RFID Helps Portuguese Trash Collector Clean Up Its Operations

Under the new system, an Alien M-tag, compliant with the EPC Gen 2 standard, is encased in a rugged housing and mounted to the windshield of each of the 400 trucks that use the facility, via an adhesive backing. An Alien ALR-8800 passive UHF reader is mounted near the gate at the facility's entrance, with another interrogator mounted near the site's exit gate. When a truck approaches, the reader collects the tag ID and forwards it to software linked to gate controllers. If the tag ID matches an ID in a database of vehicles authorized to use the facility—maintained and updated in the software—the gate opens.

Once inside the facility, the driver proceeds to a dump and weigh station, where another mounted Alien reader collects the tag ID and transmits that information to the main software, linked to the scale. The weight of the load is determined after the truck dumps the garbage and returns to the scale, after which the software automatically generates an invoice, based on the load's weight, for the municipality to which the truck's tag ID is associated.

Historically, active RFID tags, with their longer read ranges, have been the preferred RFID technology for identifying and tracking vehicles within large, open facilities such as LIPOR's disposal center (see RFID Helps Take Out the Trash). CreativeSystems, however, found that passive tag technology met the agency's needs, since the trucks did not need to be tracked in real time as they moved through the facility, but only at particular areas on site where they would be certain to pass within the read range of fixed-position interrogators. Aside from being significantly less expensive than active tags, passive tags also require less maintenance, since they contain no batteries that would require replacement upon approaching the end of their lifespan.

In fact, Crocker notes, the use of passive tags for vehicle tracking is gaining real momentum. LIPOR, he says, is just one of roughly 20 end users in the EMEA marketplace that has begun using Alien's passive RFID tags for vehicle identification applications.