Montreal RFID-enabled Bike Project Picks Up Speed

Once the system is deployed, a user will be able to consult the city's bike-rental Web site to identify where the closest docking station is located, and how many bikes are available at that location. The system will enable the user to set up an account for repeated use—prepaying at a city office for a pass card with an embedded passive RFID tag designed by 8D Technologies. The pass card's unique ID number is then linked to that individual's account in the server.

To rent a bike, the user waves the pass card in front of a dock's RFID interrogator, awakening it (to reduce power consumption, the readers go into sleep mode immediately after a transaction). The reader then captures the card's unique ID number and transmits that number back to the server, which—if the number is approved—sends instructions to unlock the bicycle. The bike also has a similar passive tag attached to it, which sends the data to a second interrogator at the dock, thereby alerting the system that the bicycle is being removed. That bike and the customer's ID number are then linked together in the server.

Alain Ayotte

Alternatively, commuters could, at the time of the bike rental, pay as a "casual user" with a credit card at the station itself. Once the payment or pass card is accepted, the terminal generates a paper ticket with a three-digit number printed on it, that the user then punches into a keypad at the bike dock. The system unlocks the dock, and the reader awakens as the bike is removed, once more linking the user's identity (in this case, the three-digit number) and the specific bicycle.

Once finished, the user simply returns the bicycle to the most convenient station, and the interrogator at the dock again captures the bike tag's ID number, transmitting that data to the server to indicate that individual has returned a specific bike, and at which dock it is located.

Jean-Sébastien Bettez, who co-owns 8D with his sister and serves as the company's chief technical officer, describes the RFID hardware as proprietary. As such, he declines to reveal the frequency being used, or the ISO standard with which the system complies. It is, however, a passive system, he says, designed for a very short read range—about 1 to 3 centimeters (0.4 to 1.2 inches)—to avoid cross-reading the tags of other bikes parked in neighboring docks. Bicycles and docks are being provided by the city.