Transportation

Reading it as an identifier is straightforward; using the FASTag payment rails at your own gate is not. FASTag is a passive UHF EPC Gen2 tag (ISO/IEC 18000-63) on India's 865-868 MHz band, so a standard UHF reader at your depot will see its ID, and you can enrol that ID against a vehicle in your own database. Debiting the wallet is a separate matter — that clearing sits with the issuing bank and NPCI, and is reportedly open only to registered operators as of 2026, so confirm the current position with your bank before you plan around it. Two gaps remain either way: visitors and hired vehicles are not enrolled in your scheme, and a tag can be replaced or blacklisted without telling you. For a fleet you control, your own tamper-evident windshield tag keeps enrolment and revocation in your hands. Our explainer at /blog/how-fastag-works-rfid/ covers the mechanics.

There is no list price; a depot gate is quoted against a written specification. The cost drivers are the number of lanes, whether each lane needs separate entry and exit reads, the antenna count, and the barrier interface — a dry-contact relay to the boom, or Wiegand into an access-control panel you already have. A four-port reader such as the IHZ4 can cover several lanes or weighbridge positions on one unit and one network drop, which usually works out lower per lane than a single-port reader at each position, though only a quote against your layout will show it. Tags are the recurring line: fleet size plus visitors, and whether you want printing, serial numbers and encoding. Outdoor enclosures, cable runs, surge protection and spares are what first estimates most often miss. Send us lane count, gate widths, vehicle types and fleet size; /blog/rfid-tender-boq-specification-india/ sets out what to list.

Vehicle speed at a gate is rarely the limiting factor. A passive UHF read completes in a fraction of a second, and the IHZ4's datasheet quotes over 700 tag reads per second, so a vehicle crossing the antenna's field gets many read attempts rather than one. Range from a fixed reader is typically up to roughly 10-15 m in clear conditions, shorter through coated glass or against a metal body, and always environment-dependent — treat brochure numbers as a starting point, not a promise. What caps throughput in practice is the barrier cycle time and the approach geometry. The failure you are likelier to meet is a read that is too eager rather than too weak: the tag on the vehicle waiting behind, or in the next lane, logged as though it had passed. That is why a gate read is usually tuned down and constrained rather than boosted. Trial it with the actual vehicles and windscreen types in your fleet, with a queue present, before you fix quantities.

Ask for two things, and ask for evidence rather than a brochure claim. First, WPC approval for the reader and antenna on 865-868 MHz, which is India's licence-exempt UHF RFID allocation under the WPC's 2021 short-range-device rules (G.S.R. 853(E)), made in supersession of the 865-867 MHz RFID rules of 2005 — worth confirming with the WPC before you freeze a tender specification. Second, BIS certification, which is what Indian institutional buyers most often ask a manufacturer to produce; whether it is mandatory for a particular product category is a question for BIS, so check rather than assume. Identium is BIS certified, and our UHF readers and antennas are WPC-approved for India's licence-exempt UHF RFID band. One trap: some readers arrive configured for 902-928 MHz, the US FCC band, rather than for India — ask for the band configuration as shipped, not the brochure figure. Our guide at /blog/bis-wpc-compliance-rfid-india-buyers-guide/ walks through the paperwork.

Two paths, and most depots use both. Electrically, the reader can drive the barrier itself through a dry-contact relay output, or send Wiegand to an access-control panel already on the gate — confirm that interface on the specific model you choose, because it varies across readers. For records, the reader sits on the network and your application either receives posted reads or polls it; the IHZ4, for instance, is specified with RS-232, RS-485, Wiegand, Ethernet and USB, plus Java, .NET and C++ APIs and a Direct Post API, and it reports RSSI and which antenna port saw the tag, so your software can tell entry from exit. Every Identium reader ships with an SDK, a demo application and source code, so your developer or integrator starts from working code rather than a protocol document. Settle which side initiates that integration before you order.