Mobile Enabled RFID-GPS Based Bus Tracking System

Abstract

Public transportation in many countries is being used as a means of transport for travelling and accordingly people would prefer these public transportation to be scheduled properly, on time and the frequency be adequately fixed for commuters to make good use of it. It has been found that quite an amount of research work has been carried out, by way of using RFID technology in the public transportation systems towards the tracking of passengers when they board and exit buses. In addition research has also been carried out in using GPS towards the tracking of buses along with RFID technology at traffic lights, bus stops, intersections etc and also displaying expected arrival times on LCD screen at bus stops along with their current positions. Taking these aspects into consideration, an intelligent mobile bus tracking system for the Jamaican Urban Transport Corporation has been proposed and validated as a case study. The proposed system also enables commuters towards tracking the bus of their choice and also knowing their expected arrival times. So taking the above aspects into consideration, in this research the authors have proposed and validated on how control center of a bus company could track the location of a bus based on information received from RFID reader and GPS Transmitter positioned at various Bus stops and in the Bus and accordingly the expected time of arrival calculated for displaying the information on commuter's handset via Gmap. The implementation of the bus tracking scheme has been carried out using Adobe Flash player and Java.