Communication Reduction for Floating Car Data-Based Traffic Information Systems

In this paper, we consider a traffic information sharing system based on Floating Car Data (FCD). FCD is one of the methods used to gather traffic information. It uses vehicles as sensor nodes that transmit their speed to the server. The server then broadcasts the updated speed data to all vehicles on the road so that vehicles can compute optimal travel routes based on current traffic data. The cost of communication and load on the server are issues on this system since many vehicles on the road can generate a significant amount of communication between the vehicles and the server. A server update policy is necessary to reduce the communication load on the server and to maintain the integrity of the data that will be broadcasted to the cars. We propose an efficient way for this client/server architecture to be implemented and present an update policy that outperforms previously studied server update policies. This is shown by way of simulation using real traffic data from Chicago highways.