Feasibility of deploying wireless sensor based road side solutions for Intelligent Transportation Systems

The effectiveness of Intelligent Transportation Systems depends on the accuracy and timely reliable provisioning of real time data supplied by traffic data collection mechanisms. Data collection through wireless sensor networks is a very effective approach due to their easy installation, low cost, processing capabilities, small size, flexibility, and wireless communication capabilities. WSN are used in ITS for smart parking lots, adaptive traffic light control, accident avoidance and traffic estimation etc. In this paper we propose a WSN based road side communication architecture and system that can be utilized for the intelligent control and management of vehicular traffic at road intersections. In the proposed architecture, the end nodes are carried by vehicles that communicate with road side units, which in turn send the data to the coordinator module at the intersection. We introduce a reliable and robust channel switching technique that reduces the response time, energy consumption and connectivity delay while increasing the reliability of packet delivery. We perform sensitivity analysis of the proposed system architecture by varying various communication parameters to determine optimum system configuration. The results prove the integrity and feasibility of the deployment of our proposed architecture.