Applications of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology with eMaintenance cloud for railway system

Abstract

Radio frequency identification (RFID) helps automatic identification of objects using radio waves. This is not a new technology instead decades old and has been used during the World War II, when it was used by allied ground forces to track German bombers. It is a technology for wireless communication between a reader and a transponder/tag. This technology permits the transfer of data to the most diverse objects without the need for physical contact and uses intelligent barcodes to track items and have been successfully applied in military, security, healthcare, real time location tracking, vehicle identification and other areas. This paper is based on applications of RFID technology with eMaintenance cloud for railway system to analyze and visualize data of trains for the cost effective maintenance planning. Further, cloud computing is an emerging research area that can be utilised for acquiring an effective and efficient information logistics. Specifically, the widespread use of RFID will enable wagons to be tracked leading to better resource utilization, lower freight costs, and better maintenance. Therefore, it helps to provide greater control of the train carriages, making it easier to plan resources. However, RFID is a powerful tool that can help to improve industry proficiency, implementing this technology is not easy. Furthermore, operating RFID systems can be a challenging process. Thus, this paper is based on the application of RFID in the context of railway operation.