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Smart Car Parking Management System

Conference Paper · November 2019

DOI: 10.1109/RAAICON48939.2019.49

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 Smart Car Parking Management System
Lomat Haider Chowdhury, Z.N.M Zarif Mahmud, Intishar-Ul Islam, Ishrat Jahan and Salekul Islam
Computer Science and Engineering Department
United International University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: {lchowdhury152011, zmahmud151277, iislam152016, ijahan152076}@bscse.uiu.ac.bd, and salekul@cse.uiu.ac.bd
Abstract—The demand for vehicles increases with the increase
of the population. A densely replenished country like Bangladesh
faces many challenges in managing this increased number of
vehicles. Especially in city areas, where the road-side parking is
not legitimate . Parking management can play an important role
to diminish congestion on the roads. In our country, most of the
parking areas are maintained by a manual parking system. In
this paper, our aim is to design and develop a smart car parking
system to solve the chaos, perplexity and long queues at the
entry and exit of a parking space located inside public buildings
including shopping malls and office spaces. In the smart car
parking system, a radio frequency identification (RFID) card is
used for every vehicle to store the information of the entrance.
Time is automatically enumerated from the entry time to exit
time, and thus fare will be shown to the client for his used parking
space. In this paper, we have developed a system composed of
both hardware and software components. Our system provides
a user-friendly interface for the employees who maintain the
system. The system also generates different reports including
revenue and usage reports directly from the database using the
software section. There will be an LED display in the parking
that will show the number of available parking slots. Finally,
we have measured the performance in terms of response time
by deploying the system in the local server and remote Cloud
server.
Index Terms—Car parking, RFID, parking management sys-
tem, response time
I. I NTRODUCTION
The economy of Bangladesh is elevating, which results in
increased purchasing power. In recent years, a massive number
of newly registered vehicles were added to the congested cities
of our country. According to Bangladesh Road Transportation
Authority (BRTA) [1], in one year, the number of registered
vehicles had been increased from 412K to 468K. However,
the number of roads and parking spaces did not flourish with
that rate. This means, registered vehicles are increasing but
car parking facilities are deemed inadequate in sustaining the
influx of vehicles on the road. Unplanned parking is one of
the main causes of traffic jams in a city. Thus, utilizing these
confined parking spaces, traffic congestion can be attenuated
significantly.
A manual car parking system is managed by paper records
where it is very difficult to filter a large number of records.
Employees of such parking have to waste significant time
in finding a file for specific information about a vehicle
and propagating the reports for revenue or other documents.
Entering data in the paper is time-consuming. For an iterative
manual task, redundant money is spent on manual parking.
On the other hand, the smart car parking system is managed
by an RFID [2] card. Radio-frequency identification uses
electromagnetic fields to autonomously identify and track tags
attached to objects. All data are collected and stored in a
database. Since in this system, no paperwork is required,
unnecessary capital expenditure is decreased.
In this paper, we have designed and developed an RFID-
based smart parking system, which is composed of several
hardware and software components. We have the provision of
two types of users: VIP users and regular users. Moreover, our
system provides a flexible parking rate that can be configured
by the administrators of the system. We have developed a web-
based user-friendly interface for all types of users who control
and operate the system. A database server is also deployed to
store the usage records, maintaining the number of free slots
and excluding CCTV camera there is a system to store the
pictures of the vehicles for safety. The number of available
parking spaces will be displayed on a screen so that users
don’t need to waste their time checking for free space when
the parking is full. We have measured the performance of
our system in terms of response time. We have deployed our
system in the local server and also in Microsoft Azure [3]
Cloud.
II. R ELATED W ORK
Several commercial solutions and research articles are avail-
able for automated car parking management.
Researchers have deployed RFID, ultrasonic detector and
IoT devices to develop parking management systems. In [4], a
face recognition-based automated car parking system has been
proposed that does not need traditional payment. At entry and
exit points, it can detect the face of the driver and thus maintain
the parking. iParker is a new smart car-parking system based
on dynamic resource allocation and pricing [5]. Smart parking
system (SPS) proposes an architecture that uses the ultrasonic
detector [6]. In [7], a cloud-based car parking middleware has
been designed and implemented for IoT-enabled smart cities.
In [8], a Vehicle-2-Vehicle(V2V) based technology is used
to communicate via wireless to share information about the
nearest available street-parking spot and mutual distances via
RSS-to-distance evaluation.
Most of the commercial solutions for car parking systems
are quite expensive to deploy and need many changes to the
existing manual parking. Here, we consider the following two
solutions that provide services that are similar to our goals:
 • Ake Parking, China [9]: This car parking management III. D ESIGNING A S MART C AR PARKING S YSTEM
system has the barrier gate with a well-organized entrance
Our developed smart car parking system consists of mainly
and exit. The smart gate can automatically scan the
two operations: entry and exit. In Figure 1 we have shown
vehicle license plate, then let the vehicle enter. If an auto-
the flowchart of our smart car parking system. In this system,
pay machine is installed, drivers can pay on it before
we have considered two types of users: regular user and VIP
going to the exit.
user. For regular users, no slots are reserved and they have
• Tenet Parking, China [10]: The company has been provid-
to park the car at any available free slot. For VIP users, slots
ing innovative technologies and solutions for more than
are reserved. Moreover, regular users always have to collect
a thousand city complex, business center, large venues,
an RFID tag at the entry point while the VIP users carry their
colleges, enterprises, group property, allowing users to
own RFID tags with them.
enjoy the full range of services, convenient parking,
In the following subsections, we explain the entry and exit
happy travel wisdom pass.
systems in details.
Studying the commercial solutions, we have accumulated
the features that we need to develop in our system. We
found these necessary for our country scenario after collecting
the requirements from different sources. Table I shows the
comparison between the features of our solution with that of
two commercial solutions, i.e., Ake Parking and Tenet Parking.
Please note that in this table, Yes means the system has that
feature and No means the system does not have that feature.

TABLE I: Comparison of services between the proposed

system with commercial solutions
↓ Feature → System Tenet Parking Ake Parking Proposed System
Guidance Screen No Yes No
Video Monitoring Yes Yes Yes
Multi Platform No Yes No
RFID Yes Yes Yes
Revenue Report Yes No Yes
Auto pay Station Yes Yes No
Manual Payment Yes No Yes
Fig. 2: Flow chart of the roles of super-admin and admin

A. Entry system
During entry, a regular user comes, selects vehicle type and
collects RFID card from the entry booth. Then the barrier gate
is opened and his entry time is stored in the database. The user
parks his vehicle at any empty slot assigned for regular users.
A VIP user, at the entry point, scans his card, then the
barrier gate is opened and his entry time is stored. He then
parks his vehicle at an empty slot designated for VIP users.

Fig. 1: Flow chart of smart car parking system
B. Exit system
During exit, a regular user pays his bill, returns his RFID
card and goes out from the parking. An allowable time was
set by the system between payment and departure. If he does
not leave the parking before that time, he will have to pay a
spare amount of money according to the delay time. Monthly
user can avail postpaid system or prepaid system. If he avails
the prepaid system, he has to recharge his card before leaving
the parking if he does not have sufficient amount deposited. If
he has enough amount in his card, he can leave the parking by
scanning his card. Fare is deducted from his balance according
to his stay time. Or if he avails the postpaid system then he
can pay his bill monthly.
C. Role of Admin
In our system admin plays a major part. There are two types
of admin roles: super-admin and admin. Super-admin can
create employee account, monitor employees and admins, and
also update settings for payment and others. A regular admin
cannot do everything like super-admin. Every employee works
under an admin, who can monitor the works of the employees.
Admin sets vehicle rent per hour. Note that depending on the
vehicle types a car, minibus or bike has different rent per hour.
Admin also sets the discounts on different occasions. Admin
can see different kinds of reports. Figure 2 shows the work
performed by super-admin and admin.
D. Architecture of the system
Our system is composed of both hardware and software
components. When a user enters into the parking space, he
has to keep his card with him. At the time of exit, he has to
go to the payment booth if he is a regular user. An employee
scans his card and informs him how much he has to pay. The
user pays his bill, the employee gives him a receipt copy of his
bill and also corresponding data is updated into the database.
At the time of exit, RFID booth scans the card and sends a
request to the server for checking if the user’s payment is clear
or not. The server does its work and responses back to the
RFID booth for either opening the gate or keeping it closed.
IV. D EVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF SMART CAR
PARKING SYSTEM
The system is a composition of different hardware and
software components. Here, we explain those separately.
A. Hardware Components
The hardware components we use in developing the com-
plete system are: entry RFID booth, barrier gate, camera,
server PC, payment counter and exit booth.
Fig. 3: Hardware components for entry RFID scanner
1) Entry RFID Booth: At the entry gate, there is an RFID
vending machine with 3 buttons: Car, Bike and Minibus.
We have used ATmega328P with 32k ROM and 2k RAM
as a micro-controller [11]. Here the card is scanned while
coming out from the machine, and the card number and
corresponding vehicle type are stored in the database. We have
used RDM 6300-125kHz as our RFID reader. Figure 3 shows
the hardware components of the RFID scanner that has been
used at the entry booth.
2) Barrier gate: A barrier is a bar or a pole pivoted to allow
the boom to block vehicular or pedestrian access through a
controlled point. When all the processes are accomplished for
the entry requirements, the barrier gate is opened automati-
cally. Then the user’s vehicle can enter into the parking.
3) Camera: The camera is used for capturing a moment
into a still image. When a user’s vehicle enters into the parking
system the camera captures the image of the vehicle. At
this moment the camera is being used for security purposes.
However, in the future, this can be used for number plate
recognition so that the system becomes more secure and up
to date.
4) Servers: For implementing the software part of the
system we need a web server and a database server. These two
servers might be hosted in the same host machine or separate
machines.
5) Payment booth: In the payment booth, the user can pay
his bill and also can do some basic queries to the employees.
6) Exit booth: There is an RFID booth, which collects the
card from the regular user and scans the card for the VIP
user. All components of the system are connected to the same
network through WiFi access.
When a user enters into parking with his vehicle, if he
is not monthly user, an RFID card comes after pressing the
button and if he is a monthly user he just scans his card.
Then entry booth will send a request to the server with that
RFID number. The server inserts the entry time, RFID number
and corresponding vehicle type into the database. A request is
being sent to the camera to capture an image. When the picture
is taken, it has been sent to the server for further insertion.
As soon as the server completes all the entry requirements
and database operations, it sends a response back to the entry
RFID booth and then the barrier gate is opened.
When a regular (VIP) user enters with his vehicle, the
number of free regular (VIP) slots will be decreased by one.
Slot numbers are determined by the admin.
The step by step entry operation is shown in Figure 4 that
presents the following nine steps:
• Step 1: The user presses a button or scans an RFID card.
• Step 2: RFID number is forwarded to the server.
• Step 3: The server inserts the RFID number into the
database.
• Step 4: The server operates the camera to capture the
vehicle image.
• Step 5: Image is taken and sent to the server.
• Step 6: Server stores image with the corresponding RFID
card number.
 the same network as a local server. While Microsoft Azure
has been used as the Cloud server. Comparison of these two
environments have been summarized in Table II.

TABLE II: Server comparison table

Local Server Azure MySQL Server
Unlimited space Limited storage space
Data and communication protection Encrypted communication
Faster response time Slower response time

For performance study, we have mainly measured the

response time, i.e., the time elapsed between a request is
sent to the server and the corresponding response is received
from the server. In our experiments, we have instantiated
two entry/exit booths simultaneously. As a result, requests are
coming simultaneously from two booths to the server. In the
following, we measure the response time for ten random cases
for both local and Cloud server considering both regular and
VIP users.

Fig. 4: System diagram for entry operation

• Step 7: Response back from the server to open the barrier

gate.
• Step 8: The barrier gate is opened.
• Step 9: User’s vehicle enters into the parking space.

B. Software Components
1) User Interface: We have implemented a web-based
interface for our super-admin, admin and other employees. To
implement the project we have chosen Java language (IDE-
Eclipse). We have used JDBC for necessary database handling.
2) Database: To save the RFID information, user’s in-
formation, payment details, entry-exit time records we have
selected MySQL database Server. For the offline based system, Fig. 5: Response time of regular user entry using local server
we have used Xampp to create a server and for the Cloud
system, we have used MySQL Workbench.
3) Report generation: Since we have developed this system
for commercial use we have introduced the feature to generate
reports. We have implemented two kinds of reports: Revenue
Report (for both VIP and regular users) and VIP User Infor-
mation Report. The Revenue Report will show the income of
the parking between the selected range of dates. Admin can
also select whether he wants to see the revenue information for
VIP user or Regular User or both. The VIP User Information
Report will show all the information of VIP users. There is an
option to select Prepaid or Postpaid users and generate their
report individually.

V. P ERFORMANCE EVALUATION
We have deployed the web and the database servers in
two different environments: in the local server and in the
Cloud server. We can use a standard PC that is located within Fig. 6: Response time of regular user exit using local server
 Figures 5 and 6 show the response time for a regular user
during entry and exit operations while the servers are located
in local host.
Fig. 7: Response time of VIP user entry using Cloud Server
Fig. 8: Response time of VIP user exit using Cloud server
Figures 7 and 8 show the response times for a VIP user
during entry and exit operations while the servers are located
in Microsoft Azure Cloud.
It is clearly visible that response time increases significantly
when we move to the Cloud server. Table III and Figure 9
show the comparison between local and Cloud servers in terms
of response time. The average response times in these two
scenarios are 0.27s and 5.42s respectively. In the case of the
Cloud server, the time increases due to the distant location of
the Cloud server, which in turn increases the transmission time.
Please note that the response time is the total of transmission
time, processing time and queuing delay time.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have designed and implemented a low-cost
smart car parking system and to ameliorate the present parking
condition of our country. All the components of the system are
readily available and relatively cheap. As a result, the system
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TABLE III: Average time (Local Server & Cloud-based
Server)
↓ Test → Server Time Local server (time/req) Azure (time/req)
Average time for entry 0.33s 5.36s
Average time for exit 0.23s 5.47s
Average 0.27s 5.42s
Fig. 9: Response time in local server vs Cloud-based server
we have developed can be manufactured at a significantly
lower cost comparing to the solutions commercially available
in the market. If we use this system for a single parking area,
we can deploy the servers in a local host that is connected with
other components through WiFi or other local area networks
(LAN). We need the Cloud server only if we want remote
access to the system or if we want to use a single system for
more than one parking area.
In the future, we want to introduce image processing to
recognize vehicle number plate from a captured image so that
vehicle numbers can autonomously be stored in the database.
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