Applications and Opportunities for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology in Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Case Study

Abstract

RFID technology has been known to be one of the noteworthy converging technologies of the 20th century. The technology can be applied in many fields. However, this paper focuses on the application of the technology in the transportation industry. The application of RFID in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) is gaining popularity with its widespread use in the field of toll management and the management of the overall transport sector. There are many RFID applications available in the market such as RFID contactless smart card commonly used in buses and LRTs, Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI), Electronic Toll Collection (ETC), Smart Parking, and congestion zone pricing. In Mashhad, the second largest city of Iran, the My Card is used not only in Public transit but also in car parking, and soon in taxis and also other public municipality Services. Driven by such success stories, deployment of RFID technology in Mashhad is thus encouraged. This work has been carried out with a purpose to demonstrate benefits of the RFID technology in developing countries and its application in transport sector. This paper explores existing technology and surveys a set of successful implementations in Mashhad for Intelligent transportation applications .The integration considerations and challenges facing RFID deployment are also discussed.