uID Center

A key aspect of uID technology is the terminal that supports communication between customers and the ubiquitous computing environment. We call this a ubiquitous communicator, or UC. Just as the name indicates, ubiquitous communicators are terminals designed with a rich array of communications functions for exchanges anywhere and anytime.

Multi-communication interface

First and foremost, they offer local-area communication for accessing the microchips that store ucodes, such as RFID tags or smart cards. In addition to this, other types of UC are available: models with RFID reading and writing functions; models supporting communication with smart cards based on ISO/IEC 14443; and models combining these features. In order to offer UCs that can read several types of tags and cards from multiple developers, the Ubiquitous ID Center is currently designing multimodal local-area communicators with support for several communication methods in a single unit.
Secondly, UCs incorporate functions for wide-area network (WAN) connection to obtain information about the ucodes in objects as well as additional services associated with the objects. For example, communicators support connections with one or more of these: W-CDMA 3G mobile networks; public telephone networks (for PHS and other devices); WLANs via IEEE 802.11b; or personal-area networks (PANs) via Bluetooth.

ucode information services available via the multi-communication interface

The Ubiquitous ID Center provides a link to information services for the objects in which ucodes are embedded via both local-area means and WANs.

1. Phase 1: A UC is positioned over an RFID tag in which a ucode is stored. As the UC is brought near, it uses local-area communication functions to read the ucode.
2. Phase 2: The UC sends this ucode information to the Ubiquitous ID Center's ucode Resolution Server to find out to where the information about the object to which the ucode is attached. The information might be available over a WAN, and the UC may be able to obtain a website address on the Internet.
3. Phase 3: The UC searches the product information database of the address obtained to retrieve information about the object.
Besides enabling data to be retrieved, the database function allows data to be recorded as well.

If the RFID has enough memory capacity for data about the object, the UC can obtain this data directly from the RFID. And with the product information database, object information can be stored in the RFID or in the database.

Seamless Communication

In addition, UCs that provide two interfaces for WAN communication go beyond simply offering two means of communication; by seamlessly switching between the two methods these UCs offer optimal and uninterrupted communication. For example, let's consider a UC equipped with an IEEE 802.11b WLAN interface and a W-CDMA 3G mobile phone interface. During indoor use, the UC communicates via WLAN, but if users go outside the UC maintains the session while automatically switching to W-CDMA. Users continue using the UC without even noticing the automatic change in interface offered by this seamless communication technology.