ASPIRE Project (Advanced Sensors and lightweight Programmable middleware for Innovative Rfid Enterprise applications) will change the current RFID deployment paradigm, through introducing and boosting a shift towards royalty-free RFID middleware, while also placing the middleware at the heart of RFID infrastructures. In this paradigm a great deal of an RFID's solution intelligence is place on the middleware, which is freely offered to end-users (particularly SMEs). Accordingly, the RFID middleware can integrate with low-cost hardware, as well as with legacy IT and networking infrastructures of the networked enterprise. To support this paradigm ASPIRE will develop and deliver a lightweight, royalty-free, programmable, privacy friendly, standards-compliant, scalable, integrated and intelligent middleware platform that will facilitate low-cost development and deployment of innovative fully automatic RFID solutions. The above attributes of this middleware platform can be analyzed as follows:

• Lightweight
• Programmable
• Intelligent
• Standards-Compliant
• Scalable
• Privacy-Friendly
• Integrated

ASPIRE will research and provide a radical change in the current RFID deployment paradigm through innovative, programmable, royalty-free, lighweight and privacy friendly middleware. This new middleware paradigm will be particular beneficial to European SME, which are nowadays experiencing significant cost-barriers to RFID deployment.