown in Fig. 5. To solve this problem, we use MLP to
22/06/2016 16:57:00 3.1 67.1
predict the missing sensor data, ensuring the proposed e-pedigree 22/06/2016 16:58:00 3.1 67.6
food traceability system contains a complete history of temperature … … …
and humidity data. In this experiment, the sample of temperature … … …
22/06/2016 05:04:00 1.7 64.7
and humidity data was collected after 1 week (168 h) operation of
real-time monitoring in the distribution center cold storage. The
sensor data was sent by the gateway, processed in the server in real
time, and presented online by the web based monitoring system.
Once the data gathering was complete, we modelled this data to
predict the missing values.
This study used MLP to predict the missing temperature and
humidity sensor data. The sensor data was split into two parts, with
approximately 60% for training and the remainder for testing. MLP
was used for both temperature and humidity. The original sensor
data consist of recorded date time as input and temperature and
humidity as outputs, as shown in Table 2.
To increase prediction accuracy, the original single input was
converted into new 30 inputs/features and normalized into binary
attributes with categories 0 or 1, where 0 typically means that the
attribute is no and 1 means yes. The new input was whether the
output was equal, greater, and less than the output of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10,
15, 20, 30, 45, 60 min before or not. Fig. 6 shows an example of the
converted binary attributes. The columns represent number of
training dataset, while the rows represent number of inputs/fea-
tures. MLP training and testing was implemented in the Weka 3.6
data mining tool.
The accuracy of the proposed prediction techniques were tested Fig. 6. Multilayer perceptron for sensor data.
and compared with each other. The difference between the pre-
dicted and actual value was assessed by correlation coefficient (R)
and root mean square error (RMSE). The correlation coefficient is containing the e-pedigree history of a food product. Temperature
widely used as a measure of the strength of linear dependence and humidity are presented as a graph and location history as a
between two variables (actual and predicted value in this case), and map.
has value between þ1 and 1, where 1 is perfect positive linear Temperature and humidity history is very important to verify
correlation, 0 is no linear correlation, and 1 is perfect negative perishable agricultural food product quality. The user can easily
linear correlation. RMSE gives an indication of the overall accuracy understand the product temperature and humidity in the upstream
of the approximation, and was the benchmark for model accuracy. supply chain (Fig. 7(b)) and can analyze food quality effects. The
location map helps users track product location and movement in
4. Result and discussion real-time (Fig. 7(c)).

4.1. System implementation
This study developed the e-pedigree food traceability system
and provided a simple and convenient way for users to trace food
product history. The proposed system was web based, allowing
user access in real-time by personal computers (PCs) or smart-
phone. The system tracks the food product history using various
input data, such as tag ID, product name, producer name, address,
sender name, and receiver name; and presents the product history,
location, temperature, and humidity of the product. Thus, man-
agers can optimize product distribution as well as monitoring
product quality. Fig. 7(a) shows a screenshot of the query interface
Fig. 5. Example of missing sensor data.
4.2. Performance evaluation of the WSN based sensor monitoring
system
The WSN based sensor monitoring system consists of temper-
ature and humidity sensor, smartphone as gateway, and web ser-
vice to store the sensor data. For successful implementation, it is
essential to analyze the WSN based sensor monitoring system
performance under various dimensions.
4.2.1. Energy and memory consumption
Consider the Smartphone gateway performance. Moro  n et al.
(2014) investigated smartphone capability as a WSN gateway,
based on CPU and power consumption of the mobile device. Yang
and Gerla (2011) investigated smartphone capability based on
different performance metrics, such as battery consumption, data
processing, in different scenarios. This study assessed cellphone
gateway performance based on CPU and memory usage, and power
consumption.
Fig. 8(a) shows the power usage of the WSN based sensor
monitoring system under different scenarios: wakeup mode
(smartphone screen was always on), and sleep mode (screen was

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11 7

(a)

(b) (c)
Fig. 7. (a) Product history, (b) temperature and humidity history, and (c) product location history, presented in a map.

(a) (b)

Fig. 8. Sensor monitoring app on smartphone (a) power usage and (b) memory and CPU usage.

always off). In both scenarios the sensor monitoring app was run as
a background service, receiving sensor data and sending it to the
server every minute. For all the tests, communication with the
server was accomplished through a Wi-Fi connection. A Samsung
Galaxy Note 3 with Android OS V5, 3 GB RAM, Li-Ion 3200 mAh
battery was used for the experiment. Fig. 8(a) shows sleep mode
saves significant battery power and provides approximately 16 h
operation, whereas wakeup mode provides only approximately
10 h.
Fig. 8(b) shows the CPU and memory usage of the sensor
monitoring app. Four different reading period scenarios were
considered, where the sensor monitoring app was reading and
sending sensor data to the server every 5, 10, 30, and 60 s. The
reading period does not greatly affect CPU or memory usage.
Regarding the computational cost of the sensor monitoring app, it
should be noted that the app used less than 8% CPU and 24.5 MB for
all reading periods.
For the real case, WSN based sensor monitoring systems were
placed inside the producer, distributor and transport cold storage.
For the producer and distributor cold storage, staff (employees) can
charge the smartphone battery regularly, allowing monitoring of
temperature and humidity 24 h a day, 7 days a week. However, for
transportation, the driver must ensure the smartphone battery is
fully charged before departing. In our case study, delivery from
producer to the distributor took less than 4 h, which was well
within the cellphone operational capacity, and the WSN based

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
8 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11
sensor monitoring system worked perfectly. For longer distances,
the driver could use an external battery to increase smartphone
battery life. However, different smartphones will affect system
performance. Another problem may arise during transportation
where the WSN based sensor monitoring system is unable to send
the sensor data to the server due to insufficient remaining battery
power or network communication problems. This generates
missing sensor data, which is resolved in Section 4.4.
4.2.2. Communication reliability
Fig. 9 shows WSN based sensor monitoring system performance
in terms of communication reliability. Alazzawi and Elkateeb
(2008) proposed network delay and success rate metrics for
comparing WSN performance. Network delay explains the average
time taken between a packet sent by the source and successfully
received at the destination. Success rate is the total number of
packets received at the destination verses the total number of
packets sent from the source. We utilized these metrics, with the
smartphone as the source and the server database as the destina-
tion. Communication with the data network (Internet) was
implemented via Wi-Fi. In particular, a Wi-Fi access point located
within 1e3 m in line of sight of the smartphone was utilized for the
experiment.
In this experiment, the same smartphone was used as the
gateway, and sent the various sensor data to the web service
(server) at the same time. Fig. 9(a) shows that network delay in-
creases as the amount of sensor data increases. It takes approxi-
mately 50 s for the gateway to send 1000 sensor data at the same
time. However, in a real case implementation, takes less than 0.2 s
to send the sensor data, as we set 1 sensor data (temperature and
humidity data) to be sent every minute.
Fig. 9(b) shows the success rate for different scenarios. Scenario
1 and 3 had the gateway located inside the producer and distributor
cold storage, respectively. Scenario 2 had the gateway inside the
truck cold storage during transportation from producer to distrib-
utor. Scenario 4 had the gateway located inside the truck cold
storage during transportation from the distributor to the customer.
Success rate >93% for scenarios 1,2, and 3, and approximately 81%
for scenario 4. Network communication problems, such as no
available internet service provider, may have prevented the
gateway sending data to the server.
4.3. Performance of the proposed e-pedigree food traceability
system
The proposed e-pedigree system should be scalable to accom-
modate a growing volume of data, queries, and users, without
suffering noticeable performance loss.
(a)
Fig. 9. Sensor data (a) network delay and (b) success rate.
Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
4.3.1. RFID reader capability
Lee et al. (2009) evaluated RFID reader performance and defined
read latency as the time period for a reader successfully obtain RFID
data from a tag. They also used read rate, defined as the number of
RFID tags successfully read over the total number of tags. Wu et al.
(2016) used the read rate and success rate of the reader receiving
tag signals at different distances as evaluation metrics. Therefore,
we used the reading time and success rate as performance metrics
for the RFID reader.
We used two scenarios, 10 and 20 tags located directly in front of
the reader at different distances. Fig. 10(a) shows that the number
of tags impacts on reading time, with 20 tags needing more time to
be read. However, while the distance does not have a significant
impact on reading time it does have an impact on success rate.
Fig. 10(b) shows that as the distance increases between the reader
and tags, the success rate decreases, and the higher number of tags
generates lower success rate with increasing distance. In the real
case, we installed the reader in the entry gate of the producer and
distributor cold storage. The distance between the reader and
product when passing through the entry gate is approximately
2e3 m, and all of the tags were read by reader. We also took care to
set the antennas in good positions, ensuring the reader received the
tag signals perfectly.
4.3.2. Server capability of the proposed e-pedigree food traceability
system
The proposed system utilized centralized traceability architec-
ture, where all supply chain partners share a common database for
creating, storing, and querying product records. Kang et al. (2016)
evaluated the performance of traceability systems based on query
response time, and the capture and query response times have
been used in previous research to evaluate traceability system
performance (Kim et al., 2010). Our study considered two scenarios
to test the proposed e-pedigree food traceability system, based on
the capture and query response times. Capture response time
measures the time (ms) required by the server to receive the data
from the RFID reader and store it to the database, while query
response time measures the time required by the server to present
the RFID data from the database to various clients (users). An Intel
Xeon 3.10 GHZ computer (4GB RAM and Window Server 2008 OS)
was used as the server for the experiment, and an Intel i5 computer
(8GB RAM and Windows 7 OS) was used for the client.
Fig. 11(a) shows that as the number of records (EPC/RFID data)
stored by the user in the same time increased, the capture response
time also increased. This is reasonable, since the server requires
more time to store larger amounts of product information read by
the RFID reader at the same time. However, this experiment also
showed that the proposed e-pedigree food traceability system was
robust enough to store 10000 products information at the same
(b)
 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11 9

(a) (b)

Fig. 10. RFID reader (a) reading time and (b) success rate.

(a) (b)

Fig. 11. EPCIS server response: (a) capture response time and (b) query response time.

time in less than 1 s.
Fig. 11(b) shows that as the number of clients simultaneously
accessing the server increased, the query response time by the
server to satisfy the entire request also increased. The number of
records (products) in the database also affected the query response
time, since a large high number of records (products) require more
time by the server to find the specific records required to satisfy the
request.
The length of a supply chain will affects the proposed e-pedigree
food traceability system performance. If the supply chain includes
many suppliers and/or distributors, then the capture and query
response time will increase, and hence the system performance
will decrease.
with RMSE ¼ 0.5272 and 3.0907 for temperature and humidity
data, respectively, whereas MLP achieved RMSE ¼ 0.1991 and
0.9138, respectively. The correlations for MLP for temperature and
humidity were R ¼ 0.9325 and 0.956, respectively, whereas the
regression model returned R ¼ 0.00632 and 0.00055.
Thus, MLP is best model to provide high prediction accuracy for
missing sensor data. Integrating MLP into the proposed e-pedigree
food traceability system will ensure complete sensor data. Thus,
managers can monitor the environmental condition of products in
storage and consumers can monitor the product complete tem-
perature and humidity history.
5. Conclusions

4.4. Data mining for missing sensor data
As discussed above, during transportation the gateway may not
successfully send the sensor data to the server due to some con-
ditions, e.g. the smartphone based-sensor device ran out of battery
power, or network communication problems as the delivery truck
passed through the areas not covered by an internet service pro-
vider. To solve this problem, data mining techniques are required to
predict the missing sensor data, ensuring the proposed e-pedigree
food traceability system includes the complete temperature and
humidity history.
In this experiment, temperature and humidity data was gath-
ered from one of the cold storage kimchi supply chain networks,
and MLP was applied to predict the sensor data. The data were
assigned to training (the first N ¼ 6048 data points) and testing (the
remaining N ¼ 4032 data points) groups for both temperature and
humidity data. Fig. 12(a) shows that the MLP model predictions
were very close to the actual temperature, and Fig. 12(b) shows MLP
accurately predicted the humidity data.
Table 3 compares MLP with linear regression to predict the
sensor data. The linear regression model achieves low accuracy
Agricultural food industry safety has gained considerable
attention due to frequent food contamination crises. An efficient
approach is essential to ensure food quality and safety for con-
sumers. This study proposes an e-pedigree food traceability system
to control and maintain food product quality throughout the entire
supply chain. The proposed system integrates RFID, WSN, and data
mining technologies to provide an efficient and economical plat-
form for environment sensitive agricultural food products. The e-
pedigree food traceability system provides a complete history of
food product quality from farm to retailer. Using this system, the
consumer can view the detailed product history as well as tem-
perature and humidity data from producer to retailer, and be
confident that the product (or food) has not come through illegal
channels. The proposed system was successfully implemented in
the Korean kimchi supply chain network, and verified that the
system is robust and shows positive results for the industry.
The performance of the proposed e-pedigree food traceability
system was evaluated to investigate the effects of integrating RFID
and WSN on system scalability. The proposed smartphone based
sensor monitoring system was light and worked perfectly for every
scenario. We conclude that current commercial smartphones have

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
10 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11

(a)

(b)
Fig. 12. Multilayer perceptron neural network prediction for missing sensor data: (a) temperature and (b) humidity.

Table 3 experiments were based on an initial system implementation. With

Comparison of prediction models for temperature and humidity sensor data.
Temperature data Humidity data
Method RMSE R RMSE
MLP 0.1991 0.9325 0.9138
Regression 0.5272 0.00632 3.0907
sufficient capabilities to combine their normal operation while
simultaneously performing as gateways to transmit sensor data to
the server through Wi-Fi connections with high success rate. Sys-
tem performance was evaluated based on the reader and server
capability, and verified that system performance will be affected by
the number of supply chain partners in the supply chain.
Since some sensor data is lost due to battery power or network
communication problems, data mining techniques were included
to predict the missing data. The MLP model achieved excellent
results predicting temperature and humidity data compared to
linear regression. Integrating MLP into the proposed e-pedigree
food traceability system will ensure the complete product history
can be available to supply chain users and consumers.
This study only used a relatively small sensor dataset, as the
increasing datasets, comparison with other data mining techniques
should be considered.
R
0.956 Acknowledgements
0.00055
This work was supported by the Ministry for Food, Agriculture,
Forestry, and Fisheries through the Agriculture Research Center
under Grant 710003-07-7-SB210.
References
rate, A.G., Juarros, A., Go
Abad, E., Palacio, F., Nuin, M., de Za mez, J.M., Marco, S.,
2009. RFID smart tag for traceability and cold chain monitoring of foods:
demonstration in an intercontinental fresh fish logistic chain. J. Food Eng. 93
(4), 394e399.
Alazzawi, L., Elkateeb, A., 2008. Performance evaluation of the WSN routing pro-
tocols scalability. J. Comput. Syst. Netw. Commun. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/
2008/481046.
Aung, M.M., Chang, Y.S., 2014a. Traceability in a food supply chain: safety and
Quality perspective. Food Control 39, 172e184.
Aung, M.M., Chang, Y.S., 2014b. Temperature management for the quality assurance
of a perishable food supply chain. Food Control 40, 198e207.
Banaee, H., Ahmed, M.U., Loutfi, A., 2013. Data mining for wearable sensors in
health monitoring systems: a review of recent trends and challenges. Sensors

Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
 G. Alfian et al. / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2017) 1e11
13, 17472e17500.
Barge, P., Gay, P., Merlino, V., Tortia, C., 2014. Item-level Radio-Frequency Identifi-
cation for the traceability of food products: application on a dairy product.
J. Food Eng. 125, 119e130.
Beulens, A.J.M., Broens, D.F., Folstar, P., Hofstede, G.J., 2005. Food safety and trans-
parency in food chains and networks. Food Control 16 (6), 481e486.
Dabbene, F., Gay, P., Tortia, C., 2013. Traceability issues in food supply chain man-
agement: a review. Biosyst. Eng. 120, 65e80.
EPCglobal Pedigree Ratified Standard. Version 1.0. (2007). Available online: http://
www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/pedigree/pedigree_1_0-standard-20070105.
pdf (Accessed 5 January 2016).
Feng, J., Fu, Z., Wang, Z., Xu, M., Zhang, X., 2013. Development and evaluation on a
RFID-based traceability system for cattle/beef quality safety in China. Food
Control 31 (2), 314e325.
Gruenwald, L., Chok, H., Aboukhamis, M., 2007. Using data mining to estimate
missing sensor data. In: Seventh IEEE International Conference on Data Mining
Workshops (ICDMW 2007). Omaha, NE, pp. 207e212. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/
ICDMW.2007.103.
Han, J., Kamber, M., Pei, J., 2011. Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, third ed.
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Kang, Y.-S., Park, I.-H., Youm, S., 2016. Performance prediction of a MongoDB-based
traceability system in smart factory supply chains. Sensors 16 (12), 2126.
Kim, S., Kang, Y.-S., Son, K., Lee, Y., Rhee, J., Hong, S., 2010. Performance modeling of
an EPC information service system. Industrial Eng. Manag. Syst. 9 (3), 285e293.
Lee, G.-I., Lee, H.-M., Lee, C.-H., 2012. Food safety issues in industrialization of
traditional Korean foods. Food Control 24, 1e5.
Lee, E.-K., Yoo, Y.M., Park, C.G., Kim, M., Gerla, M., 2009. Installation and evaluation
of RFID readers on moving vehicles. In: Proceedings of the Sixth ACM Inter-
national Workshop on Vehicular Internet Working. Beijing, China.
Liu, B., Koc, A.B., 2013. SafeDriving: a mobile application for tractor rollover
detection and emergency reporting. Comput. Electron. Agric. 98, 117e120.
Mainetti, L., Francesca, M., Patrono, L., Simone, F., Laura, M.S., Vergallo, R., 2013. An
RFID-based tracing and tracking system for the fresh vegetables supply chain.
Int. J. Antennas Propag. 2013, 15.
Moro  n, M.J., Luque, R., Casilari, E., 2014. On the capability of smartphones to
perform as communication gateways in medical wireless personal area net-
works. Sensors 14, 575e594.
Park, K.-Y., Jeong, J.-K., Lee, Y.-E., Daily III, J.W., 2014. Health benefits of kimchi
(Korean fermented vegetables) as a probiotic food. J. Med. Food 17 (1), 6e20.
Parren~ o-Marchante, A., Alvarez-Melcon, A., Trebar, M., Filippin, P., 2014. Advanced
Please cite this article in press as: Alfian, G., et al., Integration of RFID, wireless sensor networks, and data mining in an e-pedigree food
traceability system, Journal of Food Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2017.05.008
View publication stats
11
traceability system in aquaculture supply chain. J. Food Eng. 122, 99e109.
Regattieri, A., Gamberi, M., Manzini, R., 2007. Traceability of food products: general
framework and experimental evidence. J. Food Eng. 81 (2), 347e356.
Ruzzelli, A.G., Jurdak, R., O’Hare, G.M.P., 2007. On the RFID wake-up impulse for
multi-hop sensor networks. In: Proceedings of 1st ACM Workshop on Conver-
gence of RFID and Wireless Sensor Networks and Their Applications (SenseID)
at the Fifth ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM
SenSys 2007). Sydney, Australia.
Sharma, S., Raval, J., Jagyasi, B., 2013. Mobile sensing for agriculture activities
detection. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology
Conference (GHTC ’13), pp. 337e342.
Silva, F., Olivares, T., Royo, F., Vergara, M.A., Analide, C., 2013. Experimental study of
the stress level at the workplace using a smart testbed of wireless sensor
networks and ambient intelligence techniques. Nat. Artif. Comput. Eng. Med.
Appl. 7931, 200e209.
Sun, F.T., Kuo, C., Cheng, H.T., Buthpitiya, S., Collins, P., Griss, M., 2012. Activity-aware
mental stress detection using physiological sensors. Mob. Comput. Appl. Serv.
76, 211e230.
Thakur, M., Foras, E., 2015. EPCIS based online temperature monitoring and trace-
ability in a cold meat chain. Comput. Electron. Agric. 117, 22e30.
Thakur, M., Sørensen, C.-F., Bjørnson, F.O., Forås, E., Hurburgh, C.R., 2010. Managing
food traceability information using EPCIS framework. J. Food Eng. 103 (4),
417e433.
Trieneken, J., Zuurbier, P., 2008. Quality and Safety Standards in the food industry,
developments and challenges. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 113 (1), 107e122.
Voulodimos, A.S., Patrikakis, C.Z., Sideridis, A.B., Ntafis, V.A., Xylouri, E.M., 2010.
A complete farm management system based on animal identification using
RFID technology. Comput. Electron. Agric. 70 (2), 380e388.
Wang, L., Kwok, S.K., Ip, W.H., 2010. A radio frequency identification and sensor-
based system for the transportation of food. J. Food Eng. 101 (1), 120e129.
Wu, J., Cui, X., Xu, Y., 2016. A novel RFID-based sensing method for low-cost bolt
loosening monitoring. Sensors 16, 168.
Yang, S., Gerla, M., 2011. Personal gateway in mobile health monitoring. In: Pro-
ceedings of 2011 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and
Communications Workshops (PERCOM Workshops), Seattle, WA, USA,
pp. 636e641.
Zhang, L., Wang, Z., 2006. Integration of RFID into wireless sensor networks: ar-
chitectures, opportunities and challenging problems. In: Proceedings of the
Fifth International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing Workshops,
Changsha, China, pp. 463e469.