Design and implementation of a street parking system using wireless sensor networks

Recently, with the explosive increase of automobiles in China, people park their cars on streets without following the rules and police has hard time to conduct law enforcement without introducing effective street parking system. To solve the problem, we propose a SPS (street parking system) based on wireless sensor networks. For accurately detecting a parking car, a parking algorithm based on state machine is also proposed. As the vehicle detection in SPS is absolutely critical, we use a Honeywell 3-axis magnetic sensor to detect vehicle. However, the magnetic sensor may be affected by the fluctuation of the outside temperature. To solve the problem, we introduce a moving drift factor. On the parking lot in Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), 62 sensor devices are deployed to evaluate the performance of SPS. By running the system for several months, we observe the vehicle detection accurate rate of the SPS is nearly 99%. The proposed SPS is energy efficient. The end device can run about 7 years with one 2400mAh AA battery.