GPS based Attendance Management System with

RFID Technology

Abstract— The process of biometrics and manual attendance

The staff’s location will be retrieved from an internet
tracking is one of the highly regarded and researched for
modifications and improvement. The long and tediousness of the database so that the permission for viewing can be controlled
manual attendance calls for its modification to ease the entire via centralized database [1]. For confidentiality on user
process. As a result, we have proposed a smart geo-location access, authentication will be supported. Time-to-time
based real-time attendance tracking system which is refreshing will be conducted so that every change in the geo-
implemented on an android platform. Any organization has its location or change in fixed interval time value gets updated
specific location, which is fixed on the GPS. The staff’s location while using a radio frequency user identity card for tracking
is the key to the attendance management in our paper. For real- the precise location of the staff [9][6].
time tracking of the staff, RFID technology will be used. Unique
ID is provided to each staff member who will be scanned by the
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
RFID reader thus giving the actual time and location of the
employee. In this paper, we have proposed a unique integration This paper uses android platform to take attendance. The
of GPS and RFID technology for a smooth and precise device’s camera will be used as a sensor that will read the
attendance management system. barcode printed on the ID cards. The updated attendance list
is then uploaded to an online database and can also be saved
Keywords—GPS; RFID; Attendance Management System;
Advanced Web Application Systems.
as a file to be transferred to a PC later on.g the application to
run on the instructor’s existing Android mobile device.
Besides that, to prevent data loss, an online database will be
I. INTRODUCTION used especially to store the recorded student’s attendance.
To overcome the time-consuming process of the manual The system was successfully developed by following the
attendance systems, many proposed literature are made. client-server framework. There are a few paperless
These proposals have reduced the need for pen and paper attendance systems that have been developed but such
based systems. In this paper, we have proposed a smart geo- systems need to be equipped with either a computer or RFID
location based real-time attendance management system reader, resulting in additional cost for hardware and its
which is implemented on an android platform. This paper maintenance. With that in mind, we have aimed to address
proposes a unique integration of RFID and GPS for a smooth this issue by having a system with minimal hardware
and precise attendance management system [6][4]. Every
requirement and at the same time, enhancing the mobility
institution has a specific location, which can be evaluated by
aspect of the existing attendance systems [7].
the GPS [4]. From this GPS, the location of each staff can be
traced. This reduces the need for any biometric scanner or This paper presents the design methodology of a simple and
any other device which ultimately need immense amount of high real time Zigbee - biometric system for easy and time
expenditure [2][3][8][10][11]. Staff’s location can be traced saving attendance management using the finger prints of the
by GPS using Android smartphone [4]. Authentication and employees at any organization along with the employee
real-time attendance tracking can be done using RFID tags incoming and outgoing log maintenance. Firstly employee's
and readers [6]. This location tracing and RFID technology fingerprints are scanned by software and an identity number
are proposed as a key of real-time attendance tracking in our is allotted as their enrolment. During the attendance time
paper. when employees impress their fingerprints, against the
scanner, the system compares the new fingerprint patterns
In the recent days, attendance tracking and working hour and the connection between various points in the fingerprint
calculations is very essential for almost every institution. The with the enrolment database. But the serious problem which
app will be a GPS service based application which will help the paper causes is the physical damage thus causing errors.
us in locating the precise geological position of the staff Also the biometrics involves maintenance and cost of the
depending upon their recent location. hardware device needed [8].
There are some key points about the app:

Volume 5, Issue 01 Published by, www.ijert.org 1

The system will scan the barcode on the back of the student’s face detection such as Face geometry based methods,
card which represents their Identification Number to indicate Feature Invariant methods, Machine learning based methods
that they attend the program instead of getting the attendance [12].
list signed by the students. The Microsoft Excel file that
contains a list name of students can also be imported to the III. METHODOLOGY
system in order to create a list name that used for attendance The User authentication and location tracking is one of the
record which will save time instead of adding each student’s major factors in this proposed system. Every staff is
detail one by one. The scanner required for the proposed authenticated based on his/her unique user identification
paper is too costly to be implemented in an organizational number using RFID cards. This unique identification number
level [9]. In this paper, two applications of fingerprint is mostly a 10 digit number. The identification number along
biometric are proposed. An Access Control System (ACS) with other information is also saved in the employee device
prototype is demonstrated for person-specific door access, and also the administrator’s database. These cards will be
using a fingerprinting device. Another prototype of a used for the authentication and real time tracking of the staff.
Classroom Attendance Management System (CAMS) is At first employee has to install the required system APK files
developed that uses fingerprint as biometric feature for into their android device. Mobile location service has to be on
classroom attendance. Any physical changes in the scanned when the system was running. If mobile location service is
fingerprints will make this system dysfunctional. The CAMS off then the whole process will not go further. Mobile
consists of modules for database, web-user interface and location service helps to trace the employee location. When
views at multiple levels of access. Both systems are expected the staff enters the campus area, android device of the
to mitigate the shortcomings of alternative existing systems, employee is automatically connected to the office internet
and eliminate the possibilities of spoofing or proxy. These and a message is sent to the office sever with the employee id
systems store fingerprints along with the date/time-stamp for and local time of the device which is counted as login time of
each user. Fingerprints are stored dynamically in a database that employee. When employee leaves the office area, a
for computing the different statistics, e.g., month-wise or message is sent to the office server with employee id and
semester-wise trends in the case of CAMS. The CAMS can local time which is counted as logout time.
also provide a solution to the problem of late-coming [10]. Figure depicts the overall methodology of our proposed
This paper employs a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon system:
device to transmit a magic number necessary for proper
registration within the classroom. An attendance management
system is developed such that the students present in the class
can register their attendance by scanning their student ID
cards over not only the teacher’s terminal device but also
their own personal Android devices. This system solves the
problem with the conventional system that it took a long time
for all the students to scan their cards by a single terminal
device. In order to spoil cheating students who try to resister
their attendance illegally from outside the classroom, we
employ a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon device to
transmit a magic number necessary for proper registration
within the classroom. In order not to allow students to send
attendance from outside the classroom, we employ a beacon
device compliant with the Bluetooth low energy
specifications (referred to as BLE beacon) to transmit a
magic number to the Android devices within the classroom.
Requesting the magic number to be sent together with the
student ID, we can let only the students in the classroom to
send registration and can deter cheating students [11].
This system, which is based on face detection and recognition
algorithms, automatically detects the student when he enters
the class room and marks the attendance by recognizing him.
The main disadvantage of face recognition is its efficiency
and the cost needed for the implementation. A proper and
efficient face detection algorithm always enhances the
performance of face recognition systems. Various algorithms
are proposed for

Volume 5, Issue 01 Published by, www.ijert.org 2

 In our application, we have used GeoLocation API as [4] Shermin Sultana, Asma Enayet and Ishrat Jahan Mouri, “A smart,
supported by Google APIs 10 or higher which would allow location based time and attendance tracking system using android
the use of app in devices starting from Gingerbread itself application.” in International Journal of Computer Science,
Engineering and Information Technology (IJCSEIT), Vol. 5, No.1,
[13]. We have used an Apache Server with PHP & MySQL February 2015.
support for remote database use. The data transaction from or [5] Dania Eridani, Eko Didik Widianto, “Simulation of Attendance
to the database occurs with the help of PHP scripts and in the Application on Campusbased on RFID (Radio Frequency
Identifiation)” in Proc. of 2015 2nd Int. Conference on Information
form of JSON objects. The android end of the app handles Technology, Computer and Electrical Engineering (ICITACEE),
this JSON objects through HTTP clients. Locations are th
Indonesia, Oct 16-18 .
extracted from the device with the help of the GPS module [6] A. S. Tiwari, N. M. Ade, S. G. K. Sheikh, and N. R. Patel, “Optimized
available [1]. A form of passive GPS use, the device decides Design of Student Attendance System Using RFID", International
on the best content with the information available from Conference on Machine Learning, Electrical and Mechanical
Engineering (ICMLEME), pp 134-139, 2014.
different providers. This location based time and attendance [7] Siti Aisah Mohd Noor, Norliza Zaini, Mohd Fuad Abdul Latip, Nabilah
tracking system locates your position and logs your login and Hamzah, “Android-based Attendance Management System”, 2015
logout time. Every staff is authenticated based on his/her IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2015), 18 -
20 December 2015, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia.
unique user identification number using RFID cards[5]. As [8] Maddu Kamaraju, Penta Anil Kumar, “Wireless Fingerprint
the staff enters his campus area, the RFID system connects to Attendance Management System”, Electrical, Computer and
the internet and sends the staff id and local time to the server. Communication Technologies (ICECCT), 2015 IEEE International
Conference, 5-7 March 2015.
Then the server gets the local time and stores the information [9] A. A. Sulaiman, M. S. Abu Bakar, M. Z. H. Noor, S. A. C. Abdullah,
in a database. Again when staff leaves the office area, the “Easy Access Attendance Management System(EAMS)”, 2014 IEEE
system notifies the office server that the employee is leaving. 6th International Conference on Engineering Education, 9-10 Dec.
2014.
To run the whole system accurately it is important that both [10] Yash Mittal; Aishwary Varshney; Prachi Aggarwal; Kapil Matani; V.
the employee device and office server is in the same internet K. Mittal, “Fingerprint biometric based Access Control and Classroom
connection [1] . Attendance Management System”, India Conference (INDICON), 2015
Annual IEEE,17-20 Dec. 2015.
IV. FUTURE SCOPE [11] Shota Noguchi, Michitoshi Niibori, Erjing Zhou, Masaru Kamada,
Attendance management system is an evolutionary system. “Student Attendance Management System with Bluetooth Low Energy
Beacon and Android Devices”, 2015 18th International Conference on
As per our proposed paper, the accuracy from GPS and the Network-Based Information Systems, 2-4 Sept. 2015.
authenticity of the RFID technology makes the attendance [12] Shireesha Chintalapati, M.V. Raghunadh, “Automated Attendance
taking process secure and meticulous. Management System Based On Face Recognition Algorithms”,
Computational Intelligence and Computing Research (ICCIC), 2013
An extension to this technology can be done using any of IEEE International Conference, 26-28 Dec. 2013.
the face detection algorithms or using biometric scanner [13] Geolocation API cited from
devices. This way the administrator has close to a hundred https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/intro.
(Accessed on 2016, November, 2016).
percent accurate information of the staff. For operation and
handling a larger database, our system can be used to cope
with students’ data too.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper we discussed our proposed method of
attendance taking problem using GPS and as an additional
feature, the RFID technology. Location tracing and
attendance marking will be done by GPS enabled device of
the staff. This technology can also be used for authentication
and administration purposes. We are developing this
application in android platform but this system can be further
developed in other operating systems for future scope.

REFERENCES
[1] Kumbhar, A. A. Wanjara, K. S. Trivedi, D. H. Khairatkar, A. U.
Sharma, D. (2014). “Automate Attendance Monitoring System using
Android Platform.”, International Journal of Current Engineering and
Technology, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp1096-1099.
[2] M. B. Srinidhi and R. Roy, "A web enabled secured system for
attendance monitoring and real time location tracking using Biometric
and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology," in Computer
Communication and Informatics (ICCCI), 2015 International
Conference on, 2015, pp. 1-5.
[3] R. Basu, S. Das Adhikari, and P. Kundu, "A microcontroller based
integrated multifunction sensor using piezoresistive element." in
Control, Instrumentation, Energy and Communication (CIEC), 2014
International Conference on, 2014, pp. 115-121.

Volume 5, Issue 01 Published by, www.ijert.org 3