A Comprehensive Approach to WSN-Based ITS Applications: A Survey

In order to perform sensing tasks, most current Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) rely on expensive sensors, which offer only limited functionality. A more recent trend consists of using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) for such purpose, which reduces the required investment and enables the development of new collaborative and intelligent applications that further contribute to improve both driving safety and traffic efficiency. This paper surveys the application of WSNs to such ITS scenarios, tackling the main issues that may arise when developing these systems. The paper is divided into sections which address different matters including vehicle detection and classification as well as the selection of appropriate communication protocols, network architecture, topology and some important design parameters. In addition, in line with the multiplicity of different technologies that take part in ITS, it does not consider WSNs just as stand-alone systems, but also as key components of heterogeneous systems cooperating along with other technologies employed in vehicular scenarios

Smart traffic control for the era of autonomous driving

This thesis aims to take on the challenges to address some of the key issues in traffic control and management, including intersection protocol design, congestion measurement, selfish routing and road infrastructure automation, under the assumption that all vehicles on the road are connected and self-driving. To design and test traffic control mechanisms for AVs, we introduced a formal model to represent road networks and traffic. Based on this model, we developed a simulation system on top of an existing open-source platform (AIM4) and used it to examine a number of traffic management protocols specifically designed for traffic with fully autonomous vehicles. Simulation outcomes show that traffic management protocols for AVs can be more subtle, sensitive and variable with traffic volumes/flow rate, vehicle safe distance and road configuration. In addition, by analyzing the real-world traffic data and simulation data, we found that measuring congestion with exponential functions has considerable advantages against the traditional BPR function in certain aspects. The deployment of autonomous vehicles provides traffic management with an opportunity of choosing either centralised control or decentralised control. The price of anarchy (PoA) of autonomous decision-making for routing gives an applicable quantitative criterion for selection between them. We extended the existing research on PoA with the ˙class of exponential functions as cost functions. We found an expression for the tight upper bound of the PoA for selfish routing games with exponential cost functions. Unlike existing studies, this upper bound depends on traffic demands, with which we can get a more accurate estimation of the PoA. Furthermore, by comparing the upper-bounds of PoA between the BPR function and the exponential function, we found that the exponential functions yield a smaller upper bound than the BPR functions in relatively low traffic flows. To specify traffic management systems with autonomous roadside facilities, we propose a hybrid model of traffic assignment. This model aims to describe traffic management systems in which both vehicles and roadside controllers make autonomous decisions, therefore, are autonomous agents. We formulated a non-linear optimization problem to optimize traffic control from a macroscopic view of the road network. To avoid the complex calculations required for non-linear optimization, we proposed an approximation algorithm to calculate equilibrium routing and traffic control strategies. The simulation results show that this algorithm eventually converges to a steady state. The traffic control scheme in this steady state is an approximately optimal solution

Vehicle re-routing strategies for congestion avoidance

Traffic congestion causes driver frustration and costs billions of dollars annually in lost time and fuel consumption. This dissertation introduces a cost-effective and easily deployable vehicular re-routing system that reduces the effects of traffic congestion. The system collects real-time traffic data from vehicles and road-side sensors, and computes proactive, individually tailored re-routing guidance, which is pushed to vehicles when signs of congestion are observed on their routes. Subsequently, this dissertation proposes and evaluates two classes of re-routing strategies designed to be incorporated into this system, namely, Single Shortest Path strategies and Multiple Shortest Paths Strategies. These strategies are firstly implemented in a centralized system, where a server receives traffic updates from cars, computes alternative routes, and pushes them as guidance to drivers. The extensive experimental results show that the proposed strategies are capable of reducing the travel time comparable to a state-of-the-art Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) algorithm, while avoiding the issues that make DTA impractical, such as lack of scalability and robustness, and high computation time. Furthermore, the variety of proposed strategies allows the system to be tuned to different levels of trade-off between re-routing effectiveness and computational efficiency. Also, the proposed traffic guidance system is robust even if many drivers ignore the guidance, or if the system adoption rate is relatively low. The centralized system suffers from two intrinsic problems: the central server has to perform intensive computation and communication with the vehicles in real-time, which can make such solutions infeasible for large regions with many vehicles; and driver privacy is not protected since the drivers have to share their location as well as the origins and destinations of their trips with the server, which may prevent the adoption of such solutions. To address these problems, a hybrid vehicular re-routing system is presented in this dissertation. The system off-loads a large part of the re-routing computation at the vehicles, and thus, the re-routing process becomes practical in real-time. To make collaborative re-routing decisions, the vehicles exchange messages over vehicular ad hoc networks. The system is hybrid because it still uses a server to determine an accurate global view of the traffic. In addition, the user privacy is balanced with the re-routing effectiveness. The simulation results demonstrate that, compared with a centralized system, the proposed hybrid system increases the user privacy substantially, while the re-routing effectiveness is minimally impacted

Network parameters impact on dynamic transmission power control in vehicular ad hoc networks

International audienceIn vehicular ad hoc networks, the dynamic change in transmission power is very effective to increase the throughput of the wireless vehicular network and decrease the delay of the message communication between vehicular nodes on the highway. Whenever an event occurs on the highway, the reliability of the communication in the vehicular network becomes so vital so that event created messages should reach to all the moving network nodes. It becomes necessary that there should be no interference from outside of the network and all the neighbor nodes should lie in the transmission range of the reference vehicular node. Transmission range is directly proportional to the transmission power the moving node. If the transmission power will be high, the interference increases that can cause higher delay in message reception at receiver end, hence the performance of the network decreased. In this paper, it is analyzed that how transmission power can be controlled by considering other different parameter of the network such as; density, distance between moving nodes, different types of messages dissemination with their priority, selection of an antenna also affects the transmission power. The dynamic control of transmission power in VANET serves also for the optimization of the resources where it needs, can be decreased and increased depending on the circumstances of the network. Different applications and events of different types also cause changes in transmission power to enhance the reachability. The analysis in this paper is comprised of density, distance with single hop and multi hop message broadcasting based dynamic transmission power control as well as antenna selection and applications based. Some summarized tables are produced according to the respective parameters of the vehicular network. At the end some valuable observations are made and discussed in detail

Heterogeneous LTE/ Wi-Fi architecture for intelligent transportation systems

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) make use of advanced technologies to enhance road safety and improve traffic efficiency. It is anticipated that ITS will play a vital future role in improving traffic efficiency, safety, comfort and emissions. In order to assist the passengers to travel safely, efficiently and conveniently, several application requirements have to be met simultaneously. In addition to the delivery of regular traffic and safety information, vehicular networks have been recently required to support infotainment services. Previous vehicular network designs and architectures do not satisfy this increasing traffic demand as they are setup for either voice or data traffic, which is not suitable for the transfer of vehicular traffic. This new requirement is one of the key drivers behind the need for new mobile wireless broadband architectures and technologies. For this purpose, this thesis proposes and investigates a heterogeneous IEEE 802.11 and LTE vehicular system that supports both infotainment and ITS traffic control data. IEEE 802.11g is used for V2V communications and as an on-board access network while, LTE is used for V2I communications. A performance simulation-based study is conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed system in an urban vehicular environment. The system performance is evaluated in terms of data loss, data rate, delay and jitter. Several simulation scenarios are performed and evaluated. In the V2I-only scenario, the delay, jitter and data drops for both ITS and video traffic are within the acceptable limits, as defined by vehicular application requirements. Although a tendency of increase in video packet drops during handover from one eNodeB to another is observed yet, the attainable data loss rate is still below the defined benchmarks. In the integrated V2V-V2I scenario, data loss in uplink ITS traffic was initially observed so, Burst communication technique is applied to prevent packet losses in the critical uplink ITS traffic. A quantitative analysis is performed to determine the number of packets per burst, the inter-packet and inter-burst intervals. It is found that a substantial improvement is achieved using a two-packet Burst, where no packets are lost in the uplink direction. The delay, jitter and data drops for both uplink and downlink ITS traffic, and video traffic are below the benchmarks of vehicular applications. Thus, the results indicate that the proposed heterogeneous system offers acceptable performance that meets the requirements of the different vehicular applications. All simulations are conducted on OPNET Network Modeler and results are subjected to a 95% confidence analysis

A Comprehensive Survey of the Tactile Internet: State of the art and Research Directions

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communication and allow skill set delivery over networks. Some examples of potential applications are tele-surgery, vehicle fleets, augmented reality and industrial process automation. Several papers already cover many of the Tactile Internet-related concepts and technologies, such as haptic codecs, applications, and supporting technologies. However, none of them offers a comprehensive survey of the Tactile Internet, including its architectures and algorithms. Furthermore, none of them provides a systematic and critical review of the existing solutions. To address these lacunae, we provide a comprehensive survey of the architectures and algorithms proposed to date for the Tactile Internet. In addition, we critically review them using a well-defined set of requirements and discuss some of the lessons learned as well as the most promising research directions