3/13/2024 11:19:32 PM     Moonwell

Using RFID Technology to Expand Parking Availability

Increasing vehicle numbers, insufficient parking capacity, and security concerns represent a significant challenge for owners of workplace parking areas, private lots, and residential or apartment building garages. The necessity of tracking entries and exits, managing visitor vehicles, subscribers, restricted permissions, and bans makes tight control of parking operations indispensable. Yet confusion persists over which technology—RFID Parking Access System or License Plate Recognition System—is more reliable, cost-effective, or simply better. To begin answering these questions, let’s take a brief look at how each system works.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has been in widespread use for around ten years and is now common in many parking facilities, especially on highways. An RFID parking-access system relies on three core components—reader, tag, and antenna—that communicate via radio waves:

Reader: Installed at the gate, it emits radio signals to detect a tag on the vehicle’s windshield and converts the tag’s response into a digital code.

Tag: Affixed to the vehicle, it stores the car’s identifying information.

Antenna: Enables the bidirectional coupling between reader and tag.

In typical parking deployments you’ll find a UHF RFID antenna, a UHF reader, and UHF tags working together. Under European Union rules, these antennas operate in the 868.6–868.7 MHz band, and in Turkey the KET directive ensures full compliance with those EU frequency allocations.