Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) based attendance system is an automatic attendance system that consists of a micro-controller, RFID reader, RFID tag, and a database as its primary components. RFID tag serves as a unique identification card for each student. Roll call in educational institutions and offices consumes a considerable amount of time and resources. Schools can overcome this inefficiency and address the problem of adopting RFID based attendance.
The main functionality of this is to verify the identity or attendance of the user who needs to access it through RFID. For this purpose, the authorized person is given an RFID card. This card contains an integrated circuit that is used for storing, processing information through modulating, and demodulating the radio frequency signal that is being transmitted. Thus, the data stored in this card is referred to as the identification or attendance of the person. Once, the person places the card in front of the RFID card reader, it reads the data and verifies it with that data present in the system and if it matches then it displays a message as a valid entry and allows accessing the device or else displays invalid and denies the access.
Features of RFID based Attendance system include the capability to store maximum records in real-time, in-built communication interface for interpretation and processing of data, auto attendance of students as soon as the student enters the school premise,tracking, monitoring, and identification of students in school premises and in GPRS-enabled school buses in real-time,generation of attendance reports daily,keeping records of late arrival and early departure, time summary,storage of complete attendance data and easy transmission of information from the RFID tag to central back end management systems.
Some of the advantages of RFID based attendance systems are that proxy attendance can be caught, hard copy paperwork of attendance sheets is reduced and data can be stored for a long time as compared to attendance sheets. This system is fully automated and it does not require any human interaction except setting the initial time setting. LCD and PC interface both are provided with RFID based attendance systems. This gives the benefit of viewing attendance on the spot on LCD or remotely from the computer.