I. INTRODUCTION
While the quality of life rises in this modern world, shopping behavior holds a special place in people's lives as a very natural and important act. Before proceeding to the main research, we have conducted a survey through SNSasking the shopping mall customers about what are the inconveniences they feel at the shopping malls. The objectof such this survey was to provide a better service to the future customers [1].
After analyzing in Fig. 1, we have found that the twomost inconvenient experiences were "crowded sales floors " and "uncomfortable burdensome services by the salesclerks". Based on such a result, our team attempted to finda solution onto which a suitable IT technology can begrafted. Thus, we have designed a server which is based on the server-client structure and offers the NFC tag-baseditem classification function. Our design will generate morepromotional effects by showing the customers productadvertisements and information selectively as it canidentify the needs of customers through the NFC tags. Ourultimate goal is to construct an exclusive IoT server for the huge space in a shopping mall where customers and products interact each other.
Fig. 1. The Inconveniences Customers Experience at the Shopping Malls.
After analyzing [Fig. 1], we have found that the two mostinconvenient experiences were "crowded sales floors" and "uncomfortable burdensome services by the sales clerks".Based on such a result, our team attempted to find a solution onto which a suitable IT technology can be grafted. Thus, we have designed a server which is based on the server-client structure and offers the NFC tag-based item classification function. Our design will generate morepromotional effects by showing the customers productadvertisements and information selectively as it canidentify the needs of customers through the NFC tags. Ourultimate goal is to construct an exclusive IoT server for the huge space in a shopping mall where customers and products interact each other.
II. RELATED RESEARCH
The NFC function can be regarded as one of the domainsin the RFID technologies. Its main difference with existing RFID technology is that the NFC technology allows bi-directional communications. For the RFID communication, one side has to have a reader that can read information provided on the tag hold by the other side and interpret them. On the other hand, the NFC technology provides both functions so that it can offer more services. The commonband width used for the NFC technology is 13.56MHz andits transfer rate is 42Kbps.
Meanwhile, Cloth simulations are usually performed to assess the effect of geometrical variation or physicalaspects. In most cases, the former draws faster results without considering the physical properties of the cloth being used. This makes it difficult to reproduce the dynamics of the clothes [1]-[3]. The latter allows morerealistic simulation in understanding the dynamics and provides better accuracy as the cloth material’s structural properties will be considered for the simulation. In other words, both the law of dynamics and the law of mechanics are based on discrete dynamics, fluid dynamics, orelasticity theories, all of which determine the cloth behaviorand its interaction with external environments [4]-[5]. Various methods often categorized as either a continuousphysics-based or a discrete physics-based approach have been studied and proposed till now, emphasizing realism or computational efficiency [6]. The former introduces arigorous, strict representation of a cloth in accordance with the continuum mechanics often adopting either a finiteelement (FE) or a finite difference model to produce asolution [7-9]. Meanwhile, by using the continuous Lagrange equations to represent the displacements fromequilibrium positions, Terozopoulos et al. [7] modeled asurface deformation of a cloth, whereas Eischen et al. [10]employed the nonlinear shell theory and Li and Volkov [11]depicted the image of a cloth immersed in a quasistationary viscous fluid in terms of fluid dynamics. For this, anonlinear FE method was applied to derive the systemequations. This method aimed to produce various types of physical models for computer animation, which are effective in generating the behaviors instead of modeling acertain deformable cloth with high degree of accuracy. This method allowed the qualitative reproduction of similarbehaviors without requiring a large number of computations [12]-[13].
A wireless identification system, NFC, allows a reader to identify the contents within a smart card or a tag and isinstalled in most of the currently available smartphones. Also, the NFC has become one of the core technologies for wireless communication-based transactions and it is expected that it will be used more widely in the futurecommunication-based systems or infrastructures than any other short-distance communication technologies currently available, including Bluetooth or Zigbee [14]-[17].
Also, the technical reviews for the introduction of an RFID system are being actively conducted and the requirements for the system are becoming more diverse. Thus, a method which is able to enhance the RFID technology has beendeveloped along with an efficient technical means ofintegrating various types of systems [18]-[20]. Meanwhile, a wide range of research on a tag identification algorith mor a multi-reader operating technics in a dense readerenvironment is being conducted to improve the identification performance of the passive readers as well.
Table 1. Application services of NFC.
In order to identify multiple tags in a dense readerenvironment, a technology which can efficiently control the interference between tags, or between reader and tags should be developed as well as a communication protocol which allows multiple readers to operate simultaneously. An efficient multi-tag identification algorithm has beendeveloped for this reason. [21]-[25].
The most significant benefit of the NFC technology is the fact that most of the current smart phones have the NFC function built in already so that various forms of services are being created and offered. Table 1 shows some of the services being offered.
III. PROBLEMS OF SHOPPING MALLS
AND ANALYSIS
In most cases, shopping malls have rather complex and crowded sales floors as there are thousands of products oneach differently organized sales floor. For this reason, we will try to inform the customers about the location of acertain product with proposed system. Meanwhile, the other problem involves some burdensome services by the salesclerks. There are many customers who would just like tosimply browse around. The proposed system will providethe product information only when the customers need them.
The users of this system will be those who are activemainly inside of the shopping mall.
Manager: Shopping mall mangers - take inventory and be in charge of pricing.
Customer: Those who actually purchase products. Buyproduct and demand product information.
Seller: Those who actually sell the products at the mall. Provide price information or calculate the prices.
Therefore, the diagram of use cases proposed in this study is shown in Fig. 2 and the entire system structure is represented in Fig. 3.
Fig. 2. A Diagram of Use Cases.
Fig. 3. An Entire Structure Map.
IV. DESIGN OF THE PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY FOR THE SMART
SHOPPING MALL USING NFC
Figure 4 shows the Server-Client structure. The serverson each floor need to communicate each other to find the products not currently displayed or stocked on theirrespective floors so that they solve the problem by establishing a P2P-type server network.
Fig. 4. A Server-Client Structure.
In this network, all the involved servers equally assumethe role of both the Server and the Client in Fig. 5. Each server delivers a product information request to all thenodes located on the P2P network and the respective servers respond to the request by sending a reply to the node thathas made the request. Since central server is not required for this system, unnecessary waste of resources can bereduced.
Fig. 5. The P2P Structure between Servers.
Fig. 6 shows the design of the server proposed in this study. Class Main ( ), Class Server ( ), Class Client (socket) and Class Admin ( ) will be implemented here. Also, Fig. 7 shows a Design of Smart Phone (Client).
Fig. 6. A Design of Smart Shopping Mall Server.
Fig. 7. A Design of Smart Phone (Client).
The design of a computation device that uses the NFCreader dissimilar to the popular bar-code type devices is shown in Fig. 8 Class Connect( ), Class ReadNFC( ), and Class Main( ) will be implemented here.
Fig. 8. A Design of Sales/Calculation Device.
Ⅴ. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This study introduces a server system developed exclusively for the smart shopping mall or smart stores. Basically, the system has a server-client structure and its primary functions are to categorize or promote/advertise the products efficiently and provide necessary information to the customers in real time while they are enjoying shopping. The system’s NFC function allows the reader to read the contents of the NFC tags attached to each product to provide relevant information related to it. Such a systemoffers a more comfortable shopping experience for the customers who prefer a self-oriented shopping practice in a convenient environment, which is considered as the currentor future trend in off-line shopping. Both Android and iOScan be adopted for the system as an OS whereas Java and Object-C are preferable for them, respectively, for thereason that these OS’s and languages are still most suitable for system development due to their flexibility and compatibility, as well as their popularity. However, as it was considered that the former (Android with Java) was better for the system to be built in terms of costs and testenvironment, an Android-based application will be developed first and then an iOS-based one next. Both will be published after obtaining copyright.
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