NFC Enabled Smart Postal System

This paper presents a smart postal application, where the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is applied into the traditional postal system in order to create a new mailing experience. The newly invented smart postal system is capable of facilitating the mail procedure, thus improving the efficiency of the traditional postal system. Moreover by attaching a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag into an envelop, a stamp or a parcel package, it permits users to combine digital media with a physical object, which creates a cross-media tangible mailing experience. The smart postal system consists of a local mobile postal application running on an NFC enabled mobile handheld and a network subsystem. The network subsystem comprises a smart postal agent service, a user profile service, a RFID correlation service and a payment service, where the smart postal agent service is the key invented network component. This is a loosely coupled network architecture that allows the functions of each network component to be split and re-arranged to fit into any specific existing system.