The Sticky Question – India adopts a new RFID standard. What does this actually mean?

August 18, 2010

By: Marc Obrowski

RFID, DSCR, active, passive ETC. If this is confusing to you it means you are quite normal. The terms are often enough used incorrectly or at least ambiguously in the media.

Indian Tollways gives you some clarity.

RFID means simply Radio Frequency Identification. This covers the DSCR (Dedicated Short-Range Communications) standard currently deployed in India, like at the Delhi –Gurgaon expressway. It covers also smart price tags at supermarkets and a way to collect toll electronically using small passive transponders.

It is those new passive transponders that people and media have in mind when talking about RFID.

They are in fact small stickers that attach to the inside of the windscreen with all the electronics in a thin layer.

The industry promise is to provide them much cheaper than our current tags. They can’t be swapped between vehicles (important to prevent fraud in closed toll systems) and they don’t need a battery.

On the downside they don’t beep and the technology is less proven than DSCR tags. Also changing from DSCR to passive RFID means installing new ETC radio equipment at your toll lanes (they can be in addition to existing DSCR gear as the two technologies work in different frequency bands).

RFID DSCR tag	Passive RFID sticker tag
Active transponders, needs battery (lasting between 5 and 10 years)	No battery needed
In a hard case	Circuit in sticker foil
Changing tags between vehicles can be prevented by a mechanism that sets a flag in the tag when it is removed from the bracket. The flag is read out at the tolling point. (This is an optional extra)	Tags can not be removed from the windscreen without destroying them
5.9 GHz	915 MHz
Reading from tag and writing on tag	Reading from tag and writing on tag
Tag beeps when detected in the toll lane	No beep
Price around Rn1000	Under Rn 200 (this is an estimate, there is no established Indian market price yet)

Written by ITW Editor · Filed Under RFID

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Written by ITW Editor · Filed Under Leisure

My Favourite Fraud

August 18, 2010

By: Marc Obrowski

The trickiest (and funniest) toll collector fraud I have ever seen can not happen in India. Sometimes I wish it could. You could make a film of it. If Bollywood were in the Philippines I am sure this would already have happened. Only problem: this story has a really bad ending. Let me explain.

My favourite toll audit tool is statistical analysis. The idea is simple: Fraud is an irregularity. If you look at the right data in the right way this irregularity will somehow show in your graphs and tables. I like it because it’s geek work. It’s only you and data. No people skills needed.

My alarm bells ring when I look at some data of the North Luzon Expressway in the Philippines:

Analysis number 1: Number of exempt (i.e. free) transactions per toll collector. Employee number 54312 had more than 10 times the average. And more than twice as the next collector in the ranking. Can’t be. Let’s fire 54312. Wait… let’s do some more checks first.

Analysis number 2: Number of exempt transactions by toll plaza and by toll lane. Lane 2 of plaza X has more than any other lane. Can’t be. Let’s fire lane 2. Wait a minute…

Analysis number 3: Who worked in plaza X? It was mainly 54312 and four others. They all had more exempt transactions than collectors in other plazas. But when 54312 was on duty (always in lane 2) it was rampant. Almost all exempts where recorded in that lane, almost none in the other 3. There are thus three factors: the plaza, the lane and the collector.

Now I hate it. Sifting through data alone won’t do it. I actually have to go out and talk to people. Geek time over.

I ended up talking to many. And here are the results.

Plaza X is where the patrol vehicle depot is. The lion share of exempts is with those cars. But why are suddenly all our patrol cars recorded only at lane 2 when 54312 is on duty? If I weren’t such a geek it would have dawned on me the moment I met collector 54312.

54312 goes by the name of Juanita de la Cruz (name changed for her protection from readers like you). And she is devastatingly pretty. The patrollers knew that her lane was number 2. Do I need to explain more? There was no fraud after all.

Oh, yes, the bad ending. Here it comes: Juanita married Francisco, a handsome patroller.

This is a true story. It happened in 2004.

Written by ITW Editor · Filed Under Guest Editorial, Marc Obrowski