Smart Antenna System for Electronic Toll Collection with Vehicle Localization and Tracking using End Users' Smartphones with BLE

In this paper, a two-dimensional amplitude-monopulse smart antenna system is proposed to identify and localize smartphones connected with the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless standard, and being carried inside automobiles. The systems is applied for Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) of vehicles. The antenna topology is described and preliminary experimental results are reported, demonstrating the capacity to track vehicles in real time with low mean error and a spatial resolution below 1 meter, covering an area of 8 m x 8 m below the smart antenna system mounted on a 4.7 meter high ETC gateway. These performances seems to be sufficient to accurately distinguish between two adjacent lanes and to resolve standard vehicles sizes in two dimensions and real time, both in stop-and-go and free-toll operation modes. The proposed ETC architecture avoids the need of extra automated radio transponder devices, since the users’ own smartphone running the widespread BLE applications is sufficient, thus reducing the implementation cost, maintenance and scalability.