RFID-based Elevator Access Control System

Akansha Yadav, Anushka Sahu, Mayank Jain, Aniket Masram

Information Technology,
Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering
akayadav87@gmail.com
anushkasahu234@gmail.com
mayankjainpv@gmail.com
aniketmasram11@gmail.com
Abstract— This work focuses on building the Elevator
Access Control System for use in department inside the
college premises. The objective of the system is to prohibit
the entry of unauthorized users into the lift by making use
of RFID technology and NodeMCU. RFID is the
communication technology that is widely referred to as
electronic tags. Radio signals can be used to identify a
particular target and the related data can be read and
written without the need for direct communication. The
aim of these system is to increase security in the
department, by prohibiting the access of unauthorised
users and the data of the entered users is recorded in the
database along with their access time for future use. It is
noted that the system response time per person is 1.20
sec/per which comes out to be faster than other available
access control systems.
Keywords— RFID, NodeMCU, Security
I. Introduction
Lifts are present in all public and private workplaces, malls,
residential buildings, hospitals, educational institutions, and so
on. They can be easily available to everyone, from the
building's tenants or occupants to regular visitors to complete
strangers who enter the premises. Out of all the
aforementioned individual identities the last one is likely to
pose a security risk as it is unknown. Elevator access
management is essential to solve this problem on a basic level.
RFID is an extremely popular solution for access control
systems. Electromagnetic fields are used by Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) to automatically identify and track
numerous things. The majority of RFID systems comprises of
access control server, a reader with an antenna, and a
microchip with an antenna (tag). An RFID system cross-
references the data stored on the tag with its own database.
The access is then provided if the data matches with the data
stored in database. An RFID access control system, as
previously stated, typically comprises of a tag, a reader with
an antenna, and an access control server. A radio frequency
energy field is continually emitted by the card reader. As a
result, when the card enters the field, the power from the RF
field energises a copper wire aerial inside the card. The wire
connects to the smart card chip included within the card.
The aerial powers the chip that contains the ID number as well
as any additional data on the card, such as a unique customer
or facility code. The reader is then given the ID number.
Finally, the reader transmits the card number to the access
control system, which determines whether the cardholder is
permitted to enter or not.
Background and Related Work
A significant amount of study has been done on RFID-based
security access control systems by a number of researchers. In
[13][14], an RFID-based campus access control system and an
automatic gate-opening system for automobiles were
suggested. The systems allow authorised users with valid tags
access and refuse access to unauthorised users with invalid
tags, but they are unable to alert security professionals through
SMS.
A kindergarten intelligence security system based on RFID
was suggested in [16]. It automates child security surveillance
and integrates with the kindergarten's current security
management system, which uses RFID tags that are sewn into
the students' uniforms. However, the technology is unable to
alert security professionals when a threat exists. an RFID
access control.
A study describing a security system employing radio
frequency identification technology to prevent asset theft was
published in [17]. The purpose was to develop a FRID-based
security system to prevent motorbike theft (Ultra high
frequency range; 905 – 925MHz). The technology alerts the
security guards for additional inquiry if the tag contains
inaccurate information. It can serve as a signal to trigger a
second circuit that will switch down the motorcycle's engine
and turn on Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) to film the
theft as it happens. To prevent disturbances, the system would
have worked better with SMS to the guards.
The purpose of this work is to develop an access control
system, which allows you to restrict and regulate access to
various areas while keeping information about all attempts to
enter the premises for further use of this information. It is
worth noting that the installation of access control systems
makes it possible to prohibit entry inside the lift and record
the information of the people accessing the lift along with the
time they entered the lift.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
F. Lourenco and C. Almeida [1], have developed an RFID-
based monitoring and access control system consisting of a
server, RFID terminal, camera, and an alert device. When the
transponder is detected, the terminal captures an image and
transmits the data which includes UID and photo to the server
through a TCP/IP connection. Then the server searches the
database for this query and sends the results back to the
terminal to allow or prohibit access. The system also monitors
whether a person tries to enter when the door is open without
completion of the authentication process and turns on the alert
device using web services. The performance of the system is
tested by integrating RFID with antennas covering a range of
10 cm and satisfactory results are obtained.
X. L. Meng, et. al [2], have developed an RFID-based
embedded security authentication system with a face
recognition structure. The system comprises two phases
namely registration and recognition. In the registration phase,
10 pictures of the user's face with different emotions are
collected and characteristics information is obtained with an
extraction algorithm. This information along with a UID is
written on the RFID tag. In the recognition phase, a camera
tracks the face, and an extraction algorithm returns the
characteristic information of the face in the picture. Then this
information is matched with the information already stored on
the tag for authentication. The entire processing is done on an
embedded ARM11 processor, S3C6410 instead of a computer
terminal/server which has resulted in a faster response time,
about 57ms with authentication accuracy of up to 86.5%. A
comparison of system performance was carried out with the
existing database systems and is found to have far better
response time with the same authentication accuracy.
D. L. Wu, et. [3] has described an access control system
based on RFID in conjunction with face recognition based on
a neural network. The system recognizes the face of the
person holding an RFID card and denies access if a person is
found to be unauthorized.
RBFNN (Radial basis function neural network) has been used
for learning the face of authorized persons. PCA which stands
for Principal component analysis has been used for extracting
the features from the image and linear discriminant analysis in
short LDA for refining these features. The network is trained
with a localized generalization error model (L-GEM) for
enhancing its generalization capabilities. Experimental results
have shown that the proposed system can improve the security
of RFID access control.
Dilip Mathuria et al. [4] implemented a biometric-based
elevator controller using a field programmable gate array
(FPGA), a kind of Programmable Logic Device (PLD) IC.
The programmer can use PLDs in a variety of ways.
Additionally, it enables the programmer to connect numerous
digital logic circuits of varying complexity levels and sizes.
Programmable logic elements and customizable linkages for
joining logic blocks make up an FPGA. They are typically
used to do certain simple combinational operations as well as
simple logic operations. In the proposed article, the authors
used FPGA to create a biometric-based elevator controller that
was more dependable and cost-effective. Platform with FPGA
for SoCs by employing hardware acceleration for the
computationally expensive picture pre-processing activities
and image buffer management, the use of the hardware-
software co-design technique results in speed performance. In
the future, errors may be decreased and the system can be
made more dependable by improving the quality of the vein
fingerprint picture.
required modifications to the system in areas like identifying
the criminals who are blacklisted in a particular area. Another
one is in the banking to provide security, based on facial
recognition, and can also keep track of account holders record
that who is accessing them. In this way, they can enhance the
proposed system efficiently by making some modifications
according to requirements.
Tejas Kanada et. a proposed an IoT-based Automated
Elevator System that uses QR (Quick Response code) [6]
which has a web application to reduce manual work. By using
this technology people can access the lifts through their
mobile devices and by simply entering the floor number in it
they can reach their location. For implementing this they have
used several technologies such as Firebase cloud to manage
the web application database and the three most important
devices NodeMCU, Motor, and IR sensor.
Sushil S. Chavhan et.al, [18] proposed RFID based Library
Management System that would enable quick transaction flow
and simplify the handling of book issuance and return from
the library. Additionally, it is employed to determine fines
depending on how long books have been missing from the
library database.
III. METHODOLOGY
Figure 3 below represents the stages that are used for
determining the flow of progress. It was divided into two
different stages. In the first stage research related to
hardware components was done, where the hardware
components have been identified and integrated. In the
second stage research and information were collected
related to the project software. All the coding relevant
work was done in this stage. After that, integration and
simulation of hardware and software was carried out.
Lastly, Testing and Analysis was done where the project
was tested and all the data of the project was recorded.

K. Tarun Reddy et.al, proposed an Intelligent Door Lock

System with Face Recognition [5] that can be used for both
trespasser detection and also provide security for the house
with the help of alert messages sent to the owner. In their
system, the camera captures the sequence of images once the
object is detected in the defined area of the home premises
then it sends an automatic alert to the owner to take the
necessary actions. This face recognition system is
implemented based on standard Haar Cascade and they detect
and recognize the human face by using the OpenCV library on
the Arduino platform. Their system can be utilized by making

Figure 3: Project Methodology Flow Chart
Figure 4 below shows how the system will function
roughly. When the tag was detected by an antenna in the
RFID controller, it will send a signal to the NodeMCU and the
data is processed. If the data is valid, NodeMCU will send the
command to the h-bridge motor. Finally, the motor will send a
signal to open the flap to allow the user to push the level
button when the user is registered, else the entry will be
prohibited and the output is displayed on the LCD screen
saying "Sorry you are not allowed". The data of the user will
be stored in the database along with his/her access time.
Figure 4: RFID Elevator Access Control System Architecture
The system is made up of a NodeMCU, an RC522 RFID Module,
and RFID tags, h-bridge motor, LCD display. After each product
is purchased, the information is delivered to the webpage using
the ESP8266 WiFi module. The major functional unit of this
system is explained below.
NodeMCU
Espresso's ESP8266 is a Wi-Fi enabled system on chip (SoC)
module. It is mostly used to create IoT (Internet of Things)
embedded applications. It runs at 80 MHz on a 32-bit RISC CPU
based on the TensilicaXtensa L106 (or over clocked to 160
MHz). It features a boot ROM of 64 KB, instruction RAM of 64
KB, and data RAM of 96 KB , . External flash memory is
accessible through SPI.
The ESP8266 module is a low-cost standalone wireless
transceiver that may be utilised in IoT endpoint development.
The microcontroller must utilise a series of AT instructions to
connect with the ESP8266 module. The microcontroller talks
with the ESP8266-01 module via UART at the set Baud rate. As
seen in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5. Pin diagram of NodeMCU ESP8266
Smart Card
The information of a cardholder, is electronically stored in the
RFID cards or tags, which will contain only small pieces of
information about user such as their name, and registration
number. Users will be validated through smart card. In this case,
RFID-enabled tags are usually attached to ID cards.
Fig. 6. Smart Card
RFID Reader
RFID readers are used to read RFID tags' unique IDs. When
an RFID tag gets into range, the RFID reader scans its unique
ID and serially transmits it to the microcontroller or PC. RFID
readers are equipped with a transmitter and an antenna.
RFID systems are classified as active or passive based on how
they are powered and their range:
1. RFID active system
 RFID tags that are active have their own transmitter instrument panels. One way to utilize an LCD is with a
and power supply (Mostly battery operated). They generally NodeMCU microcontroller. By wiring an NodeMCU
have a read range of 60 feet to 300 feet and operate at 455 microcontroller to the pins of an LCD display it is possible to
MHz, 2.45 GHz, or 5.8 GHz (20 metres to 100 meters).
program the microcontroller to display a desired text string or
2. RFID passive system image on the screen.
Passive RFID tags lack a transmitter and merely
reflect energy (radio waves) from the RFID reader antenna.
They operate in the low frequency (125 KHz) and high
frequency (13 MHz) bands, with a restricted read range of up
to 1m.

Figure 9: LCD display (16x2)

Figure 7: RC522 RFID module
SOFTWARE TOOLS
L298N Dual H-Bridge Motor Drive
This dual bidirectional motor driver, is based on the very In order to implement the RFID based access control system
popular L298 Dual H-Bridge Motor Driver Integrated Circuit. we have exploited the following software: -
The circuit will allow you to easily and independently control
two motors of up to 2A each in both directions. It is ideal for Google Firebase
robotic applications and well suited for connection to a The Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted NoSQL
microcontroller requiring just a couple of control lines per database that lets you store and sync data between your users
motor. It can also be interfaced with simple manual switches, in real-time. Firebase is use for storing user’s data such as user
TTL logic gates, relays, etc. This board equipped with power name, registration number, access time, access permission.
LED indicators, on-board +5V regulator and protection
diodes. Algorithm Used
For checking whether the user accessing the lift is valid or
not we have used sequential search algorithm that has time
complexity of O(n).
Pseudo -code of sequential search: -
Valid_id_Search (a, n, id) // 'a' is the given array, 'n' is the
size of given array, 'id' is the employee id to be search
Step 1: set pos = -1
Step 2: set i = 1
Step 3: repeat step 4 while i <= n
Step 4: if a[i] == id
set pos = i
print "Name of employee and their employee id"
//In LCD display and send login data i.e. time, date
Figure 8: L298N Dual H-Bridge Motor Driver
and employee detail to firebase
go to step 6
[end of if]
16x2 LCD set i = i + 1
A liquid crystal display, or LCD, is a video display that utilizes [end of loop]
the light modulating properties of liquid crystals to display Step 5: if pos = -1
pictures or text on a screen. Since their invention in 1964, print " Sorry You are Not Allowed "
LCD screens have grown to be used in a very wide variety of [end of if]
applications, including computer monitors, televisions, and Step 6: exit
 IV. RESULT
Figure 10: Project Prototype
In Figure 10 we can see all the components are connected in
their respective ports and the LCD display also works
remarkably. All the components can be seen in this photo and
also, we can recognize them easily.
Figure 11: Welcome Message displayed on detecting valid tag
In Figure 11 we can see that the RFID reader detects the valid
RFID tag then the user name and employee ID gets displayed
on LCD screen. This is a sign of valid entry by the user. So
whenever a registered user tag is detected the LCD display
will show user name, employee id and a flap will get open so
that the user can push the level button to enter the lift.
Figure 12: Warning message displayed on detecting invalid
tag
In Figure 12 we can see that when the RFID reader detects a
different RFID tag that seems to be invalid then a warning
message is displayed on the LCD display saying "Sorry you
are not allowed" and the flap will not get open. Thus, when an
unregistered user is detected, the LCD display will show a
warning message.
Figure 13: Web page module
In figure 13 we can see web page module that is visible to
admin only and is helpful for generating report of the users
who have access lift at a particular date and time.

Figure 14: report generated after selecting date and clicking
on view button
Figure 14 shows the web page module that will display the
data about the users who have accessed the lift along with
their name, employee ID and access time. This report is
generated when the admin will select a particular date and
click on view option.
Accuracy and timing are the most important variables in
access control and personnel management. Every day,
hundreds of users should be able to use the authentication
system reliably and rapidly. Additionally, it's important to cut
waiting times during access control. Through testing and
observation, it was shown that reading mistakes and
processing times for RFID and QR code recognition were less
than those for biometric recognition.
The average processing time for QR codes was 1.4 seconds
per man, compared to 1.2 seconds for RFID cards.
Additionally, it has been shown that changing the location of
the QR code in relation to the QR scanner's light results in
variations in processing times. The downsides of biometrics
include substantially greater mistake rates and longer
detection times. They do, however, have several benefits, one
of which is that ID cards are not required to be carried. Due to
the necessity for a certain stance for proper detection,
biometric recognitions have often been found to take longer;
the processing time took two to four times longer than those
employing RFID or QR codes, as indicated in Table 1.
Additional time was required to establish the proper location
in the vein and fingerprint situations to prevent false positives.
For the camera to identify the iris or face with iris and face
recognition, the worker had to adjust the camera height or
bend his/her worker's, lengthening the process.
Technology Response time per person
(sec/man)
RFID 1.20
QR Code 1.40
Fingerprint 2.67
Iris 3.53
Face 5.05
Table 1: Response Time of Authentication Technology
Graph 1: Comparative analysis of different access control
systems
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
This work is about designing a Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) based Elevator Access Control System consisting of
RFID application NodeMCU, h-bridge motor and LCD
display. When the valid RFID tag was detected by an antenna
in the RFID reader, it will send a signal to the NodeMCU and
the data is processed. If the data is valid, NodeMCU will send
the command to the h-bridge motor. Finally, the motor will
send a signal to open the flap to allow the user to push the
level button also, the name and employee ID of the user will
be displayed on LCD screen, else the entry will be prohibited
and the output will be displayed on the LCD screen "Sorry
you are not allowed". The data of the user will be stored in the
database along with his/her access time for further
investigation. Using this system, it can increase the security in
the residential buildings, hospitals, educational institutions,
and so on. During peak time, this system can limit the
undesirable traffic flow by only allow the authorized staff and
patient to use the elevator. It is noted that the system response
time per person is 1.20 sec/per which comes out to be faster
than other available access control systems.
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