Wireless Sensors for Intelligent Transportation

To enhance road safety and minimize the impacts of abrupt traffic conditions, transportation authorities have long relied on human operators to continuously monitor a large number of video cameras installed along major highways. As abnormal conditions are detected, the operators must resolve them by dispatching human response teams, rerouting upcoming traffic, and re-timing traffic signals. These tasks exert enormous stress and responsibilities on the operators and are prone to reliability concerns. This project evaluates a real-time traffic monitoring and automated response methodology utilizing wireless sensor networks. By deploying a network of wirelessly communicating traffic sensors and controllers, the network monitors traffic in a distributed yet collaborative fashion in reporting and resolving detected events. To effectively plan, deploy, and operate such a network in a selected traffic management area, a hierarchical wireless sensor network architecture is defined. Design procedures for optimal sensor and controller placement, network communication methods for real-time operations, and metrics for performance evaluation are being developed.