RFID Aids Fueling for Canadian Bus Operator

Jan 10, 2012Coast Mountain Bus Co. (CMBC), located in British Columbia, Canada, recently completed a pilot of an RFID-based automated fuel-management system at one of its fueling stations that authenticates each of the company's busses, allows drivers to fill up their vehicles with the appropriate fuel and stores data regarding fuelings and engine performance, including idle times and miles traveled. Based on that pilot's success, the company is now installing the RFID tags and readers at six fueling locations, in order to manage the fueling of its entire bus fleet. The system includes RFID tags and readers supplied by TagMaster North America, integrated with the FuelZone Transit fuel-management system provided by Montreal automated solutions firm Coencorp.

By April of this year, the bus company reports, each vehicle will carry a semi-passive 2.4 MHz TagMaster RFID tag that transmits its unique ID number to a reader at the station, prompting the release of locks for specific dispensers of fuel and other products (such as transmission or windshield-washer fluid) appropriate for that particular vehicle. At the same time, a Coencorp device known as an engine diagnostic port, or Vehicle Data Unit (VDU), uses its built-in omnidirectional RF transceiver to transmit data regarding the engine's use history and mileage, and a record is stored in the FuelZone software, along with the vehicle's fueling history. Although the VDU broadcasts a unique ID number, the footprint of its omnidirectional signal is too wide for the system to identify the specific fuel lane in which a bus is parked.

According to Derek Leach, CMBC's maintenance planning manager, the bus company plans to be using RFID at all six of its fueling stations in the British Columbia area by April, for its approximately 300 buses.

Coencorp has been providing fuel-management solutions to transit companies, as well as other firms maintaining fleets of vehicles, for approximately two decades, says Ali Tavassoli, Coencorp's president—and one of its clients for many of those years has been CMBC. The Coencorp system provides access to fuel for drivers after they input a password or swipe a card, and also stores a record of that transaction. With the TagMaster RFID technology, however, that process can be automated, indicating to the system any time that a bus enters within read range of the readers installed at the fueling station. In addition, once a vehicle stops at the fueling lane, within about 300 feet of the FuelZone receiver, data pertaining to its engine functionality could be loaded wirelessly into Coencorp's software solution.

Several years ago, Coast Mountain Bus Co. had installed a system involving active RFID tags to identify buses arriving at a fueling station, which CMBC then incorporated into the FuelZone system. However, the company found that readers too often picked signals from tags on buses in neighboring fueling lanes, thereby making RFID reads unreliable.

To remedy this situation, Coencorp provided CMBC with TagMaster's semi-passive 2.4 MHz tags and readers, compliant with a proprietary air-interface protocol, for the bus company to pilot. Each TagMaster LR-6 reader comes with an adjustable reader lobe so that it can be set to only interrogate tags within the perimeters of a specific lane in which that reader is installed. The heavy-duty tags not only are designed to sustain weather and daily washing, but also have read ranges that can be adjusted in such a way that stray reads from neighboring lanes are eliminated. Regardless of how many times they are read, the tag's life remains seven years, according to Heather Hinds, TagMaster North America's director of sales and marketing. The tag's battery is used to keep the integrated circuit awake at all times, she explains, so that when the tag comes within range of a reader's signal, it can use the signal's power to respond by transmitting its unique identifier.

Coencorp's FuelZone Transit system consists of a dedicated FuelZone receiver, known as the "controller," that receives all data from the TagMaster readers and Coencorp engine-diagnostic equipment, and forwards that data to the FuelZone software, where it can then be interpreted and displayed for CMBC's management.

To capture data about each engine, Coencorp provides its own vehicle data unit (VDU), which is wired to that bus' engine computer in order to measure performance levels. The VDU transmits that information directly to the controller when it comes within read range of it—that is, within approximately 300 feet. However, the RFID functionality alerts the system of the bus' arrival—even if it does not pull up to a fueling lane, and is simply passing the fueling area, a detail that is of interest to CMBC as well.

For the RFID functionality, a TagMaster tag is attached to the top front of every bus. A TagMaster reader, mounted on the ceiling above each lane, interrogates the tag and sends that data via a wired connection to the controller, which forwards the information along to the FuelZone Transit server.

When a bus enters a fueling lane, its tag transmits its unique ID number to the reader located at that lane, which is then forwarded to the FuelZone Transit server, where the software correlates the bus ID with data about the vehicle itself, then unlocks fluid dispensers at the specific station at which the bus is waiting. At the same time, the VDU transmits a unique ID number, as well as engine data indicating the vehicle's health—such as engine idle time since last fueling, in addition to mileage—then transmits that data directly to a reader built into the controller on the wall, at a frequency of 2.4 GHz.

In 2005, CMBC began employing RFID to track the fare boxes installed on its buses (see Bus Co. Keeps Tabs on Fare Boxes). That system is slated to be discontinued by the first quarter of 2013, however, as the bus company eliminates the cash-payment system and moves to a smart-card ridership solution in which passengers scan a card upon entering a bus, rather than placing money into a box.

CMBC intends to open a new maintenance facility for its buses in 2015, says Jeff Vogstad, CMBC's project manager, and hopes to leverage the tags on the vehicles to make the maintenance-receiving process more efficient. For example, a TagMaster reader installed at that facility could read the tag of an arriving bus, prompting an LCD screen mounted in the work area to display each bus' ID number and details for the maintenance staff.