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Autopass (stylized autoPASS) is an electronic toll collection system used in
Norway. It allows collecting road tolls automatically from cars. It uses
electronic radio transmitters and receivers operating at 5.8 GHz (MD5885)
supplied by the Norwegian companies Q-Free and Fenrits.
Contents
The road sign which indicates an automatic toll collection lane
The system involves the installation of a DSRC based radio transponder on the
windscreen of a vehicle, and to sign an agreement with one of the toll
collection companies in Norway. Tolls are charged at toll plazas as before, but
cars can drive past in over 100 km/h. The system is administrated by the
Norwegian Public Roads Administration. 23 of the 45 toll roads in Norway use the
system, in addition to tests for use of the system on some car ferries. The
primary reason that some projects don't support Autopass is that they charge
both for the car and for passengers, which the system cannot support. All
projects using Autopass can only charge per car. All systems with Autopass also
have manual payment methods, though not necessarily manned.
Each Autopass unit contains a microcontroller which will process requests from
the road side, and respond with the proper information to the road side.
There are 5 generations of cryptographic key pairs inside each Autopass unit,
which are unique for each unit. The cryptographic keys are used for
authenticating the unit when passing a toll plaza, thus making it difficult to
make fraudulent copies of an Autopass unit. Unlike similar DSRC based tolling
systems used in many countries, there is no access control in the Norwegian
system, the unique ID within the unit is available to be read for those who have
the proper DSRC equipment.
There is an internal storage space for 100 log entries, which are normally
updated each time a vehicle owner is charged when passing a toll plaza. This is
a collection of receipt entries which includes the time, date and the station
identity of the toll plaza which did the tolling transaction.
Each Autopass unit features a move detect mechanism. When the unit is removed
from the windscreen, an electrical switch will be activated, causing a flag to
be set in processor within the Autopass unit. This flag will be registered when
doing a tolling transaction the next time the unit passes a toll plaza.