FPGA implementation of a traffic light system: Self adaptive with disruptions indicator

Conventional traffic light systems become ineffective when increase in traffic does not take place simultaneously in all directions of a junction. Moreover, their performance further degrades in the case of disruptions like accident or vehicle breakdown, increasing the rate of fuel consumption and air pollution. In this paper, we propose an traffic light system which itself adjusts traffic lights´ signal timing at a single junction. We have employed a network of sixty infrared (IR) sensors, where each of the four directions have fifteen sensors embedded on the road. The first layer of sensors is placed at the stop line for indicating any violators, and all the layers of sensors (including the first layer of sensors) are placed at a distance of 4 metres from each other. All the sensors calculate the time taken by a vehicle to pass over them, which varies with velocity of the vehicles, and accordingly timings of the traffic lights´ are rectified. The timings of all the four traffic lights at a junction is constantly updated for smoother flow of traffic and effective congestion control. Along with congestion control and violations indicator, the traffic light system also indicates any accident or vehicle breakdowns because of which the respective authorities can be alerted without any delay, hence, resulting in a shorter disruption of the traffic flow. The traffic light system was implemented on Virtex-7, and was able to work at the maximum frequency of 567.54 MHz with a power of consumption of 0.476 Watt.