RFID to Reduce Highway Accidents: DSRC

Filed in archive Privacy and Security on April 15, 2004

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration plans to use RFID technology for highway safety. It's all part of a proposed new system that will alert drivers of road hazards and advise when vehicle speed is too great to go around that upcoming curve.

The FHA has asked four contractors -- Mark IV Industries, Raytheon, SIRIT and TransCore -- to jointly develop a subset of RFID called dedicated short-range communications (DSRC). DSRC will use a dedicated radio frequency spectrum from 5.850 to 5.925 GHz (the 5.9 GHz band).

According to RFID Journal:

"DSRC will use a modulation type that breaks data down into small parts and transmits them in parallel within a wide channel, whereas traditional RFID sends everything in series over a narrow channel. This basic difference makes it possible for DSRC to offer a much higher data transmission speed than RFID does."

Another key difference is that DSRC will be akin to a peer-to-peer arrangement, meaning transmissions can originate from either side. In traditional RFID, one side is a tag and the other a reader.

Why is this important? Well, it turns out that many of the uses of DSRC are intended to be vehicle to vehicle.

Of course, many reading this last sentence will be cynically resigned or alarmed. Already, over at Slashdot, they are convinced that this new technology will be used by law enforcement for catching speeders and criminals, and tracking the movements of ordinary citizens.