Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487

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Scientific African
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sciaf

Ultrasonic sensor based traffic information acquisition

system; a cheaper alternative for ITS application in
developing countries
Obed Appiah a, Ebenezer Quayson b, Eric Opoku c,∗
a
Mphil Computer Science, Lecturer, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana
b
Mphil Computer Science, Assistant Lecturer, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana
c
MSc. Computer Science, Teaching Assistant, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The use of Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) for traffic congestion and jams management has
Received 24 October 2019 yielded successful results over the years. ITS which uses various hardware and software
Revised 7 July 2020
tools to capture traffic flow, automatically adjustment traffic signalling lights and vehicle
Accepted 13 July 2020
speed limit displays is making most developed cities smarter by helping control traffic
flow thereby minimizing congestion. An effective ITS requires excellent traffic informa-
Keywords: tion acquisition modules which has seen a lot of techniques already implemented. The
Ultrasonic sensor mode of installation and maintenance of traffic information acquisition modules affect the
Traffic flow cost of ITS significantly. In order to minimize the cost of installation and maintenance,
ITS the use of ultrasonic sensor for traffic flow has also been proposed. However, its chal-
Traffic information acquisition device lenges are the horizontal mount of sensors which makes them susceptible to interference
Occupancy ratio
by non-vehicular moving objects, number of sensors used for implementation, and energy
consumption of modules due to system design. This paper therefore proposes an overhead
or vertical sensor mount, single sensor for a node, and congestion estimation based on
Occupancy Ratio algorithm. Experimental results indicate that the design can effectively
be used to determine road conditions at a relatively cheaper cost as compared with other
ultrasonic sensor implementations.
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of African Institute of
Mathematical Sciences / Next Einstein Initiative.
This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Introduction

Increasing number of cars as a result of population growth across the globe continue to put pressure on road network
infrastructure. The resultant effect of this pressure on the road network is congestion and traffic jams. The phenomenon of
rural-urban migration is also putting much pressure on road network in cities and especially cities in developing countries.
The issue of congestion continues to challenge engineers, planners, and policymakers all over the world and various tech-
niques have been employed to help minimize its effect on the environment, health, and productivity of city dwellers. One of

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: obed.appiah@uenr.edu.gh (O. Appiah), ebenezer.quayson@uenr.edu.gh (E. Quayson), eopoku2@st.knust.edu.gh (E. Opoku).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2020.e00487
2468-2276/© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of African Institute of Mathematical Sciences / Next Einstein Initiative. This is an
open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
2 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487

the basic techniques to help minimize congestion is to implement better road network designs as well as multiple carriage
lanes which enable as much as 6 to 8 vehicles to move in one direction at a time as seen in most advanced countries.
The advantage of such implementations is that they offer travellers the opportunity to commute within a relatively shorter
time as compared to single or dual carriage lanes and its resultant benefit such as less environmental pollution, save time
and energy, and enhance the comfort of commuters [14]. The expansion of road network put so much financial pressure on
governments of developing countries since they may have to pay so much to compensate for owners of houses that are so
close to existing roads in order to create space for expansion as well as raise money for the construction of road. This option
of ejecting people is believed to have a negative impact on the social relationships of people that are relocated as a result
of road expansion projects [1]. In some cases, residents are relocated to a distance far from their businesses and will have
to commute longer distances to their business premises affecting their productivity hours and also increasing the number
of vehicles on the road network.
Increasing the number of lanes may seem a simple solution, but expensive to implement anywhere in the world. The
desire to overcome the challenge has led to popular technology known as the Intelligent Transport System (ITS). ITS is a
kind of technology that employs various sensing and connection devices that makes it possible for traffic flow, density and
speed to be estimated and information used for decision making to help improve the traffic flow [14]. The ITS is believed
to have started in the 1980s in many developed countries and have become sophisticated today with various Artificial In-
telligent (AI) techniques employed in the domain [19]. According to Xiong et al. [16], a major milestone for ITS after its
inception in the ’80s was in China during the 2010 Asian Games where the technology was used for parallel traffic control
and management. ITS enables traffic flow to be optimized using various controlled systems and make traffic signals more
dynamic so as to accommodate the varying traffic density in the road network. The system primarily uses various hardware
and software to capture vehicle flow, density and speed, and transmit the data for a centralized system to perform analyses
leading to dynamic traffic signalling and other management activities by stakeholders. Advance Traveller Information System
(ATIS), Advance Traffic Management System (ATMS), Advance Public Transport System (APTS), Emergency Management Sys-
tem (EMS), Real-Time Traffic Information (RTTI), and Vehicle Speed Limit (VSL) are various systems contributing to effective
ITS today [1,19].
Advanced countries are taking advantage of ITS in order to minimize congestion that are experienced on their road
networks, especially during the rush hours of the day resulting in delayed commuting, and increasing air and noise pollution.
United States of America, Europe, UK, Dubai, and Canada are some advanced countries that have successfully implemented
ITS for their benefits [3,6,13]; Retrieved from http://www.its-Uk.org.uk.23–08–2019. Retrieved from http://www.Itscanada.Ca.
23–08–2019).
However, the same cannot be said about developing countries and especially those in the Sub-Sahara Africa. This may
be partly due to the lack of infrastructure that support the smooth implementation of ITS. Lack of proper internet con-
nection, unreliable energy supply in some cities, and poor political will to implement such system have led to generally
non-existence of such technology that helps commuters and the environment. Indeed, ITS comes with a cost that must be
borne by governments which are already handicapped with financial resource.
ITS’s key component is the data acquisition devices that enable proper collection of data [14]. When traffic data is cap-
tured accurately, it helps intelligent systems to make effective predictions and decisions for managing traffic flow. Today’s
ITS data acquisition is done by employing more powerful sensors or developing sensor fusion to deliver high performance
[20]. These sensors can be either intrusive or non-intrusive. The intrusive sensors (inductive loop detectors, pneumatic tubes,
piezoelectric sensors, and weight-in-motion) are normally buried under the road or pavement [5,10,11,15]. The non-intrusive
sensors (utilize microwave radar, infrared, video, ultrasonic systems and acoustic) are not buried [4,8,9].
In developing countries where road maintenances are poorly done, acquiring intrusive sensors may not be helpful. Pot-
holes on roads may expose these sensors and may cause them to cease functioning. Again the cost of acquiring and main-
taining both intrusive and non-intrusive traffic information acquisition systems seems to be out of reach of many developing
countries and therefore discouraging them from implementing ITS. Ultrasonic technology for estimating distances have seen
some applications in the acquisition of traffic information. The device deployed in a Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)
promises cheaper alternative to high maintenance cost (high computing power, wired power supplies, and wired communi-
cation) associated with majority of the existing system [20]. When designed well, the system can easily be used for traffic
information acquisition making it ideal for traffic flow monitoring in developing countries. Moreover, with the anticipation
and effort made to embrace self – driving cars, such proposed solution comes in handy. Self – driving cars are equipped
with features such as lane switching control, vehicle – to – vehicle communication, street sign recognition, etc. which heav-
ily rely on satellite, sensors (both internal and external) data that are efficiently processed to ensure optimal performance.
Our proposed system also uses sensors to generate traffic data which can be communicated to self – driving cars using
appropriate software to optimize its utility. Considering goal ten (10) of the AU’s agenda 2063, which seeks to promote ICT
penetration and targeting at least 70% increase in broadband accessibility by 2020 will lead to an ubiquitous infrastructure
platform that can be leveraged on to ensure massive enrolment and implementation of the project.

Literature review

One of the most critical components of ITS is its accuracy in the acquisition of traffic information such as traffic flow,
speed, and density. The data serve as input to the system to help make necessary decisions. The number of vehicles and
 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487 3

Fig. 1. An illustration of slot’s state acquisition installation. Source: Kianpisheh et al. [2].

Fig. 2. Mount positions of an ultrasonic sensor. (a) Overhead mount; (b) side top mount; (c) horizontal mount. Source: Jo & Jung [18].

speed of movement within a specific period in the road networks are normally used as mechanism to identify the traffic
state such as congestion and jams. This has led to so many mechanisms to register such critical data on traffic flow on a
road network. Ten (10) vehicle sensing technologies were discussed in a document titled “Vehicle Sensing: Ten Technologies
to Measure Traffic”. The techniques discussed were Manual Counts, Video Vehicle Detection, Pneumatic Road tube count-
ing, Piezoelectric Sensor, Inductive Loop, Magnetic Sensor, Acoustic detector, Passive Infrared, Doppler and Radar Microwave
Sensors. The techniques mentioned can straightway be grouped into two main blocks; the manual and automatic vehicle
detection techniques. The manual counting of vehicles which was investigated extensively by Zheng & Mike [22], concluded
that, the approach can be effective with the exception of classification of vehicles that can be marred with some errors. Au-
tomatic count of vehicles uses various computer software and hardware tools to count the number of vehicles that moves
along a road. The strength of the system is generally based on the acquisition hardware and the algorithm that processes
the captured data in order to extract the necessary information from it. Challenges such as accuracy of sensing devices,
mode of installation, energy consumption, cost of installation and maintenance, and environmental effect on performance
makes this field an active field. Research into these sensing devices and improvements are proposed day in and out such as
the improved inductive loop detector design by Yogesh, Sharma & Vanajakshi [21] for efficient traffic signal operations. The
ultrasonic sensor is also becoming popular sensing technique for traffic data acquisition and this work primarily focuses on
it to help identify road traffic conditions.
The use of ultrasonic devices to detect vehicles is not new in the transportation industry. The technique has been used
to identify the presence and absence of cars or vehicles to help make necessary decisions or take actions. Kianpisheh et al.
[2] proposed the use of ultrasonic detector for identification of the status of parking slots in a smart parking system. Ultra-
sonic sensors were mounted overhead for all parking slots in dedicated parking spaces. The presence of a vehicle in a slot
was detected by reduced distance registered by the ultrasonic sensor. In the absence of a vehicle, the predefined distance
which is the distance between the floor and the sensor is registered by the device. The processing component of the system
indicate the presence of a vehicle when the distance is reduced to or below 89% of the predefined distance. The slot’s state
acquisition implementation was successful with no known glitches. An earlier parking guidance design by Idris et al. [7] in
their work "Parking Guidance System Utilizing Wireless Sensor Network and Ultrasonic Sensor" also successfully used ultra-
sonic device as data acquisition device to help drivers park effectively. The basic idea of changes in distance is used to make
the necessary decisions by the system. However, these implementations were not for traffic flow or density estimations that
feed into systems for effective use of parking space. Fig. 1 and 2 illustrate various mounting orientations for an ultrasonic
sensor.
To achieve low costs and high scalability, the use of traffic information acquisition systems based on wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) was proposed by Jo et al. [17]. The paper proposed an ultrasonic based traffic information acquisition
system that had high accuracy, low power consumption, and low transmission delay.
4 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487

Fig. 3. Vehicle detection using ultrasonic sensors. Source: Jo & Jung [18].

Fig. 4. Analysis Model. Source: Jo & Jung [18].

Ultrasonic sensors in Fig. 3 were mounted horizontally and the distance measured used to determine whether a vehicle
is in lane n or n + 1. This was done by using predefined distances. Mounting sensors along one lane can lead to invalid
counting of vehicles. The design was therefore enhanced by mounting sensors on both sides of the road and appropriate
algorithms to identify single or multiple vehicular movement across a section in the road network.
Jo & Jung [18] attempted to estimate the speed of vehicle that moves across the line of sound of an ultrasonic sensor
mounted horizontally. The paper’s aim was to estimate the speed of vehicles as well as count them in order to help provide
data for an ITS. The design was to serve as traffic information acquisition system with minimal consumption of energy of
nodes in the wireless sensor network. In order to achieve accurate speed of a moving vehicle, the model in Fig. 4 was
proposed. The key element here which can be challenging for practical implementation is the variable lv , which represents
the length of the vehicle. This means that when the length of the vehicle change, the speed of the vehicle estimated by the
system may be invalid. For practical implementation, lv may be estimated by finding the average length of cars in order for
the system to generate speed very close to the actual speed of the vehicle.
Traffic congestion prediction using ultrasonic sensors was proposed by Prasetyo et al. [12]. In the paper, the ultrasonic
sensors are used to estimate the speed of vehicles and that information serve as the basis to determine the traffic condition
or status on a highway. The architecture used is like that of the stereo camera implementation in computer vision to ac-
curately determine the speed of vehicles. Two sensors were mounted horizontally with a distance of 5 m apart. The speed
of a vehicle is determined by finding the time difference between when the first sensor identify an obstacle and that of
the second sensor. Since the distance between the two sensors is fixed (5 m), the speed of the object can be accurately
estimated by dividing the fixed distance by the time difference between sensors feed. This architecture practically performs
better than that of Jo et al. [17] approaches discussed earlier. Prasetyo et al. [12] approach works well but requires double
sensor and can estimate the flow in a unidirectional way. This suggests that each road lane will require double sensor in
order to determine the rate of movement of vehicle on the road network. This approach may end up using relatively more
ultrasonic sensors across the road network demanding more energy to run and also increasing the cost of implementation.
Especially when more nodes are required for the implementation across the road network.
 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487 5

Fig. 5. Ultrasonic Sensor Module HC-SR04 Distance Measuring Sensor for Arduino.

Fig. 6. Image of Arduino UNO.

In developing countries where road network infrastructure is sometimes poorly done, and road traffic regulations poorly
observed by road users, mounting sensor horizontally can sometimes be challenging. Non-vehicular object that moves across
the sensors may be registered as vehicles. To avoid this, sensor may have to be mounted at the edge of the road which too
can easily be knocked down by cars. Overhead mounting of sensors can help avoid this situation considerably since insignif-
icant number of humans are likely to move in the middle of the road where the sensor may be mounted and therefore
likely to achieve much accurate results. This paper therefore proposes the use of overhead mounting‘ ultrasonic sensor for
traffic flow estimation, and suggest fusion of mount positions for effective results. In the design, limited number of ultra-
sonic devices are implemented which can make it relatively cheaper to install and maintain as compared to the designs
discussed earlier. This will mean that more sensors can be installed to help monitor wider stretch of road network for ef-
fective ITS implementation. Here, congestion detection can easily be done by just a sensor with minimum computing power
since the basic architecture is based on a propose concept called Occupancy Ratio to report state of a stretch as described.
The concept is used because the term congestion can best be described with fuzzy logic which allows for some degree of
membership of congestion and non-congestion conditions. Average Occupancy Ratio of a lane can therefore be used to ef-
fectively report the road congestion status. This paper therefore present how congestion status can be reported effectively
with minimal number of sensors minimizing computational resource (time and space) as well as saving energy which can
help the implementation of ITS in-resource constraint areas such as developing countries.

Methodology

The traffic information acquisition system proposed in this work is implemented with basic open source microcontroller,
ultrasonic sensor, and data communication channel that transmit the state of traffic to a computer system (server). An
Arduino UNO, an HR-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor, and a laptop were primarily used for the acquisition and processing of the
signals captured for this experiment. The ultrasonic sensor is used as the signal acquisition device and the Arduino UNO as
the device for the processing of signals captured by the ultrasonic device. A USB cable connected the Arduino and the laptop
and therefore served as a channel to transmit the state of traffic flow for further analyses or processing. In the experiment,
the data transmitted to the laptop was saved into a data file which was later on analysed and the traffic state visualized to
compare results with what happened on the road. Fig. 5 and 6 illustrate the HC-SR04 and Arduino UNO respectively.
The ultrasonic sensor is used to measure the distance between it and any object that is placed in its line of sound or
sight. The object must be capable of reflecting audio signals for the estimation of the distance. Soft surfaces that absorbs
sound and rough surfaces which disperses sound signals normally results in an error in the readings of the measurement of
the distances. The HC-SR04 used for this experiment is capable of measuring distance between 2 cm to 400 cm.
6 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487

Fig. 7. Sensor Mount.

Fig. 8. 1 × 3 median filtering on sample data.

The sensor is aligned vertically and the surface of the road is considered a stationary object with vehicles as moving
objects. The sensor is hanged 4 m from the surface of the road position in the middle of road and periodically measures the
distance. Any vehicle that comes between the sensor and the road reduces this distance. Distances measured by the sensors
that are less than the predefined distance of 4 m will be considered as the present of a vehicle and the period of occupancy
considered as the nature of traffic flow on a particular stretch of road.
The sensor was placed in a protected cone to help prevent stray ultrasonic sound that may be coming from the environ-
ment having minimal impact on the performance of the setup. The surface of the road where the sensor was mounted was
smooth, ensuring that ultrasonic sound will not be absorbed or dispersed. Without the flat hard surface, the sensor may
estimate wrong distances which will impair the results generated by the system.
A simple presence and absence scenario is illustrated in Fig. 7.
The number of times the sensor records close to 400 cm is recorded. A tolerance of 10% is integrated into the design so
that distances between 360 cm and 400 cm are all considered as absent. A ratio of absence is calculated by counting how
many times the sensor’s reading reported absent when compared to the total number of reading made within a specific
period. The larger the absent ratio, the lesser the congestion while the higher the ratio, the more congestion on a road.

System implementation

System design (software implementation)

The signal acquisition stage is where the system captures the distance between the sensor and any object. The distance
captured is pre-processed before final analyses to estimate the traffic flow is performed on the captured data. The main pre-
processing employed is the denoising pre-processing method. The data captured by the sensor may be corrupted by noise,
especially impulse noise, and therefore had to be cleaned using noise removal or suppression techniques. The median filter
with 1 × 3 sliding window is used to suppress the noise. The median filter has been extensively and effectively used to
suppress noise, specifically what is normally referred to as the “salt-and-pepper” noise in image processing. The technique
is able to suppress glitches that occurs during remote sensing or transmission of signals or errors that may be present in the
signal. Fig. 8 illustrates a simple demonstration of the 1 × 3 sliding window used for the removal of noise in the captured
data
The median filtering approach which normally selects the median value in a given set of values in a window is normally
implemented using arrays. This array manipulation can be expensive to implement especially on microcontrollers which are
mostly limited with computational resources (memory space and processing time). The design therefore avoided the used of
array which may perform other computational activities in order to generate physical addresses of values using index values.
Three floating point variables are used to handle the last three sample values. This enables the sorting to be done on these
values and the median selected. This approach significantly improves speed of computation and hence makes it possible
to run the algorithm on the microcontroller easily. Another advantage such design offers is reduced energy consumption
 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487 7

Fig. 9. Result of simulated experiment.

prolonging the lifespan of batteries when used as power source. The C codes implementation of the filtering processing is
outlined below. The A and B variables are initialized during the setup section of the codes. The code snippet can be found in
the main loop section of the source code for the microcontroller. The last line performs the shifting of values in the window
to create space for the new value that will be read.

/∗
Read distance from the ultrasonic sensor and assign the
value to C;:C = (time ∗ 0.034) / 2;
Sort the content of A, B, C: Load A, B, C into X, Y, Z respectively
∗
/
X = A; Y = B; Z = C;
if (X > Y){Temp = X; X = Y; Y=Temp;}
if (Y > Z){Temp = Y; Y = Z; Z=Temp;}
if (X > Y){Temp = X; X = Y; Y=Temp;}
distance = Y;
A = B; B = C;

After the pre-processing, the sampled values are quantized into stream of zeros (0 s) and ones (1 s). The distance that
indicates empty road is quantized into 1 s and those that match vehicles detections are quantized into 0 s. The stream of
zeros and ones are further processed to be able to determine the nature of road traffic flow. Eq. (1) was used to perform
the quantization.

0, x < 3.6m
q (x ) = (1)
1, x ≥ 3.6m
The sampling of signals is made continuously for 30 s and data processed to report the status of a road. The total number
of samples made in every 30 s is recorded and the number of 1 s within the period is determine. Fig. 9 illustrates a graph
of simulated experiment using the above quantization formula for 150 second.
Total samples (Ts ), number of absent count (Ac ), and number of present count (Pc ) are determined every 30 s. The imple-
mentation of the algorithm for the counting was improved by summing quantized values since values after the quantization
were 0 s and 1 s. The sum value was equal to counting the number of absent within a specific period which improves the
speed of the counting process. Road Occupancy ratio value is estimate that enable the system to grade the state of the traffic
situation at a point in time. Eq. (2,3, and 4) are used for the road Occupancy Ratio estimation.
Absent Count (Ac )
Absent Ratio(Ar ) = (2)
Ts

P resent Ratio(Pr ) = 1 − Ar (3)

P resent Percentage(Pr% ) = Pr ∗ 100 (4)

Road Occupancy (Ro ) which is the same as Pr% is calculated using Eq. (4) is used to grade the state of traffic condition.
Twelve (12) different grades for occupancy for every 30 s are used in the system’s design. Table 1 illustrate the various
ranges that were used for the occupancy state of the road.
In this design, the occupancy of a road is not simply determined by the grade calculated in the last 30 s, but the last
5 min. That is, the average of the last 10 states reported by each 30-second-cycle is used for the estimation of the state of
the road. A queue data structure is used to store the last 10 states observed. Let S(N) be the last n road states recorded.
8 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487

Table 1
Road traffic condition classifications.

Pr% Grade Remarks

100.00 100.00 11 Traffic Jam

90.00 99.99 10 Congestion Very Heavy
80.00 89.99 9 Heavy
70.00 79.99 8 Medium
60.00 69.99 7 Light
50.00 59.99 6 Very Light
40.00 49.99 5 Busy Very
30.00 39.99 4 Medium
20.00 29.99 3 Light
10.00 19.99 2 Very Light
0.00 9.99 1 None Busy
0.00 0.00 0 No Vehicle

Fig. 10. Suspension of ultrasonic sensor.

N = 10 is used for the experiment conducted in this work. Estimation of the statistical average is always influenced by
outliers and therefore using them for decision making may result in a biased one. The outliners are handled by determining
the maximum value in the last n set of values (Smax ) and the minimum of the same set of values (Smin ) and eliminating
them from the computation of the mean value. Eq. (5) is used for the estimation of the mean state of the traffic flow status
for the last 5 min.
  
1 
n
μ= Si − Smin − Smax (5)
n−2
i=1

In order to prevent shifting of data in a queue which increases the computation resource demand of the model or an
overflow from occurring if fixed-size arrays are used to implement the buffer of queue, a circular queue is used in this
experiment. The queue is initialized with the first state that was calculated. Subsequent enqueuing are done by adding
values to the rear of the queue without thinking about what may happen at the front of the queue. This is so because each
insertion on the queue automatically delete the oldest value on it. This helps limit so much iteration which are normally
required to handle the traditional queue implemented with an array.

System setup

Figs. 10, 11, and 12 illustrate design of suspension bar, installation of device on an electric pole and illustration of a
vehicle passing under the sensor.
The state of the traffic flow is communicated using a USB cable connected to a laptop and the setup. The laptop can
easily be replaced with GSM module or Wi-Fi module to send data using wireless connection. Such modules also consume
some significant amount of energy when in used. If they transmit data periodically, they turn to drain much energy source
that powers the system, and becomes problematic when devices are running on batteries. This experiment did not use pe-
riodic transmission of road state information to a web server or GSM server, but a smart technique that prevent high cost
for connection as well as energy cost was used. The system compares the last road Grade that was transmitted to the server
before deciding to transmit Current Grade. If the last transmitted Grade is not same as Current Grade, the system trans-
mits the Current Grade as the state of the road, otherwise no transmission is done and therefore the cost of transmission
minimized. This can make it possible to have no transmission for a longer period which makes the design economical to
operate.

Testing of system

The system was tested on a relatively smaller width of a road on the campus of University of Energy and Natural Re-
sources (UENR), Sunyani, Ghana near the Basic School. Fig. 13 presents the map of the area the system was implement.
 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487 9

Fig. 11. Installation of ultrasonic traffic information acquisition device.

Fig. 12. Vehicle moving under the installed sensor.

The values Ar , Pr , Pr% Current Grade and General Grade were recorded. Manually counting was also done in order to help
compare the Grade reported by the system to the number of vehicles that passed.
The recordings were done for several hours in the mornings when the school was in section. The results section presents
the data captured during the testing phase.
10 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487

Fig. 13. A map illustrating the area and location of sensor.

Table 2
Extract from recorded traffic flow.

Seq. % Absent % Present 30 s Traffic Grade Traffic Condition

1 100 0 0 No Vehicle
2 100 0 0 No Vehicle
3 100 0 0 No Vehicle
4 99.51 0.49 1 None Busy
5 100 0 0 No Vehicle
6 100 0 0 No Vehicle
7 100 0 0 No Vehicle
8 100 0 0 No Vehicle
9 100 0 0 No Vehicle
10 100 0 0 No Vehicle
11 100 0 0 No Vehicle
12 100 0 0 No Vehicle
100 0 0 No Vehicle
14 100 0 0 No Vehicle
15 100 0 0 No Vehicle
16 83.58 16.42 2 Busy – Very Light
17 0 100 11 Traffic Jam
18 41.72 58.28 6 Congestion – Very Light
19 64.43 35.57 4 Busy – Medium
20 100 0 0 No Vehicle

Results & discussion

Traffic flow data was recorded between the dates of 16th of September 2019 to 20th of September, 2019. Table 2 presents
an extracted period of 600seconds of traffic flow on the road indicated in Fig. 13 on the 16th of September 2019.
Ratio or percentage of present (Pr% ) which is inversely proportional to the % Absent values are used to determine the
Grading of traffic conditions. The Grade number can be used to determine traffic condition.
The traffic condition for the road can be determined by using the 30-seconds grade values in Table 1. Table 2 contains
traffic condition descriptions for some recorded data. Using Eq. (5), the traffic condition for the last five (5) minutes can be
estimated as 1.5. Rounding the value will produce 2.0 which matches with Busy (Very Light) on Table 1. The road at this
instance can be described with the lowest form of busyness per our description of road condition. Even though sequence
17 on the Table 2 reported traffic jam, it effects on the last 5 min of data gathered indicate that it may have been a vehicle
stopping temporary for about 30 s under the sensor. This is not good enough to generalize traffic jam.
Fig. 14 illustrates 4 h segment of data gathered during one morning testing period between the hours of 6:00 AM and
10:00 AM. The extraction starts from 7:20 AM to 9:00 AM.
 O. Appiah, E. Quayson and E. Opoku / Scientific African 9 (2020) e00487 11

Fig. 14. An extract of traffic flow from 7:20 AM to 9:00 AM.

The results from Fig. 14 illustrate that traffic flow was regular between 7:20 AM to 8:00 AM where staff members and
parents drive in to drop their wards. The period between 8:00 AM to 8:40 AM recorded a lot of activities with some
instances recording Pr% values above 10.00 indicating busyness on the stretch of road. The last section of the extracted data
representing the periods between 8:40 to 9:00 AM indicates virtually an empty road. This is typically observed when most
staff members have already reported to their offices and most parents have already dropped their wards. The last 2minutes
in the extract represents a situation where a vehicle was made to stop under the sensor for more than 40 s to simulate a
traffic jam condition.
Experimental results indicate the ultrasonic sensor can be used to estimate traffic flow or density. In the proposed design,
the percentage of road detected by the sensor within a period is used to determine the Occupancy Ratio of a section of
a road and subsequently used to report traffic conditions. It was observed generally that the Occupancy Ratio does not
correlate to the number of vehicles that passed under the sensor. For example, an Occupancy Ratio of 58.28 on Table 2 may
suggest that more vehicles moved under the sensor, but it was just a moving vehicle slowing under the sensor within the
30 s period. Interestingly, sequence 16 on Table 2, five (5) cars moved under the sensor with various speeds within 30 s
and the system registered an Occupancy Ratio of 16.42. The system’s ability to handle such extreme values by eliminating
them from the computation of the mean traffic condition for the last 5minutes makes the design robust for reporting traffic
conditions. The traffic data acquired using the ultrasonic sensor setup is highly accurate, but interpretation of the figures
may differ from one’s definition of congestion to another.

Conclusion

This paper proposes the use of ultrasonic sensor for traffic information acquisition system. The overhead or vertical
orientation is used in this work in order to limit the interference of humans and other non-vehicular objects that may
move across the sensors when mounted horizontally or sideways. Again, we define traffic conditions based on a concept
we term as Occupancy Ratio which does not depend on counting of vehicles or speed of vehicles as used by a lot of traffic
information acquisition systems. This was done to generally limit the number of sensors for traffic information acquisition
as well as simplified algorithms for extracting traffic conditions which makes the system run faster. Experimental results
show that such method can effectively be used to determine the traffic conditions if ratios are effectively interpreted and
therefore minimizing the cost of traffic information acquisition for developing countries.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors have no affiliation with any organization with a direct or indirect financial interest in the subject matter
discussed in the manuscript

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