The fare payment system for public transportation has developed from coins, paper tickets, magnetic strips, and pre-paid cards to new technologies such as Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC).Most fare payment systems are a fusion of NFC and mobile payment.As the latest fare payment system, After Sun Care the studies on gate-free technology without tag action are in progress.The gate-free system has several advantages, such as improving user convenience, eliminating congestion, and preventing the spread of infectious diseases.
We introduce a gate-free system using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology as the next-generation fare payment system for public transportation.We propose a smart block structure for a gate-free system and analyze the antenna for this structure.A directional antenna is required for location detection of multiple mobile terminals in the gate-free zone, and an antenna to satisfy the requirements is analyzed.A stacked air-gap patch array that satisfies BLE performance and has high directivity has been proposed within the limited smart block size.
To compensate for the low Garbage Cans/Bins bandwidth of the patch antenna, an air gap is added between the patch radiator and the ground, and the antenna gain is increased by applying a stacked patch on the patch radiator.Based on the proposed antenna and smart block, a gate-free system testbed is installed, and the testing results are presented.