An RFID based Toll Payment System for Green World
Muhammad Wasim Raad and Tarek R. Sheltami
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Keywords: RFID, IOT, GHG, Sensors.
Abstract: As the urbanization and fast-i.mproving quality of life raises the energy consumption, over 72% of carbon
emissions come from cities. With the current petrol-powered cars on the road, there are large amounts of
CO2 emissions, which pollute the atmosphere resulting in what is called global warming. At the same time,
the advent in technology has brought up emerging technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID),
wireless sensor networks, and Internet of Things (IOT), which found their way in tracking everything
particularly in supply chain and manufacturing. In this paper, the research focuses on the state-of -the art
technologies used to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions in traffic congested areas. It is based on
developing a prototype of a wireless sensor module based on RFID technology to mitigate the CO2
footprint in the environment interfaced to an access control toll payment system in parking lots.
1 INTRODUCTION
As people are increasingly aware of the relevance of
carbon emission cuts worldwide, the global efforts
to reduce carbon emissions are on the increase.
Since the Kyoto protocol was adopted in 1997,
international organizations have been making lots of
efforts to cut down carbon emission through various
international pacts such as Bali road Map in 2007
and Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in
2009.
Currently, the urban population accounts to
about 50% of the entire global population and
consumes 60% to 80% of energy. The urban
population is expected to reach 60% of the entire
global population and to consume 73% of energy in
2030. Urban carbon emission reduction projects and
researches in city transportations, energy systems
and other areas are required to cope with the
accelerating urbanization (Choi, 2012). Many cities
in US, Japan and Europe have already launched eco-
friendly urban projects to cope with climate changes.
The issue of traffic congestion as a direct result of
urbanization has been widely investigated (Elkin,
2010)(Levinson, 2010). The general acceptance of
the nearly universal consensus on climate change,
promotes a low-carbon scenario regarding
motivating local economy towards less carbon
emissions. (Wang, 2011)(Chang, 2011)(Lin, 2010).
Toll payment in transit fare & parking has been used
for some time utilizing smart cards to reduce traffic
congestion. (Ranki, 2000), but rarely this is used in
conjunction with eco-friendly environment.
Lately, environmental policies began to prohibit
the use of toxic & harmful substances in the
automotive industry complying with the requirement
of eco-friendly environment. In this context, the
automotive industry has been investigating the
possible use of emerging technologies like RFID
and the IOT, to ensure proper tracking of each
component in the automotive industry and record all
material information and recyclability/recoverability
information of each component for vehicle emission
inspection, to ensure that all cars can be examined
for their engine emissions continually (Vong, 2011)..
RFID has been widely used in many fields as a
wireless automatic identification and capture
(AIDC) technology. It is emerging as the hottest
information tracing technology in supply chain
management. RFID has the potential to enable
machines to identify objects, understand their status,
and communicate and take action if necessary, to
establish “real time awareness”. Identification
technologies such as RFID, wireless sensor
technologies, allow objects to provide information
about their environment. Smart technologies that
allow everyday objects to “think and interact”
establish an IOT that connects and enables
intelligent interaction between objects around the
world. Identification technologies such as RFID,
77
Raad M. and R. Sheltami T..
An RFID based Toll Payment System for Green World.
DOI: 10.5220/0004407900770081
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems (SMARTGREENS-2013), pages 77-81
ISBN: 978-989-8565-55-6
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
allow each object to have a unique identifier that can
be read at a distance allowing automatic, real-time
identification and tracking of individual objects
(Finkenzeller, 2010)(Khoo, 2010).
In this paper, we present a novel toll payment
solution eco-friendly environmental, named green
(IOT) for an urban community using active RFID
interfaced with environmental sensors. The solution
was developed in KFUPM RFID lab as a proof of
concept targeted to be used as a toll payment to be
placed on the windshield of a car. Since RFID tags
are used nowadays everywhere for toll payment and
transit & parking fares, this could constitute an ideal
infrastructure to use the toll payment in conjunction
with the eco-friendly or green environment
requirements in an urban city. Whenever a car stops
at the gate of a parking lot or a toll payment gate, the
active RFID tag with the CO & CO2 sensor placed
under the windshield of a car sends a measured level
of gas concentration wirelessly to the interrogator
installed at the gate to add an extra fee to the toll
payment or transit fare in case the gas emission level
does not comply with the environmental
requirements.
2 ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
There are currently several enabling technologies for
IOT and mainly categorized into wired and wireless
aspects. For the wired part, we use environmental
sensors and an I/O board with built-in controller.
Wireless technologies such as radio frequency
identification (RFID) or wireless sensor network
(WSN) can be considered. Taking into consideration
the goal of our application where only few kilobytes
of information (sensor data plus the tag ID) are
retrieved from the active tag under the windshield of
the car, RFID may be more cost effective solution.
2.2 RFID TAGS
Since there are five classes of RFID tags (9), the
appropriate RFID tags have to be chosen based on
the requirements of the target application. For
passive RFID, the communication range is limited
by two factors:
1) The need for very strong signals to be received
by the tag to power the tag, limiting the reader to
tag range.
2) The small amount of power available for a tag to
respond to the reader, limiting the tag to reader
range.
Active tags have built in battery which powers a
microchip or additional sensors. Active RFID, with
operating ranges of 100 meters or more, is able to
collect thousands of tags from a single reader;
additionally, tags can be in motion at more than 100
mph and still be accurately and reliably collected.
Detail properties of the RFID tags are shown in
table1. Table2 summarizes the technical differences
of passive and active RFID Technologies, and
Table3 shows the functional capabilities of passive
and active RFID technologies.
We have chosen to use the RF code active tag
with dry contact for it is convenient and easy to
interface with environmental sensors and for its long
life battery of (5-7 years). In addition it has a long
range of more than 200 feet and it does not suffer
from interference compared to passive tags. Once
the active tag is connected, it will monitor and report
the open and closed state of the sensor. The active
tag is configured to beacon the sensor once every 10
seconds.
Table 1: EPC RFID Tag Classes.
Class 0 Passive Read only
Class 1 Passive Read only write once
Class 2 Passive 65 KB read-write
Class 3 Semi-Passive
65 KB read-write with
built-in battery
Class 4 Active Built-in battery
Class 5 Active
Communicates with
other class 5 tags and
devices
2.2 Environmental Sensors
Among the environmental sensors available, we
have selected the CO & CO2 sensors since they are
directly related with global warming.
The CO2 Gas Sensor Module is designed to allow a
microcontroller to determine when a preset Carbon
Dioxide gas level has been reached or exceeded.
Interfacing with this sensor is done through a 4-pin
SIP header and requires two I/O pins from the host
microcontroller. The sensor module is intended to
provide a means of comparing gas sources and being
able to set an alarm limit when the source becomes
excessive.
SMARTGREENS2013-2ndInternationalConferenceonSmartGridsandGreenITSystems
78
Table 2: Technical differences between passive and active
RFID technologies.
Active RFID Passive RFID
Communication
Range
Long range
(100 m or
more)
Short or very short
range (3 m or less)
Multi-Tag
Collection
Collects
1000’s of
tags over a
7 acre
region from
a single
reader
Collects 20
tags
moving at
more than
100 mph
Collects up to a
few hundred
tags within 3
meters from a
single reader.
Collects 20
tags moving at
3 mph or
slower
Sensor
Capability
Ability to
continuously
monitor and
record sensor
input;
data/time
stamp for
sensor events
Ability to read and
transfer sensor
values only when
tag is powered by
a reader; no
date/time stamp
Data Storage
Large
read/write data
storage (128
KB) with
sophisticated
data search
and access
capabilities
available
Small read/write
data storage (e.g.
128 bytes)
3 SYSTEM DESIGN
The proposed system is based on a dry contact active
RFID system consisting of a robust Motorolla 433
Mhz active reader & tags with a detectable range of
up to 70 meters. The RFID reader or interrogator is
installed at the toll payment gate, and connected
through TCP/IP to a server. The RFID tag has a dry
contact interface directly interface able to any
environmental sensor. In our design and to serve the
purpose of research, we have chosen a CO2 gas
sensor, which has a built-in alarm as shown in figure
1. The R130 Dry Contact Tag features two twisted
wires that enable connection to a dry contact device.
Once connected, the R130 will monitor and report
the open and closed states of the device. While the
connected device is in either an open or closed state
the tag will beacon the dry contact status once every
10 seconds. When the dry contact state changes the
tag will immediately broadcast three beacons at 0.5
seconds apart with the new dry contact status then
return to beaconing once every 10 seconds.
Figure 1: The Wireless CO2 sensor.
Figure 2: The CO2 emission Toll payment RFID.
A Vellman I/O board with built-in microcontroller
and 5 digital input channels and 8 digital output in
addition to two analogue inputs and two analogue
outputs with 8 bit resolution has been used to cut
down development cycle of the research.
We propose the wireless sensor node to be placed
under the windshield of a car or a van to measure the
amount of CO2 or other GHG gas emissions at toll
payments gates. Since in an urban city the number of
toll payment gates & parking lots are constantly
increasing, we found it feasible to add another level
of intelligence to the existing toll payment
congestion fee by measuring the level of gas
emission. Whenever the level of gas emission is
above the permissible level specified by the Kyoto
protocol, the RFID tag sends the amount of
measurement or a command to the reader to take the
proper action. Moreover, a fee will be deducted
named the CO2 fee. The overall system has been
successfully tested in the lab. See figure 2 for the toll
payment access control system.
AnRFIDbasedTollPaymentSystemforGreenWorld
79
4 DISCUSSION
As about 60% of global population is expected to
reside in cities in 2030, the GHG emission is a
critical issue for urban residents. Based on the fact
that urban development cause climate changes, but
also offer solutions to such problems, it is necessary
to establish urban strategies to reduce GHG
emissions. The EU has the goal of reducing CO2
emissions by 20% within the next decade. The
transportation sector is responsible for a large
proportion of these emissions because of its reliance
on fossil fuel. While the very nature of the industry
means the introduction of alternative energy sources
is not an immediately useful option, an alternative
may be found in improving logistics. While the
present global climate debate is to a large extent
focused on mechanical solutions like electric cars
and wind turbines, such technology is expensive and
time-consuming to implement. Better IT-based
logistics and planning tools with a focus on the
environment may be an attractive alternative, since
they do not need large investments, fast to
implement, and the underlying techniques are
already mature.
Technologies, such as RFID, have been widely
used to track material & equipment in the supply
chain. They have their impact in the automotive
industry in real-time reporting of faults and
continuous monitoring of material & components
used in cars to make sure they complies with the
green environment requirements. RFID integrated
with environmental sensors like CO2 sensor not only
it motivates car owners to test their car engine
frequently to keep the CO2 level down by enforcing
a carbon toll payment tax, but also adds an
additional value by what we call preventive
maintenance. In preventive maintenance, RFID tags
can be attached to major components in the car.
These tags have the capability to store maintenance
history thereby providing prompt inspections and
more informed on the spot repair decisions to cut
down the unnecessary journeys and mitigate failure
rate of the car engine. Carbon tax has been used
widely in different countries as a policy to mitigate
CO2 emission (Shankar, 2006). Nevertheless, the
biggest challenge though is to enforce these
measures by governments due to the high cost
involved. The benefits of the actions taken by
governments outweigh the costs.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the feasibility of a wireless sensor
based system based on RFID for mitigating CO2
footprint in environment in a toll payment context
has been studied. A prototype based on active RFID
and environmental sensors has been built and tested.
The prototype can be easily mounted on the
windshield of cars for constant monitoring of CO2
emissions. Hence, car owners are forced to run
regular examination for their car engine. RFID
offers lots of benefits by connecting car components
through the IOT, thus cutting down the failure rate
of car engine and mitigating CO2 footprint.
Research is ongoing on studying implementation
issues in addition to cost and legislations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge the support of
King Fahd University Petroleum & Minerals for its
support.
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