Real-Time Traffic Management System using SDR Technologies
- Reference number
- RIT08-0016
- Start and end dates
- 090101-120630
- Amount granted
- 7 000 000 SEK
- Administrative organization
- KTH - Royal Institute of Technology
- Research area
- Information, Communication and Systems Technology
Summary
The main objectives of this research are: to integrate the traffic management network with available commercial communication networks and maximize the use of existing infrastructure, and to make the subscriber unit available as a software application that runs on the user’s mobile phone. The focus is a Traffic Management System that provides vehicles with user specific, on demand route guidance based on real-time traffic information. It takes into account the real-time average velocity of each road segment in the best path calculation algorithm that provides route guidance to the service subscribers. The system performs the traffic information gathering and processing, and user specific traffic aware navigation. These operations are supported by an efficient communication system and a database management system. The goals of this system are:1) Minimize additional infrastructure: to further the use of autonomous sensors such as GPS units, minimizing the number of sensor nodes required; to integrate traffic measurements from autonomous sensors with the sensor network’s; to make the inter-sensor communication flexible, permitting a large number of protocols to talk to each other; 2) Increase unit modularity and mobility: the on-board unit can be made available to the user as mobile phone application software. In this project, we will develop and deliver: Sensor algorithms; Traffic Database Management Software; On-board Processing Unit; Traffic Management System Demonstrator.
Popular science description
The significant surge of vehicle use around the world, especially in developing countries represents a major threat to the environment and could be a major contributing factor to global warming. This is one of the main motivating factor behind our proposed research. Another equally important factor is the tremendous increase in oil prices which substantiate the need for saving energy. Whether oil or another source of renewable energy is used, the fact remains that people and the environment will certainly benefit greatly from a real-time traffic management solution that finds the optimum path for a car driver to go from one location in a city to another location. Accordingly, this proposal discusses development of a novel real-time traffic management system exploiting state-of-the-art wireless technology. Our vision is based on the notion that existing wireless infrastructures can and should be "upgraded" to enable seamless integration of such real-time traffic management system. The proposed research is an attempt to develop and validate the tools necessary for such an upgrade to become a reality. The smart use of available radio resources can be used to provide vehicles updated on-demand traffic information in a power and cost effective manner. Processing this information to offer route guidance minimizing the total fuel consumption increases the energy efficiency of a car ride. Such traffic management system is not only environmentally friendly; it also gets us a step closer to the Cognitive Radio paradigm, where efficient use of the radio resources meets user demands. This project addresses this problem and proposes a future proof solution using Software Defined Radio (SDR) Wireless technologies.