Improvement in the Detection of Passengers in Public Transport Systems by Using UHF RFID

Abstract

Automatic control for recognition of passengers in public transport systems has been a crucial point in mobility systems towards enhancements in passengers’ flow and overall system efficiency. It allows the recognition of passengers’ origins and destinations, so that the specific demands for specific periods of the day can be assessed for an effective system planning. However, this automatic control has to be efficient and smooth so that it does not incur in additional overhead to the entire system. This work presents a study on a passenger recognition system for public transport through the use of RFID technology using EPC Gen2 standard. Preliminary tests were performed with two different forms of voluntary order to evaluate different types of tags. These tests first evaluated the height and angle of the antennas using 1, 2, 3 and 4 antennas in the tag recognition. From the results of these first tests, a set up was defined and then applied to a second evaluation now with 10 volunteers, which evaluated repeatability and effectiveness of the system for recognition. Moreover, additional laboratory-based tests were performed to access the effectiveness of the proposed recognition system. The acquired results provide a basis for evaluate the suitability and applicability of the proposed system.