New RFID Reader Targets Mining and Transportation in India

Published: July 22, 2024
  • Indian technology company ID Tech Solutions has released its IDT-87 UHF RFID reader to capture tag reads in outdoor, industrial settings such as mine or factory gates and weigh bridges.
  • The reader is the latest in the company’s solutions, which are in use by groups like KEC International, banks and the Indian railway.

Indian waste management companies, mining firms and mills have begun using a new UHF RFID reader specifically designed for the challenges of industrial settings and harsh weather.

ID Tech Solution’s IDT-87 UHF IN Integrated Reader is in use for vehicle management, weight scale verification, as well as warehouse, employee and student tracking, said Anshrah Neyaz, the company’s senior technical consultant.

A 20-year-old, full solutions RFID company in Delhi National Capitol Region (NCR), ID Tech provides what it calls 360-degrees of an RFID system— from reader and antenna hardware to the software that manages RFID tag reads, as well as integration and installation.

RFID technology use in India has been growing, often fueled by subsidies from the federal government. The federal FASTag system, for instance, tracks millions of vehicles across the county as well as banks and industrial sites.

Why the Use of RFID?

One challenge in this part of the world that RFID can address is related to verifying materials being picked up or delivered from mining sites. ID Tech provides solutions to digitize data at weigh bridges and industrial exits where heavy vehicles pass, loaded with high value materials.

When the dispatching, weighing and identification of vehicles is done manually, the potential for error or fraud is high. That makes it hard for companies that release their products to customers to ensure proper and efficient billing.

ID Tech offers an RFID-based, unmanned weigh-bridge centering system. The company’s reader is integrated with an IoT controller and positioning sensors. With each transaction, the reader captures RFID tags on vehicle windshields to automatically identify a passive UHF RFID tagged vehicle that is entering the scale system. This, company officials assert, minimizes wait times, ensures precise weights and controls pilferage or theft.

Moving Vehicles and Challenging Environments

Standard RFID readers pose some challenges at such sites, due to the harsh conditions in which they need to operate, as well as performance requirements with moving vehicles, and deployment complexities at a variety of sites, according to Neyaz. In the latter case, standard RFID readers often come with an internal portal, and four or eight ports for an array of readers—more than is needed at a single company gate or scale.

When it comes to weather, India is subject to everything from extreme heat (Delhi reached 121 degrees Fahrenheit in June) to heavy rains and wind. So the company designed its new reader with IP68 rating intended to protect the reader from the five seasons of India: spring, summer, fall, winter and monsoon.

The reader leverages an Impinj E710 chip, and its engineers designed the antenna and algorithms for automatic vehicle identification applications, by reducing the risk of stray reads across vehicle lanes, or by tailgating vehicles. The reader is sized at 298 millimeters square, and 105 millimeters in depth.

Single External Antenna for Ease of Deployment

In developing the reader, “we kept various things in mind including the Indian environment and the need for high accuracy so that all of that the [government and billing related] certifications are done accordingly,” said Neyaz.

The readers need to be easily deployed, despite the fact that the outdoor settings and configurations vary widely. Often a lane of vehicles requires the reader to be mounted overhead, with a single additional antenna nearby to broaden the coverage area and ensure reliability.

Because it is reading tags on moving vehicles, the reader needed to include visual and audible verification that the tag read was properly accomplished as well. So it comes with a large LED light and buzzer that sounds with each successful interrogation. In that way the vehicle driver as well as gate or weighbridge operator has confirmation that data has been captured  and the vehicle can proceed.

Additionally, the reader comes with Power over Ethernet (PoE) for connectivity to a backend system and power supply.

Capturing User Memory

The reader is designed to capture data from the three memory banks of a tag including EPC number, TID and user memory. Data on the user memory could include payment or transaction information that could be required by the National Highways Authority of India.

Typically, the reader can accomplish approximately 25 to 28 meters but in the practical case scenario it reads at a range up to 16 or 18 meters.

ID Tech is now working with new clients to deploy the reader at additional sites. Thus far there are hundreds of the readers in use across India, Neyaz said. Because many companies are subsidized by the government, or are government entities, the necessary paperwork and certification process means deployments may take more planning and deployment time.

Meeting Growing Demand in India

RFID deployments across India have been on the upswing, traditionally in industrial, transit and financial sectors for which the government has provided funding for technology use—including livestock identification and railways. However, the retail industry is now deploying the systems for inventory management, self-checkout, warehouse management and other features as well.

And while ID Tech launched with solutions such as RFID-based smart cards for identification and payment, as well as access control, it has a large presence in industrial settings as well as the growing retail environment.

KEC International Civil Contractor

One existing customer is Indian power company KEC International Limited that provides engineering, procurement and construction work for civil projects as well as railways, cables solar and smart infrastructure. The company operates in India as well as Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.

Traditionally asset management and audits had required a manual process, on paper, and required signatures from authorized managers. As a result, operations could be delayed.

KEC deployed the ID Tech solution that leveraged ruggedized UHF RFID tags with ID Tech’s software that manages data related to each asset, its location and status. The tags include an acrylic label designed for IT asset tracking as well as the tech company’s Ferric Series tag that is mounted on metal surfaces such as heavy machinery. Its strip tags are used for non-metallic items such as furniture.

ROI on RFID

As a result of the solution, KEC reported that it had reduced labor costs and improved operation efficiency as well as ensuring assets could be properly accounted for and didn’t go missing.

Additionally, ID Tech Solutions systems are in use by DCB Bank and the Reserve Bank of India to manage the financial institutes’ files that serve as collateral and gold loans documents. The company provides fixed readers at portals into the file storage areas, overhead readers, as well as handheld readers and UHF RFID tags.

Indian Railways network uses the technology to track its rail cars as they move around the country. The solution can identify rolling stock at speeds up to 200 kilometers per hour.

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About the Author: Claire Swedberg