The Application of LoRa Module and Smart Card for A Large-Scale Area Attendance Monitoring System

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging device type that shifts our traditional way of living into high technology lifestyle. IoT enables interconnection between electronic peripherals and sensor devices through internet. Thus, a flawless data communication method plays an important role to develop an IoT system. This study proposes an attendance monitoring system for use in large-scale areas that are difficult to be integrated by LAN using LoRa modular system. By integrating LoRa technology into the IoT system, a wide-range data transmission performance issue can be resolved with the utilization of smart card technology to develop a module for recording attendance portably. To evaluate the data retrieval effectiveness, a technique for value measurement of RSSI, SNR, and LoRa packet loss has been applied in indoor and outdoor experiments at a campus in Indonesia. The results show the average RSSI value of -81.4 in the indoor experiment, which has the best value close to 0. For outdoors, the data transmission distance is only able to reach 133.17 m in the case of the standard LoRa device configurations applied, for instance, the use of antennas for sending and receiving data on LoRa. Another influencing factor is the placement of the receiver and sender of LoRa at a location that is blocked by buildings. The use of RFID technology is employed to record employee attendance, which comprises components such as a microcontroller, RFID reader, and LCD to display information at that time. Writing data directly onto RFID eliminates the need to connect to a server to obtain employee information, providing an advantage in constructing infrastructure. Although data is written and read directly, security is still enforced by utilizing the authentication key contained in the RFID.