Investigating RFID for Linear Asset Management

® The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the information presented herein. This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the Department of Transportation University Transportation Centers Program, in the interest of information exchange. A linear asset is defined as an asset whose length plays a critical role in its maintenance. Such assets include road, pipeline, and railroad track. For instance, major features of a roadway asset include traffic lights, number of lanes, speed limit, guardrail, and highway billboards. Linear assets along with their features are hard to physically access and therefore inventory information files that were captured previously may be inaccurate. To address this problem, some of transportation agencies are investigating technologies that will assist in solving this asset inventory problem. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology that uses communication via radio waves to exchange data between a reader and an electronic tag attached to an object for the purpose of identification and tracking. The primary focus of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing RFID as a means of gathering, verifying, and storing information for linear assets. The study investigates confluence factors that affect the performance of RFID. The factors investigated in this study incorporate driving speed, tag location on signposts, delineators, and guardrails. The study tested the active RF code type of RFID technology. The results indicate that for the three (10mph, 20mph, 30mph) vehicle speeds tested, tag readability decreased with an increase in speed.