Zigbee Wireless Vehicular Identification and Authentication System

Abstract

We propose a Zigbee technology based wireless vehicle identification and driver authentication system consisting of a central database of authorized vehicles, Zigbee RF Vehicle tags, RF tag Reader and RF tag Writer. Zigbee is based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard for Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) that is being used in many commercial and research applications today where it has become an attractive solution for low power and low cost applications. The RF Tag is placed in a vehicle that will be approaching the entrance of an establishment, the RF tag reader is used to communicate with the RF tags and the RF tag writer is used to program or write to the RF tags. Vehicle identification is performed by reading the serial number in the RF tag and driver authentication is done by means of a password entered through the RF tag. Both information are read through the wireless 802.15.4 interface via the RF tag reader and sent to a central database through Ethernet for verification. In order to enhance the data security, 128 bit Advance Encryption Standard (AES) was implemented in the Zigbee interface. This paper is based on a prototype development of the proposed system and it presents hardware and firmware aspects of the design. A vehicle identification device profile was defined and developed using the Microchip Zigbee protocol stack. Hardware implementation of Zigbee RF tags, reader and writer was carried out using Microchip micro-controller PIC18F4620, Chipcon CC2420 RF transceiver and an inverted F-type PCB antenna which was used with the transceiver. The designed application functions in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. The physical layer of the Zigbee stack is implemented in the CC2420 transceiver and the Microcontroller implements the other layers including the application layers of the Zigbee stack. The system was successfully demonstrated at Ratmalana Air-force base with a maximum omni-directional range of 7 meters.