McCarran International Airport

McCarran International Airport is one of the first airports in the world to use UHF RFID-embedded baggage tags for 100 percent of the auto-ID and tracking of all outbound baggage in the sortation and explosives detection process. After receiving a contract from the airport, FKI Logistex turned to us, noted as one of the leading controls integrators in the field of RFID tracking systems, to be their partner in this project.

RFID has proven to be a favorable alternative to bar-coding for luggage identification. Due to the unpredictable orientation of the label to the optical barcode scanner, 15 to 30 percent of the bar-coded labels being used to identify the luggage at airports are not properly read as the luggage moves through the airport baggage handling equipment. Because RFID tags do not require line-of sight, they are much more easily read. In fact, during normal operation McCarran International Airport achieves an amazing 99 percent read accuracy rate. With this outstanding performance, the airport saves time and money.

This Major Expansion and Renovation of the Airport Features:

• 160 Symbol RFID Scanners operating as over 80 redundant RFID Reader Arrays
• 42 eXaminer 3DX® 6000 EDS units

Recapitalization

After previously being entrusted with the first RFID programming and installation at McCarran International Airport, they approached us again to update the system. They had been experiencing several issues with the system in place and wanted to recapitalize it to make it faster and more redundant. This would turn into our largest project to date, encompassing over 2,000 conveyors to be re-controlled. Included in this upgrade was PLC based controls for Nodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 5A as well as the country’s only 100 percent RFID baggage scanning system. The Central Control Room was outfitted with custom MDS and Sortation Software packages. Other features included were 18 Motor Control Panels, 83 Remote IO Panels, 80 redundant RFID Arrays, and 24 EDSs.