On the feasibility of using public transport as data mules for traffic monitoring

A broad range of diverse technologies, known collectively as intelligent transportation systems (ITS), holds the answer to many of our transportation problems. ITS provides the intelligent link between travellers, vehicles, and infrastructure. In this paper, we study the feasibility of an architecture that involves deploying mobile gateways on a selected subset of public transport vehicles for one particular ITS application: traffic monitoring. We assume that all buses, bus stops and traffic lights are equipped with a wireless device to communicate with in-range neighbours (e.g. other buses). In our analysis, we use realistic movement patterns of public transport buses in a metropolitan city. Our results suggest that it is feasible to use such an architecture with existing radio technologies for traffic monitoring applications.