Access Control System Integrated with RFID and NFC-Enabled Smartphone Technologies

As smartphone technology has evolved, several wireless communication technologies have emerged and those on the market have improved. The Near Field Communication technology has spread significantly among payment, ticketing, tourism, healthcare and access control applications. In this context, this research aims to develop an access control system, based on microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, MQTT communication protocol and a supervisor interface, which can offer real-time recordings, management and security services for hospital or clinical environment. The developed prototype is compatible with RFID and NFC technologies, making it simple to manage users physical credential with RFID tags or virtual credentials with a smartphone. A smartphone app was developed to manage the NFC communication between the smartphone and prototype. A pilot study was carried out in laboratory and validated over a period of 1 year with approximately 11,500 records. Based on the implemented topology, the system can migrate to extranet applications with several RFID/NFC Modules for online remote recordings of several healthcare establishments in real time.