Innovative Solutions for the Automatic Payment of Car Parks

Abstract

In this paper we describe a solution for the payment of car parks based on different telecommunication technologies. The solution focuses both on street car parks, i.e. parks located along the streets or in the squares, and on closed car parks, i. e. parking areas and infrastructures enclosed by entrance and exit bars. This system has been studied in order to reduce the timing of payment operations and to improve the accuracy of parking fares and is based on different technological solutions using the following technologies: the GPS localization and GPRS connectivity, the UMTS connectivity on mobile phones, the RFID technology and the new short range Near Field Communication (NFC) telecommunication technology. The proposed system allows the user to park the car and then to communicate the time of the parking to a server in an automatic way. At the moment of car picking the user communicates the exact hour and the exact fare is calculated and automatically withdrawn. Together with the application for the user, also a mobile solution for traffic officers has been studied, to allow them to check whether someone is paying or not for a parked car, and an Internet site has been developed, to allow the users to interact with the system.