31-01-2012, 02:36 PM
Device, Intelligent System and Communication & Networking
Intelligent Traffic Control System using RFID
A. Chattaraj, S. Chakrabarti, S. Bansal, S. Halder and A. Chandra
Advanced Digital & Embedded Systems Lab.
Department of Electronics and Communication Engg.
National Institute of Technology, Durgapur-9, West Bengal, INDIA
e-mail: anuran_nitdgp[at]yahoo.co.in, chakrabartisayan[at]yahoo.co.in, aniruddha_chandra[at]yahoo.co.in
Abstract— In this paper we propose a novel
architecture for creating Intelligent Traffic Control
Systems (ITCS) using Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) [1]. This architecture can be
used in places where RFID tagging of vehicles is
compulsory. The efficiency of our proposed system
lies in the fact that this system operates traffic
signals based on the current situation of vehicular
volume in different directions of a road crossing and
not on pre-assigned times.
Keywords: Database Processing, RFID, Traffic
Control, Vehicle Tracking.
INTRODUCTION
Vehicular Traffic control at road crossings has always
been a matter of concern for administrations. Several
attempts have been made to design efficient automated
systems to solve this problem. Most present day systems
use pre-determined timing circuits to operate traffic
signals. However these systems are inefficient because
they do not operate according to the current volume of
traffic at the crossing.
It is often seen in today’s automated traffic control
systems that vehicles have to wait at a road crossing
even though there is little or no traffic in the other
direction. There are other problems as well, like
ambulances getting caught up by a Red traffic signal
and wasting valuable time. To solve these problems and
to add further enhancements to the complex problem of
vehicular traffic control at road crossings we propose
the idea of “Intelligent Traffic Control Systems using
RFID”. Our idea is based on the principle of RFID
tracking of vehicles, a topic on which many
organizations are doing extensive research.
PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE OF ITCS
Let us consider the diagram of a road crossing as shown
in Figure 1. Our idea is to place two RFID readers [2]
(separated by some distance) in each direction of a road
crossing and have a Central Computer System (CCS) to
control them all. As a vehicle passes by a reader, it
tracks the vehicle and retrieves its Electronic Product
Code (EPC) data [3]. Currently available hardware can
be used to monitor vehicles traveling at normal speed at
a read distance of 10m (33 ft.) [4]. The data obtained is
then sent immediately to the CCS by wireless [5] or
wired channels (as found convenient at that location).
The CCS contains a Central Database Processing
System (CDPS) for processing vehicular data and a
Decision Making Section (DMS) for controlling the
traffic signals. A diagrammatic representation of the
system is given in Figure 2.
The CDPS consists of two parts:-
(1) A dynamic database where the records of
vehicles currently passing the crossing are
temporarily stored.
(2) A permanent database which stores the records of
all vehicles that have passed the crossing.
The dynamic database is divided into a number of
parts. It arranges the EPC data of vehicles according to
their path and direction of travel. Whenever a vehicle
moves towards or away from the crossing, the two
readers in its path detect it and convey the obtained data
to the CCS with some time gap in between. The order of
response of the two readers determines the direction of
travel of the vehicle (whether it is moving towards or
away from the crossing). The vehicular data is then sent
to any one part of the database corresponding to its path
and direction of travel.
