PROJECT TITLE

Traffic Flow Management using Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract:
The emerging field of wireless sensor networks combines sensing, computation,
and communication into a single tiny device. A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists
of spatially distributed autonomous sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or
environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or
pollutants. The developments of wireless sensor networks was motivated by military
applications such as battlefield surveillance and are now used in many industrial and
civilian application areas, including industrial process monitoring and control, machine
health monitoring, environment and habitat monitoring, healthcare applications, home
automation, and traffic control. We propose a novel decentralized traffic light control
using wireless sensor network. The system architecture is classified into three layers; the
wireless sensor network, the localized traffic flow model policy, and the higher level
coordination of the traffic lights agents. The wireless sensors are deployed on the lanes
going in and out the intersection. These sensors detect vehicles’ number, speed, etc. and
send their data to the nearest Intersection Control Agent (ICA) which determines the flow
model of the intersection depending on sensors’ data (e.g., number of vehicles
approaching a specific intersection). Our main contribution is the real-time adaptive
control of the traffic lights.

Objective:
Our aim is to maximize the flow of vehicles and reduce the waiting time while
maintaining fairness among the other traffic lights. Each traffic light controlled
intersection has an intersection control agent that collects information from the sensor
nodes. An intersection control agent manages its intersection by controlling its traffic
lights. Multiple intersection agents can exchange information among themselves to
control a wider area. Tremendous amount of time and power is wasted due to a green
traffic light with no cars passing on its lane. We envision a smart road system were the
total trip time is minimum due to minimizing the average waiting time on traffic lights. In
addition to minimizing the average traffic waiting time, we would like to see a road
system which can optimize the traffic flow by utilizing the free roads.

Literature survey:
Our system consists, mainly, of the wireless sensor network and the intersection
control agents. The wireless sensor network composed of group of nodes, each
comprising one or more sensors, a processor, a radio and a battery. They generate traffic
information such as number of cars, speed and length of the vehicles, based on processing
of the sensor data. The information is then sent to the nearest intersection control agent
over the radio. The intersection control agent collects the information from the sensor
nodes to analyze traffic conditions and take actions such as adjusting the traffic light
durations or exchanging information with other intersection agents for better optimization
of traffic flow. In the field of Multi-agent Systems (MAS), controlling intersections is
studied with intelligent system on mind. Using wireless sensor network along with
intelligent transportation system is still in its preliminary stage. To compete with current
technologies, however, the data provided by the system must be accurate, delivered to the
traffic intersection agents within a certain time for real-time applications, and the lifetime
of the system must be on the order of several years.
 Many solutions were proposed to solve the traffic jam. Most conventional traffic
surveillance systems use intrusive sensors, including inductive loop detectors, micro-loop
probes, and pneumatic road tubes. However, these sensors disrupt traffic during
installation and repair, which leads to a high cost installation and maintenance. In
addition, over the ground sensors like videos, radars, and ultrasonic were used. These
systems are also high cost and their accuracy depends on environment condition.
We present a real-time adaptive system based on wireless sensors that has the
potential to establish a new era of traffic control and surveillance because of its low cost
and potential for large scale deployment. To replace the costly and high maintenance
classic traffic surveillance such as inductive loops, a traffic surveillance technology
system based on wireless sensors is used. Their system is deployed in freeways and at
intersections for traffic measurements such as vehicle count, occupancy, speed, and
vehicle classification which can’t be obtained from standard inductive loops. The
experiments in shows that deploying wireless sensor network for traffic monitoring
provides %99 of detection rate in real time.

Diagram:
 Figure1(a). The model of the proposed system

Figure 1(b). -Road intersection configuration

Implementation:
The system prototype consists of four elements:
 1. The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)
2. The Intersection Control Agents (ICA)
3. The Actuators - Traffic Lights
4. The Environment - Vehicles

Figure2. Life cycle of the system

The protocol consists of several message types for each agent :

1. Sensor Nodes to ICA: Sensor nodes count number of vehicles approaching an
intersection. Every node monitors one lane. The message sent from the sensor nodes to
the intersection control agent includes number of vehicles, time duration of the collected
data, and lane number.
2. ICA to Sensor Nodes: After receiving information from all the nodes
monitoring a specific intersection, the intersection agent decides the best flow model
(policy) for the vehicle flow.
3. Greedy ICA to ICA: Intersection control agent can exchange information with
other intersection control agents in its vicinity to improve the flow of vehicles in a wider
area. This is because the agent can select a better policy depending on more information
collected. We call this situation greedy policy because each agent satisfies its intersection
flow without paying attention of other intersections flow.
4. ICA to ICA with Coordination: This is the same as the previous one except that
the agents coordinate among themselves to achieve even better flow. The intersection
control depends not only on the analysis one agent but on the coordination of multiple
agents.
We test our model using Glomosim Simulator. Global Mobile Information
System Simulator (GloMoSim) is a network protocol simulation software that simulates
wireless and wired network systems. GloMoSim is designed using the parallel discrete
event simulation capability provided by Parsec, a parallel programming language.
GloMoSim currently supports protocols for a purely wireless network. It uses the Parsec
compiler to compile the simulation protocols.

Graph:

Graph1. Average Junction Waiting Time vs. Cycle

Requirements:
Simulator – GloMoSim version 2.03.
Languages used – C or Java.
Future Works:
Some deeper problems need a further research. For example,

 The intersection units in the same city form a huge network, which can be used to
transfer traffic information. What challenges will we meet in a large scale of
network?
 Vehicle unit can only transfer dynamic information of a vehicle up to now. If we
write some solid information of this vehicle, such as vehicle type, license ID, it
will become an electronic tag, which can be used in multiple applications in
transportation system, such as ETC (electronic Toll Collection), Parking
Management and so on.

 After vehicle unit being installed on most vehicles, the traffic information can
exchange among vehicles, that is, the roadside unit is not necessary. Wireless
sensor networks offer a promising platform for traffic monitoring that can
compete with current technology in accuracy and lifetime. We have built a
prototype of the sensor node for traffic surveillance. More intersection flow policy
need to be investigated for the intersection agent to be able to decide the best flow
policy depending on information received from the sensor network.(Figure 3)

Figure3. Sensor in vehicles

Reference:
[1] Sing Yiu Cheung, Sinem Coleri, Baris Dundar, Sumitra Ganesh, Chin- Woo Tan, and
Pravin Varaiya. Traffic measurement and vehicle classification with a single magnetic
sensor. Journal of the Transportation Research Board, February 2006.

[2] Ana L. C. Bazzan. A distributed approach for coordination of traffic signal agents.
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 10(2):131–164, 2005.

[3] Kurt M. Dresner and Peter Stone. Multiagent traffic management: an improved
intersection control mechanism. In 4rd International Joint Conference on Autonomous
Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2005), July 25-29, 2005, Utrecht, The
Netherlands, pages 471–477. ACM, 2005.

[4] Marco Wiering, Jilles Vreeken, Jelle van Veenen, and Arne Koopman. Simulation
and optimization of traffic in a city. In IEEE Intelligent Vehicles symposium (IV’04),
June 2004.