Travel tracker

As airports begin to integrate new security measures such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to track people and luggage, they will need a wireless network capable of dealing with vast amounts of information.

Such a system is set to be installed and trialled at Heathrow's terminal five, where an 'intelligent gate' will demonstrate, among other things, accurate passenger position estimation through active and passive RFID and radio over fibre (RoF) where the RFID is part of the boarding pass and/or passport.

Predictions suggest a terminal-wide network would have to support 10 million sources of information, from individual tracking units for passengers and staff to technology such as biometric gates. It is believed the system will have to deal with a peak data rate of 100Gbit/s as it tracks people, luggage, aircraft and all the information generated by those sources.

Researchers from the universities of

,

and

have teamed up with 10 companies on The INtelligent Airport (TINA) project.