VANET based advanced road traffic management systems

With the increasing number of vehicles on the road, the demand for advanced traffic control systems is on the rise. In future, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is envisaged to be a key component of the road traffic management system. To maximize the efficiency of the traffic control system, various ITS applications could be used along with the existing control methods by integrating communications, computing and electronic technologies. A new wireless networking standard known as the IEEE 802.11p has been exclusively developed for the VANET (Vehicular Ad-hoc Network) based next generation transportation systems. The IEEE 802.11p standard can support both V2V (Vehicle to Vehicle) and V2I (Vehicle to Infrastructure) communications mode. For a VANET based ITS, the V2I mode can be used for exchanging signals between traffic control entities and vehicles. The aim of this research is to utilize a V2I communication architecture to accommodate and integrate two novel applications of an advanced ITS, namely the IRTSS (Intelligent Road Traffic Signalling System) and the PRTMS (Predictive Road Traffic Signalling System). A novel IRTSS has been proposed and implemented using the V2I based VANET architecture to control traffic flow both at isolated and coordinated road intersections. Furthermore, a basic Predictive Road Traffic Management System (PRTMS) has been developed and integrated with the VANET architecture to achieve multi-junction traffic flow control. An OPNET based integrated simulation model has been developed that jointly examines the performance of the proposed road traffic management system and the communications network. A realistic road traffic flow has been embedded in the simulation model that complies with the international road traffic control standards proposed by Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, AsutRoads and United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DoT). Both proposed ITS applications are based on the VANET architecture which could be implemented for a city size road network. The proposed vehicle detection system is relatively advanced compared to the existing sensor based detection systems. The thesis presents a unique co-simulation model that incorporates both road infrastructure, controlled vehicle mobility and a model of a VANET network. Simulation results are analysed to characterise the VANET based IRTSS and PRTMS systems for a wide area traffic control system. The results indicate that the proposed architecture can efficiently detect and control traffic flows in a large road network with minimum hardware/software resources compared to the existing vehicle detection methods.