CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction

Today, people spend the majority of their time outside of their home environments, they

travel daily to work, and they go frequently to the shopping centers and attractions, without

forgetting the displacements to the center of the city. This certainly caused an imbalance in the

daily mobility that led to the development of parking services to avoid unnecessary driving around

the city center to simply search for a parking space. This, on the one hand, causes additional carbon

dioxide emissions and damages the environment of the city’s ecosystem. On the other hand, it

increases the driver’s frustration and traffic congestion in the city, which will certainly cause traffic

accidents.

The rapid development of smart cities is a major focus for scientists due to the need to

improve the safety of human lives and create conveniences for the large rural to urban human flow.

Highly concerning are the hazards posed to on-road commuters owing to road traffic jam. This

traffic congestion generates more problems that impact negatively on humans such as time

wastage, fuel burn, exhaust fume, etc. which contributes to an increased cost of living for

inhabitants of the town (Schrank, Lomax, and Eisele, 2011). More so, human productivity is

reduced because of the less mobility of vehicle users. Based on global traffic parameters, it is

evident that traffic jam hinders vehicle users’ mobility, particularly in developing communities,

regardless of traffic lights being used to control the motion of these vehicles.

Over time, various road traffic management systems have either been proposed or

implemented especially dating back to 1868 (Day and McNeil, 1998). Ever since technologies

have made improvements in finding ways of utilizing applications that will aid road management

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in cities that there is no need for road traffic wardens and officers; with numerous innovations,

there are now changes to the style of signs and indicators but the operational principle of the road

traffic control has not changed. The traffic signals have so far not impacted positively on our

Nigerian roads because traffic jams are still obvious on our major junctions. This is specifically

due to existing fixed-time traffic signals that do not align with the ever-changing traffic patterns.

Intelligence traffic control represents a clear edge over the conventional one and looks to

be the next promising solution to the road congestion problem (Cai et al, 2009). Due to its

importance, various researchers all over the world have been coming up with different findings

that can help improve the traffic light control technology. Ghazal et al (2016), integrates an XBee

wireless system for a secured communication between controllers that can activate a lengthy ON

mode for the green light until all the queued vehicles have passed. The superiority of Dynamic

Phase Scheduling of a road traffic system was considered by Zachariah et al (2017) over Static

Phase Scheduling of road traffic system as a means of assigning lengthy phase durations to traffic-

congested lanes and shorter phase durations to traffic-congested lanes in other to attain an

automatic traffic light system. By utilizing a network mode learning software Mei et al (2017)

developed a program that can simulate various traffic conditions and performs its control.

Road traffic load has key dependence on time, day, season, weather parameters and some

situations that can’t be deciphered (Kumari, 2017). Bottlenecks and delays are very likely if the

parameters are not effectively considered. To achieve this, an intelligent road traffic control system

is developed to consistently sense and monitor the road traffic situation and effect the controls

embedded in it. This prediction ability of the smart system will create an optimal control so that

vehicle users can as well become aware of roads with gridlocks well ahead of time and the system

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can be able to perform logical calculations to allow passage of vehicles on roads with the highest

densities while stopping vehicular mobility on the roads with very fewer densities.

Automatic traffic monitoring and surveillance are crucial for making road usage and

management more efficient. Traffic parameter estimation has been an active research area for the

development of Intelligent Traffic Control Systems (ITCS). For ITCS applications traffic

information needs to be collected and distributed. Various sensors were employed to estimate

traffic parameters for updating traffic information. Magnetic loop detectors have been the most

used technologies, but their installation & maintenance are inconvenient and might become

incompatible with future ITCS infrastructure. It is well recognized that vision-based camera

system is more versatile for traffic parameter estimation. Numerous techniques can be applied

within the domain of vision-based systems as well. But there is a trade-off between accuracy and

processing time. Hence it is necessary to choose a technique which is sufficiently accurate and

considerably fast. The processing time has to be reduced by converting the image inputs into easily

analyzable forms, where the well-known technique of Image Segmentation comes in handy. This

method of analyzing the images is based on counting contours (closed loop) which takes minimal

processing time. This work considers the application of an effective and adaptable road traffic

control system at roundabouts with dual lanes. Considering the high rate of road accidents at

crossroads, this option of road traffic control will be suitable and more convenient.

1.2 Statement of the problem

The growth of industrialization and urban population causes the tremendous increase in the

traffic. Traffic management has become one of the severe problems today. With the increase in

traffic there arise a number of problems such as heavy traffic jams, violation of traffic rules, long

waiting times, loss of fuel and money etc. In fact, one of the major problems encountered in large

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cities is that of traffic congestion. Data from the Chartered Institute of Traffic and Logistic in

Nigeria revealed that about 75 per cent mobility needs in the country is accounted for by road

mode; and that more than seven million vehicles operate on Nigerian roads on a daily basis (Ugwu,

2009). This figure was also confirmed by the Federal Road Safety Commission of Nigeria; the

institution responsible for maintaining safety on the roads (Mbawike, 2007). The commission

further affirmed that the high traffic density was caused by the influx of vehicles as a result of

breakdown in other transport sectors and is most prevalent in the ‘+’ road junctions. Several

measures had been deployed to address the problem of road traffic congestion in large cities in

Nigeria; namely among these are: the construction of flyovers and bypass roads, creating ring

roads, posting of traffic wardens to trouble spots and construction of conventional traffic light

based on counters. These measures however, had failed to meet the target of freeing major ‘+’

intersections resulting in loss of human lives and waste of valuable man hour during the working

days.

It is therefore necessary to have a fast, economical and efficient traffic control system. This

paper described a solution to road traffic problems in large cities through the design and

implementation of an intelligent system; based on fuzzy logic technology to monitor and control

traffic light system. The authors will show how the new fuzzy logic traffic control system for “+”

junction, eliminated the problems observed in the manual and conventional traffic control system

through the simulation software developed using Java programming language.

1.3 Research Aims and Objectives

The study aims to design and implement an intelligence traffic control system. Specifically, the

study is guided by the following research objectives:

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  To design a simple system that is easily adaptable to the existing traffic conditions at

junctions, involving a minimum of physical changes in the intersection.

 To provide the quickest possible clearance for vehicular and pedestrians traffics in all

direction of a junction.

 To design a flexible artificial intelligence traffic light system that will take care of changes

in the traffic density and character.

 To reduce the stress of the traffic warder.

 To reduce the occurrence of possible accident

 To verify the efficacy of the program.

1.4 Scope of the Research

The scope is the study bothers on the design and implementation of an intelligence traffic control

system. The current method of traffic control system is indicating each light at a particular time

interval to pass vehicle at one lane and stop those on the other lane. The light is broken into three

(3) categories (red, yellow and green) to signal to lane on what to do at the indication of any of the

light.

1.5 Significant of the study

The study on completion would help reduce the occurrence of collision or accident that is rampant

on roads and thus, enhance the confidence of the drivers and the pedestrians using the highways.

It will also, allay the fear of time wastage on roads particularly “T” junctions due to unevenly

direction of traffic system. Finally, since the system is capable of working for 24 hours

uninterrupted, it would help assured the constant availability of traffic control service hence reduce

human efforts and energy.

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1.6 Definition of Terms

Intelligent Traffic system: It refer to information and communication technology hat improve

transport outcome such as transport safety, travel reliability, informed travel choice among others.

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 CHAPTER TWO

2.0 Introduction to the Subject Area

Traffic Congestion is a major issue of transportation system in most of all the cities of

developing Countries. This is especially true for countries where population is increasing at higher

rate. There is phenomenal growth in vehicle population in recent years. As a result, many of the

arterial roads and intersections are operating over the capacity and average journey speeds are

lower than 10 Km/h at the peak hour. The main challenges are management of constantly

increasing vehicles, annual growth of 7–10% in traffic, roads operating at higher capacity, less

travel speed at some central areas in peak hours, insufficient or no parking space for vehicles,

limited number of policemen.

Intelligence Traffic Control System (ITCS) incorporates modern emerging technologies

including information processing, intelligent embedded systems, internet and wireless

communication, electronics, and etc., to provide continuous or pre-selected travel information,

congestion alleviation, incident detection and/or guide optimal route (re-route) to travelers,

vehicles and infrastructure. Four (4) major stages including data collection, data processing,

decision making stages, and information delivery, are involved within an ITMS. Software based

real time bi-directional traffic management system (TMS) with Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

was proposed and implemented in (Rahman & Akhter, 2015a; 2015b; 2015c). The proposed TMS

solves a decision problem, dynamic road weights calculation, using different environmental, road

and vehicle related decision attributes. Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) with

Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) optimization was adopted in (Akhter et al., 2016) to replace DT. NN

classifies four (4) different decision classes, and they correspond to four (4) different weight

increment/decrement values. Cluster based classifications are able to find the optimum number of

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classifications in each attribute and can improve the classification performance of the ITMS. With

this hypothesis, Hierarchical and K-means clustering were applied on environmental data in

(Nawrin et al., 2017), and Dunn-Index cluster validation technique was performed better.

2.1 Review of Related Literature

Several traffic control systems have been implemented in recent years using different

communication and surveillance technologies to control and manage the problem of urban traffic

in cities and resolve the limitations of traditional traffic light systems.

The authors in (Zitouni, et al., 2019) propose a new architecture for the urban traffic control

system (S1) based on an IoT network. This system makes it possible to connect roads to the Internet

via sensor nodes, capable of detecting the arrival of vehicles and sending the detected data to a

cloud from a border router. Data collected in the cloud allows middleware to decide the future

state of traffic lights. This decision is disseminated via the network to actuators installed in traffic

lights to manage traffic in city intersections. This system is based on the implementation of a self-

organization protocol that creates a star network topology allowing all detection nodes to send

their data to the sink node via a single hop. However, this protocol is not adequate for the

management of linear car parks and for large car parks because it will create a load imbalance

between the different detection nodes during the communication of a single hop towards the sink

node quickly exhausting the most distant nodes which will negatively affect the quality of

communication and the reliability of the system. In addition, this approach uses recent technologies

such as wireless sensors to limit the cost of system deployment. However, such a solution remains

obsolete vis-à-vis citizens and drivers because they cannot connect to the roads and know the state

of traffic in real time and remotely which are part of the concept of the creation of smart cities.

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 In Latif et al., (2018), a new intelligent traffic control system (S2) is presented, which is

based on the deployment of wireless sensor networks on roads, on traffic lights, and on specific

places (such as hospitals and petrol pumps) in order to monitor road traffic in the city and find the

shortest route to the destination in terms of time and distance, avoiding traffic jams. This system

employs intelligent cameras on the roads to identify the vehicle numbers and send this information

to the central system to monitor the cars in the city. The proposed system uses more recent

technologies which allow the interconnection of the various urban services between them by

creating a smart city. However, the deployment of smart cameras can be expensive and also less

effective, especially when detecting the numbers of cars in cases where there are visibility

problems such as the reflection of light from car headlights, given that there are other cheaper and

efficient solutions such as RFID technology which interacts with WSN networks and which allows

vehicles to send this information to the central system in a sustainable and efficient way.

In Sadhukhan and Gazi, (2018), the authors propose an intelligent traffic congestion control

(S3) based on the deployment of wireless sensor networks in order to measure the density of road

congestion created at road crossings. This system consists of two modules. The first is TDMM

(traffic density monitoring module) which uses an ultrasonic sensor to measure the length of the

queue created by the crowd of cars, and the second is TMM (traffic management module) which

is software deployed in a computer which makes it possible to control the traffic lights according

to the data collected by the various TDMM implemented in the roads. The TDMM deployed on

each road in a road crossing send their collected data to their nearest TMM via Wi-Fi using multi-

hop or single-hop communication depending on the communication range in order to determine

the density of road congestion (strong, medium, or low) and dynamically define the operating time

of the traffic lights according to the values obtained from the different routes. This system uses a

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self-organization protocol which creates a nonautonomous tree type topology between the different

nodes, of which each monitoring node communicates via a single hop with the nearest node which

in turn communicates with the sink node via intermediate nodes to transmit data to the traffic

management module. However, the nonautonomous tree structure formed by this system creates

an imbalance in the energy consumption between the various monitoring nodes, especially for the

intermediate nodes, and also, it decreases the quality of data delivery to the central node when one

of the routing nodes becomes faulty or exhausted in energy. In addition, the deployment of

ultrasonic sensors should only be used on roads with little traffic and moderate traffic. Car vehicle

detection on multiple lanes with roadside ultrasonic sensors is subject to a reduction in detection

accuracy in heavy traffic. This can cause a system stability problem, especially during peak hours

with heavy traffic, which can lead to poor decisions when estimating the running time of traffic

lights.

The authors in Milner et al., (2018) propose a system for monitoring road traffic (S4) based

on mobile devices and Bluetooth beacons with low energy consumption. The vehicle detection

offered by this system uses mobile devices (for example, smartphones) installed on the side of the

road to measure the strength of the RSSI signal when receiving radio frequency frames emitted by

Bluetooth beacons on the other across the street. Bluetooth beacons are installed along the road at

different heights in order to identify and classify the type of vehicles traveling on the road (cars or

trucks). The RSSI values detected by mobile devices on each route as well as their positions are

sent via a cellular network or Wi-Fi communication to a server in order to measure the density of

road congestion and monitor traffic on the roads. On the other hand, Bluetooth technology can

cause major synchronization problems and communication breakdowns between the BLE beacon

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and the smartphone, which negatively affect the feasibility of the system, especially in the case of

heavy traffic. So, an agent must be on-site to pair the two devices to resume communication.

The authors in Lewandowski et al., (2018) present a new intelligent traffic monitoring and

traffic light control system (S5) based on wireless sensor networks. These sensor nodes are

installed along the roads constituting a road intersection. The data captured by the sensors is sent

to a two-traffic signal controller to assess the congestion conditions of traffic on each road at an

intersection and to predict the state of traffic jams. This system uses a self-organization protocol

(Alg5) which creates a star topology between the different nodes of the network. However, the

algorithm adopted by this system will create dark areas for certain nodes far from their associated

central node which they will not be able to communicate with it and which will cause degradation

in the quality and in the feasibility of this system. This solution makes it possible to dynamically

manage the traffic lights according to the states of traffic congestion obtained in an intersection

and also makes it possible to optimize the synchronization phase of traffic light control in order to

avoid traffic jams before its formation. The intelligence of this system remains beyond the reach

of drivers and citizens because they do not interact with the remote system and also do not connect

to roads in real time.

The authors in Zaatouri et al., (2018) describe a new intelligent system of adaptive traffic

light control (S6) based on the deployment of the wireless sensor network (WSN) in the roadways

leading to an intersection. These nodes are magnetic sensors installed in the ground along all the

paths that form an intersection. These sensors form a cluster-type network topology in which each

node detects the presence of vehicles and sends the data to the nearest head cluster to reach the

base station. The data collected by the WSN is used by the base station by running an algorithm to

detect the rate of traffic congestion in each lane and dynamically control the traffic lights at the

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road intersection. This system adopts recent, intelligent, and inexpensive technology to monitor

traffic congestion and to control traffic lights. However, such a solution to create a smart city and

be connected to citizens remains isolated from drivers who ignore what is happening on the roads

of their city.

An intelligent traffic light monitoring system using an adaptive associative memory was

designed by Abdul Kareem and Jantan (2011). The research was motivated by the need to reduce

the unnecessary long waiting times for vehicles at regular traffic lights in urban area with 'fixed

cycle' protocol. To improve the traffic light configuration, the paper proposed monitoring system,

which will be able to determine three street cases (empty street case, normal street case and

crowded street case) by using small associative memory. The experiments presented promising

results when the proposed approach was applied by using a program to monitor one intersection

in Penang Island in Malaysia. The program could determine all street cases with different weather

conditions depending on the stream of images, which are extracted from the streets video cameras

(Abdul Kareem and Jantan, 2011).

A believe that electronic traffic signal is expected to augment the traditional traffic light

system in future intelligent transportation environments because it has the advantage of being

easily visible to machines was propagated by Huang and Miller (2004). Their work presented a

basic electronic traffic signaling protocol framework and two of its derivatives, a reliable protocol

for intersection traffic signals and one for stop sign signals. These protocols enabled recipient

vehicles to robustly differentiate the signal’s designated directions despite of potential threats

(confusions) caused by reflections. The authors also demonstrated how to use one of the protocols

to construct a sample application: a red- light alert system and also raised the issue of potential

inconsistency threats caused by the uncertainty of location system being used and discuss means

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to handle them (Huang and Miller, 2004). Di Febbraro et al., (2004) showed that Petri net (PN)

models can be applied to traffic control. The researchers provided a modular representation of

urban traffic systems regulated by signalized intersections and considered such systems to be

composed of elementary structural components; namely, intersections and road stretches, the

movement of vehicles in the traffic network was described with a microscopic representation and

was realized via timed PNs. An interesting feature of the model was the possibility of representing

the offsets among different traffic light cycles as embedded in the structure of the model itself (Di

Febbraro et al., 2004).

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 CHAPTER THREE

3.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Design Methodology

A novel methodology was described in this work for the design and implementation of the

intelligent traffic lights control system. The design of this work is actualized by having the

Programmable Logic Controller at the center of the system. The ladder logic is embedded in the

memory storage of the PLC and gets executed when it receives instructions from the input. The

input section comprises sensors that are configured to send signals to the microprocessor when

energized. The microprocessor will perform a mathematical operation to interpret input signals

that will generate the controlled output. The system design implementation is carried out relative

to the diagram depicted in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: Block Diagram of an Intelligent Traffic Control System Using PLC.

The block diagram in Fig. 1 determines the interconnection and operation of every module

in the system. The components of the block schematic include;

 Power supply

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  Sensor devices

 Programmable Logic Controller

 Timing circuit Interface

 Traffic light indicator

3.1.1 Power Supply Circuit

The mains power supply circuit is a linear power supply system that utilizes ~240VAC at

the input which is then converted to different signal power levels for the various devices. When

stepped down to 24VDC, it was applied to power the PLC which in turn powers all its input and

output ports with the same voltage level. The sensor is powered with a 5VDC which is gotten by

stepping down the 24VDC. And the timing circuit interface was driven with a 9VDC. This was

achieved by including an LM7809 IC between the output section of the PLC and the circuit so that

the IC steps down the 24VDC to 9-12VDC which in turn was used to power the LEDs. The rms

voltage is 24V and the peak inverse voltage will be √2Vrms = √2 x 24 = 33.94V.

Fig 2. Power supply circuit

Then a rectification occurs next with the use of a full wave bridge rectifier circuit to convert

the current signal from A.C. to D.C. The maximum load current and the peak inverse load were

highly considered when selecting the type of diode to be used. As it should be able to withstand

the peak voltage of 33.94V. The output waveform after being rectified will look like a square

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waveform with all ripples removed using the capacitor. The choice of the capacitor used is based

on the analysis below;

Vrms = 2.4 x IL/C1 (1)

IL= Load Current (20mA)

Vrms = 𝑉𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑥 √2 = 33.94 x √2 = 47.998V

47.998 = 2.4 x 20𝑚𝐴/C1

𝐶1 = 1000.04uF = 1mF (preferred value)

3.1.2 Sensor Devices

The HC-SR04 Ultrasonic sensor is used to determine input pulses for the PLC in this

system operation. This sensor has a 4-pin module namely Vcc, Trig, Echo, and GND respectively.

It provides a 2cm-400cm non-contact measurement function with an accurate range of 3mm

(Zhmud et al, 2018). Its operation model comprises a transmitter, receiver and a control

mechanism. The sensor operates with the principle of distance being relative to speed and time so

that if a pulse of 10uS is applied to trigger the input. This will send an 8-cycle trigger of ultrasound

frequency at 40kHz to increase its echo which is the proportion of pulse width and range.

Fig 3: Sensor Timing chart of the range finder signal

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3.1.3 Programmable Logic Controller

The choice of Allen-Bradley MicroLogix 1000 device is due to its compact size so that

design complexity is reduced. More so, its built-in EEPROM memory can retain all ladder logic

programs and data in a situation when the controller loses power supply and so battery back-up is

eliminated. The system specifications include scan time – 10ms, preconfigured 1K data and

program memory. Scan time is the time needed by a PLC to check the states of its inputs/outputs.

Data memory is the capacity for data storage. Program memory is the capacity to control software.

The inputs are electrically isolated from the CPU power and data bus. As it is with inputs, outputs

are electrically isolated from the CPU power and the data bus. The PLC is programmed through a

personal computer (Allen-Bradley, 1998).

Table 1: PLC Memory Map

File Number Type Logical Address range

0 Output image O0:0 to O0:3

1 Input image I0:0 to I0:3

4 Timers T4:0 to T4:255

5 Counters C5:0 to C5:255

3.1.4 Timing Circuit Interface

The timing interface, as shown in Fig. 4, is a combination of a power circuit, LM7809 IC that

drops the power signal from the output section of the PLC from 24VDC to 9VDC to drive the

circuit that will order the preset timing sequence of the three LEDs (Red → Amber → Green

→Amber → Red) in a continuous state. This is achieved using the CD4017 IC, a CMOS decade

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counter with a five-stage Johnson counter and 10 decoded output that counts to 10 decimals and

the 555 timer IC which is set in a stable mode to produce pulses that depend on the timing of a

resistor and a capacitor which is used on the clock input of the CD4017 IC to make the red, amber

and green LEDs to glow. More so, pulses from the 555 timer IC are utilized to time glow but

controlled by varying the potentiometer. The 1N4148 diodes have been used to bring stability to

the signal on the LED.

Fig. 4: Timing circuit interface with voltage regulator IC.

3.1.5 Traffic Light Indicator

In this design project, the conventional display for a road traffic light is utilized. This is achieved

by implementing three light-emitting diodes (LEDs) of ‘Green’, ‘Amber’ and ‘Red’. The LEDs

were connected to the diodes in a reverse position so that the LEDs conduct in a forward biased

condition and the diodes conduct in the reverse biased condition of the LED thereby limiting the

reverse voltage to one diode drop ~0.7v then a resistor in series placed with the combination of

LEDs will reduce the current. While the potentiometer controls the time deviations between each

LED through the 555 IC. From the developed logical program embedded in the microcontroller of

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the PLC, the four tracks of the road traffic light will function in an open-loop state. But performs

a secondary control when there is dense traffic.

Fig. 5: Traffic light indicator

3.2 Closed-Loop Control Model

The developed closed-loop model is used to describe the feedback control mechanism in which

the control action is dependent on the controlled output so that such output is compared with the

reference input and a differential signal is produced (Saeed, 2013). This produced differential

signal is put in the controller to remove the error and provide the output response as the desired

signal. The ultra-sonic IR sensor monitors the passage of vehicles so as to detect vehicles that have

stopped for a length of time. When this happens, it measures and compares the acquired signal

with the input reference. The differential signal is then used to energize the controller which then

provides the controlled signal as the output based on what the final control element can deliver.

Since the block diagram indicated is a linear system with input x(t) and output y(t), we can define

the output/input relationship with a differential equation in nth order as

𝑑𝑎 𝑑 𝑑𝑏 𝑑
𝑚𝑎 𝑑𝑡 𝑦(𝑡) + ⋯ + 𝑚1 𝑑𝑡 𝑦(𝑡) + 𝑚𝑜𝑦(𝑡) = 𝑛𝑏 𝑑𝑡𝑏 𝑥(𝑡) + ⋯ 𝑛1 𝑑𝑡 𝑥 (𝑡) + 𝑛0𝑥(𝑡) (2)

If m and n are constants, we can find the Laplace Transform of the above equation as thus;

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𝑚𝑎𝑆𝑎𝑌(s) + ⋯ + 𝑚1𝑆𝑌(s) + 𝑚0𝑌(s) = 𝑛𝑏𝑆𝑏𝑋(s) + ⋯ + 𝑛1𝑆𝑋(s) + 𝑛0𝑋(s) (3)

(𝑚𝑎𝑆𝑎 + ⋯ + 𝑚1𝑆 + 𝑚0) 𝑌(s) = (𝑛𝑏𝑆𝑏 + ⋯ + 𝑛1𝑆 + 𝑛0) 𝑋(s)

𝑦(𝑠)
The transfer function for the closed loop system becomes; G(s) = 𝑥(𝑠) (4)

𝑦(𝑠) 𝑛𝑏𝑆𝑏+⋯+n1S+n0
And = (5)
𝑥(𝑠) maSa+⋯+m1S+m0

𝑦(𝑠) 𝑛𝑏𝑆𝑏+⋯+n1S+n0
G(s) = 𝑥(𝑠) = maSa+⋯+m1S+m0

Fig. 6: Closed Loop Control Model

3.3 Circuit Construction and Testing

The entire system circuit was design in two steps. Firstly, based on specification the components

were put together on bread board and then simulated for the required output. This circuit was

further produced on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) for efficiency. Secondly, the second step is

interfacing the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and the personal computer.

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3.3.1 Road Tracks

The standard four-way road network has been chosen for this work to satisfy the efficacy of the

design project implementation. The terminal of this road network is a roundabout which represents

a typical road system faced with jams and queues. The model developed for the road access is

based on two control measures – open-loop control is under a normal condition where the lights a

triggered to allow or stop access using a preset time while the closed-loop control energizes the

system based on a monitored condition.

Fig. 7: Road layout with points implementation of ultrasonic sensor.

3.3.2 Ultrasonic Sensor on Road Layout

An ultrasonic sensor has been utilized to give feedback to the input section of the PLC at the

instance when vehicular density is increased or vehicular flow is lengthy and stalled. The ultra-

sonic sensor is placed by the side of the median strip 50m far from the roundabout. This is to

enable effective monitoring and give sufficient dead time. The sensors will be placed facing the

side of vehicles for proper transmission and reception of signals.

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3.4 PLC Memory Operation

The flowchart depicts the internal operation of the system. When the device is initialized, the RAM

and other aspects of the microprocessor come on and become obvious on the indicator lights. The

input ports are scanned to read the terminated ultrasonic infrared sensor devices which are then

stored in a specific memory destination. The variables’ values are then taken to be utilized and the

results are returned to the memory (Chen, 2005). The memory is diagnosed so that the device is

void of all forms of error. The output ports interfacing with the timing circuit is thereby updated

with the stored data from the system memory.

Fig. 8: Flow chart of PLC memory operation.

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3.5 Principles

The conventional road traffic light system works relative to the principle of an open-loop system.

The open-loop system which is also the primary control operates to time and is not capable of self-

control which means it can’t derive the desired output relative to a feedback function. The

secondary control parameter has been designed to run on the primary control so depending on the

signal from the feedback system, it overrides the open-loop control and has the closed-loop control

actuated for only one cycle of output. This will continue while allowing other tracks to continue

in their normal states.

Fig. 9: Sensor position and four road track configurations.

3.6 Program Testing

The signal going through the output ports with the following addresses O:0/0, O:0/1, O:0/2 and

O:0/3 controls the road traffic light indicator on each road track. While some of the input ports as

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well are terminated with the ultrasonic infrared sensor on each road track with port addresses I:0/0,

I:0/1, I:0/2 and I:0/3 respectively. Output ports O:0/0 and O:0/1 will be controlled by the input

port I:0/1 and the output ports O:0/2 and O:0/3 will be controlled by the input port O:0/2. The

control program will be highly influenced with the aid of timer bits. The input switches with

addresses I:0/1 and I:0/2 represents the sensors for each port for the opposite road tracks.

The road tracks are labelled A1, A2, A3 for track A; B1, B2, B3 for track B; C1, C2, C3 for track

C and D1, D2, and D3 for track D are utilized to signify the number of directions each track leads.

For tracks A and B, their sensor switches are aligned with the I:0/1 address and tracks C and D are

aligned with the I:0/2 address.

Fig. 10: Flowchart for the PLC based traffic light control.

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