Electronic Toll Collection(ETC) and emission control System

[jeyapalan]

1 INTRODUCTION

Currently, there are close to 525 toll plazas, operating on national and state highways in India. Over 20,000 vehicles cross these plazas daily, each queuing up for approximately 5-10 minutes awaiting their turn to pay the toll fare. Each vehicle consumes almost 0.5-1.0 litre of fuel in an hour. Collectively, these vehicles spend around 1,800-3,600 hours at toll plazas, which accounts for a daily wastage of Rs. 30-60 million and annually, Rs. 10 billion.

Our project aims to reduce this resource wastage by introducing “Electronic toll collection” system. In real application, the electronic toll collection system, based on radio frequency identification (RFID); it comprises a wireless on-board unit (OBU) fitted into a vehicle and a stationary roadside unit (RSU) placed at the toll plaza. The OBU is, by design, compatible at toll stations across the country. The RSU can sense an OBU even as a vehicle moves at 50 km per hour, and automatically deducts toll from the owner's pre-paid toll account with a central clearing-house. The automated collection promises to eliminate waiting time and ease congestion at toll plazas. The system is also equipped to detect defaults in toll collection which occur either due to insufficient funds in a toll account or a faulty OBU by activating an alarm to inform authorities, without stopping the flow in traffic.

Electronic toll collection system relies on four major components:

• automated vehicle identification(AVI),
• automated vehicle classification,
• And violation enforcement.

In our project we use RFID system to identify the vehicle, after identification of the vehicle the ETC debits the toll charge automatically from the owner’s account and sends an SMS which informs the transaction to the owner.

Apart from ETC, our project also consists of a vehicle emission control system. Using Labview, our system will verify whether the identified vehicle is in order with the emission control; based on that the vehicle will be allowed either to continue or will be sent for emission control.

2 OUR GOAL

By choosing this project, our goal is to reduce wastage of resources (fuel, time, money), to discourage the excessive use of polluting engines, to prevent the usage of unauthorized vehicle and ultimately to reduce bribe and corruption at toll gates.

3 THE CHALLENGE

The challenges of this project are:

• To identify a vehicle using RFID technology.

4  PROJECT OUTLINE

As shown in the figure, we use Labview to process the input data and give proper output, and also for the whole ETC and emission control system.

Vehicle authentication:

For vehicle authentication we use RFID technology which is the use of a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data from a tag attached to the vehicle for automatic identification and tracking.

The stationary roadside unit (RSU) receives the on-board unit (OBU) frequency, and compares the received data with the database. The on-board unit has a unique identity which serves to identify the vehicle.

Automatic toll taxation:

After the authentication of the vehicle, its identity is compared with the database of the Electronic Toll Collection System. If the identity matches with the data base, then the vehicle is allowed to pass through the barrier and necessary toll fee (depending on the category of the vehicle, its weight and its emission) is deducted from the vehicle’s account. If database does not contain any data about the vehicle is taken to a different lane where it can be registered. The database also checks for lost vehicles information, if the vehicle crossing the toll gate is found to be lost/stolen it is not allowed to pass through the Toll gate barrier. Electronic Toll Collection System allows recharging the account and notifies the vehicle owner if the vehicle’s balance is low.

An SMS notification is sent to the vehicle owner at every toll.

Emission control:

A record of emission control is also kept in the database. A limit period for emission checking is prefixed; if the vehicle has crossed that period, it is taken to a different lane for emission checking. The emission parameters are updated in the database, and the emission tax will be based on it.

Labview interface

All the data from the RSU, IR sensors, and weighting sensor are fed to the Labview software using a DAQ card. Labview software processes all the inputs, and imports the needed information from the database, and gives an output by reducing the user’s ETC balance, and by sending a SMS notifying the user of the transaction.

4 LIMITATIONS

In vehicle authentication system, the possible limitations and challenges are:

• Due to the vehicle’s speed, the RSU may not have enough time to communicate with the OBU.
• Lack of coordination between countries or states. Vehicles from other states or country may not be identified.

In automatic toll taxation, the challenge is the synchronization of the databases.

In emission control, the challenge is to calculate the exact volume of air pollutant emitted by the vehicle.

5 APPLICATIONS

This system finds many applications, among which:

• This system finds an application in toll gate taxation, allowing different taxation to different types of cars according depending on different parameters. Thus assigning high taxes for high polluting and heavy cars, and low taxes for low polluting cars.
• Vehicle localization: if a vehicle is stolen, it can be roughly localised using the RFID data.

6 HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

National Instruments LabVIEW software is used for processing the sensor data and for giving the corresponding output based on the program.

A DAQ card is used for interfacing the different inputs and outputs to the Labview platform.

An RFID transponder consisting of an on-board unit (OBU) and an road-side unit (RSU), to identify the vehicle.

Weighting sensors are used to calculate the weight of the vehicle.

IR sensors are used to calculate the length of the vehicle. The toll fee is fixed based on the vehicle weight and length, and its emission rate.

7 ESTIMATED TIMEFRAMES

We are expecting that we need around 6 weeks part time work to complete our project. Some time we may complete our project shorter than six week period.

8 CONCLUSION

One of the most important aspects of technology nowadays is the development of sustainable technologies that do not alter the needs of future generations, save energy and time.

Our project contributes in these aspects, by saving time to road users, by making them save fuel, and by regulating the pollution and the usage of vehicles at toll gates; as shown it makes the toll taxation payment easier by automating the tolling process.

8 FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

As future development:

• Optical character recognition (OCR) can be used, which is an electronic conversion of scanned images into machine-encoded text. This will make the road users save money of buying an RFID tag; it may also be used to identify the length of the vehicle, thus avoiding the use of sensor.
• Usage of emission sensor, which will calculate the amount of pollution and thus charge the tax accordingly.

10 REFERENCES

[1]  www.wikipedia.org, Wikipedia free encyclopaedia.

[2] http://institute.lanl.gov, Los Alamos national library.

Team Members

K.Gajan ; Y.Thushyanthan; Senga Ndimubanzi Boris; Souradeep Mukherjee; M.Naveen

College : Sona College of Technology