LIU LAYOUT 2/7/11 10:47 AM Page 64
ACCEPTED FROM OPEN CALL
DISTRIBUTED AUTOMATED
INCIDENT DETECTION WITH VGRID
BEHROOZ KHORASHADI, FRED LIU, DIPAK GHOSAL, MICHAEL ZHANG, AND CHEN-NEE CHUAH,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
ec. 5 Sec. 6 Sec. 7 ABSTRACT
In this article, we study an ad hoc distributed
3 automated incident detection algorithm for high-
way traffic using vehicles that are equipped with
wireless communications, processing, and stor-
age capabilities (referred to as VGrid vehicles).
ec. 5 Sec. 6 Sec. 7
Each VGrid vehicle periodically broadcasts bea-
con messages with its speed, location, and lane
information. Using these beacons, each VGrid
1 2
vehicle builds and maintains information about
different sections of the road. Using such infor-
mation, each VGrid vehicle independently per-
forms an anomaly detection algorithm based on
the traffic density, speed, and the number of
ec. 5 Sec. 6 Sec. 7 lane changes to identify incidents. The robust-
ness of the detection is improved by a voting
scheme in which a consensus, among participat-
ing VGrid vehicles, is achieved when a fixed
The authors study an number of votes are accumulated. We use a sim-
ulation tool called VGSim to study the perfor-
ad hoc distributed mance of our detection algorithm in a highway
scenario. The results show that our distributed
automated incident incident detection algorithm has low false posi-
detection algorithm tive rate, zero false negative rate, and can still
achieve incident detection with as little as 10
for highway traffic percent penetration of VGrid vehicles.
using vehicles that INTRODUCTION
are equipped Every year freeway accidents and obstructions
result in traffic congestion [1], environmental
with wireless pollution, and damages in property, personal
communications, injury, and/or fatalities. The overall cost to soci-
ety is in the billions of dollars and increasing [1].
processing, and With the availability of advanced sensor tech-
nologies, preventing and/or minimizing the
storage capabilities impact of these occurrences has been a major
focus in highway incident detection research in
(referred to as VGrid the past decade. An important goal in these
efforts has been to reduce the response times in
vehicles). detecting the incident. Timely and accurate inci-
1 Nodes refer to VGrid vehicles that can store and process
information and, using wireless communication, commu-
nicate with other VGrid vehicles. Throughout this article
we use the terms VGrid vehicle and node interchangeably.
64 1536-1284/11/$25.00 © 2011 IEEE
dent detection is critical to notify approaching
drivers, dispatch emergency response teams to
deal with the injured, clear the road of the
impeding obstruction, to return traffic patterns
to the normal flow, and prevent subsequent sec-
ondary incidences.
Automated incident detection (AID) meth-
ods have been developed for detecting potential
incidents since the 1970s. However, early deploy-
ments of these systems were relatively ineffective
since they had either high false alarm rates
(which rendered them ineffective) or low detec-
tion rates (which rendered them unreliable). The
recent advances in sensor technologies and wire-
less devices have created a new paradigm for
design and development of AID systems. Recent
systems have incorporated complex algorithms
to predict and detect incidents and their loca-
tions [2]. Unfortunately, even these elaborate
methods have unacceptable levels of false posi-
tive and false negative rates.
In this article, we propose an AID system
that leverages vehicular ad hoc networks
(VANETs) and is implemented as an application
on the VGrid framework [3]. Within a geograph-
ic area, an ad hoc network of vehicles equipped
with sensors and in-vehicle processing capability
can form an ad hoc cluster of sensors and grid
computers, which we refer to as VGrid. VGrid is
a control and management infrastructure frame-
work, where VGrid collects and processes real-
time traffic data using in-vehicles sensors and
computers to make distributed control decisions.
VGrid can complement and extend the existing
fixed infrastructure by distributing previously
centralized control functions, such as traffic
statistics collection and dissemination of traffic
advisory messages, to local intelligent agents,
including in-vehicle sensors and computers.
As part of its design, VGrid vehicles broad-
cast beacon messages that include information
about the vehicle’s speed, position, and lane.
These messages are then collected by nodes 1
that are within the broadcast range of transmit-
ting vehicles. Using the aggregated information,
each node independently estimates and main-
tains information on the occupancy, lane
change, and speed for different sections of the
IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011
LIU LAYOUT 2/7/11 10:47 AM Page 65
road. The information is processed to detect
anomalous traffic patterns to identify static
obstructions in the road. The initial individual
detection phase is used to detect all potential
incident points, and then collaboration and veri-
fication among the nodes is used to filter out
erroneous predictions. The proposed method
decreases both the false positive and false nega-
tive rates to acceptable levels. In addition,
because each vehicle acts as a low-cost sensor
that collects and processes the information
received from other sensors, the detection time
is, in most cases, very low (on average about 20
s). The low cost of each device also allows more
efficient deployment compared to systems that
require devices that must be installed at road-
sides or in the road itself.
The rest of this article is organized as follows.
In the next section we discuss related work on
AID. We then give a detailed description of the
proposed incident detection approach. We
briefly describe the simulation tool and the sce-
nario for which we evaluate the performance of
our proposed incident detection algorithm. We
then discuss the results and finally, we conclude
with a summary of our results and outline future
work.
RELATED WORK
In general there are four main types of AID
detection algorithms. They are based on pattern
recognition, catastrophe theory, statistical analy-
sis, and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques [4].
Of these four types, statistical and pattern recog-
nition based methods were the first to be devel-
oped in the 1970s. Later, with the emergence of
more high-powered computers, AI techniques
were applied.
The earlier work in AID used techniques
based on decision trees for traffic pattern recog-
nition [5], time series analysis [6], and Kalman
filters [7]. Based on these techniques, three
major AID algorithms were developed: the Cali-
fornia Algorithm, the McMaster Algorithm, and
the Minnesota Algorithm. The California Algo-
rithm utilizes decision trees to identify anoma-
lous lane densities between detection points.
The California Algorithm, also referred to as
Traffic Services Corporation (TSC) Algorithm-2,
uses a five-minute roll-wave suppression logic
that helps reduce false alarms due to shock
waves from downstream. The key advantages of
the California Algorithm is that it is comprehen-
sive in nature and has low false positive rates.
Unfortunately, the California Algorithm makes
decisions based solely on the occupancy rate of
the road; other parameters such as vehicle speed
and volume are not used.
The McMaster Algorithm is based on catas-
trophe theory [8]. It classifies traffic conditions
into subcategories and determines if traffic pat-
terns fall within these categories. They are robust
in the sense that they are not affected by
upstream input failures. However, the McMaster
Algorithm only tracks data from the fast lane.
Finally, the Minnesota Algorithm, which is simi-
lar to the California Algorithm, uses the occu-
pancy rates. This, however, leads to the same
disadvantage as the California Algorithm but
IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011
also has the added limitation of creating a large
number of false alarms in low traffic density sce-
The key advantages
narios. of the California
Examples of AID systems based on statistical
methods include the DES algorithm summarized Algorithm is that it is
in [4], and the Standard Normal Deviation
(SND) [4] and Single-Station Incident Detection comprehensive in
(SSID) algorithms [9]. SSID uses the standard
statistical T-test to analyze the differences in nature and has a
occupancy.
The introduction of AI techniques has result-
low false positive
ed in new AID approaches. The study reported rates. Unfortunately,
in [2] uses a combination of fuzzy logic and
genetic algorithms (GAs). While this approach is the California Algo-
highly adaptive, both fuzzy logic and GAs are
highly complex algorithmic approaches that have rithm makes deci-
yet to be proven to be efficient. The AI-based
approaches for AID systems have also focused sions based solely on
on artificial neural networks which contain mul-
tiple layers, multiple inputs, and a complex
the occupancy rate
structure. This approach has been shown to per- of the road; other
form better than fuzzy logic and GA-based
approaches; however, complexity and accuracy parameters such as
are still major drawbacks. The use of AI in con-
junction with modern camera technology was vehicle speed and
investigated in [10]. Unfortunately, this approach
is very expensive since cameras must be installed volume are not used.
and maintained. An example of this is the video
or 3D image processing adopted in [11].
In recent years, VANET has provided a
unique framework to develop new techniques for
AID. In the research reported in [12, 13], a cen-
tralized detection approach is proposed for AID.
These methods rely on information collected
and reported periodically at roadside nodes by
VANET vehicles. These roadside nodes then
aggregate the information collected from indi-
vidual vehicles to detect obstructions upstream
from the roadside node. Although this work
addresses a similar problem (AID using
VANET), there are fundamental differences
that distinguish it from the work presented in
this article. A major difference is that the
method proposed in this article is a fully dis-
tributed approach that leverages the fully dis-
tributed VGrid computing framework in which
vehicles form an ad hoc network with no infra-
structure coordination to detect anomalies in
vehicular traffic flows. This distributed design of
the AID scheme has significant advantages, as
mentioned later in this article. In addition, the
proposed detection method is evaluated using
VGSim [14], a simulation platform designed
specifically to simulate a realistic mobility model
for vehicles and an integrated wireless network-
ing protocol stack.
To date, the most effective and rapid detec-
tion system seems to be based on cell phone
callers and/or roadside call boxes [4]. It has been
argued that using cell phones to call in roadside
incidents can be dangerous, and could result in
secondary accidents and/or other traffic flow
problems. Furthermore, studies have shown that
as cell phone conversations increase, the likeli-
hood that some highway traffic situation will go
unreported and/or unnoticed also increases [15].
The use of call boxes can be very effective but
requires the overhead of deployment; the more
frequent the call box stations, the greater the
cost.
65
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Over time each VGrid Field Type Size
vehicle builds an Source IP address Integer 4 bytes
independent and Position Integer 4 bytes
local view of the
Lane number Byte 1 bytes
road and its traffic
Time-to-live (TTL) Byte 1 bytes
pattern. Each vehicle
periodically searches Message timestamp Long 8 bytes
this aggregated Vehicle speed Short 2 bytes
information for Road ID Integer 4 bytes
specific markers that Total bytes 24 bytes
indicate road Table 1. Beacon message fields.
obstructions.
All the previously mentioned AID techniques
sort through data collected from roadside sen-
sors or other similar data collection devices. As
such, these algorithms are all constrained by the
same limitation; they can only achieve a certain
level of accuracy and efficiency. VANET tech-
nologies and the proposed VGrid framework
[14] enable new approaches to AID. They pro-
vide both spatially and temporally fine-grained
data regarding the speed, position, and lane
changes of vehicles. Furthermore, the distributed
grid computing (VGrid) framework implement-
ed over VANET allows complex coordinated
computation over the data to accurately and
robustly detect various patterns in the traffic
flow and thereby detect incidents.
OBSTRUCTION DETECTION ALGORITHM
In order for vehicles to detect potential road
obstruction, vehicles must exchange traffic infor-
mation. The VGrid framework [14] provides this
in the form of traffic beacon messages. These
message are broadcasted periodically by each
VGrid vehicle and, in-turn, collected by all VGrid
vehicles that are within the transmission range of
the broadcast. Over time each VGrid vehicle
builds an independent and local view of the road
and its traffic pattern. Each vehicle periodically
searches this aggregated information for specific
markers that indicate road obstructions. Once a
vehicle detects an obstruction, it initiates a voting
phase, in which nodes within the transmission
range vote to reach a distributed consensus on
the detection. In the following subsections we
describe the details of the algorithm.
BEACON MESSAGES AND ROAD PROFILING
The core of this algorithm relies on the dissemi-
nation of vehicle traffic information by all VGrid
vehicles. The beacon messages are broadcast at
4 Hz (4 times/s) and contain the fields shown in
Table 1. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Con-
trol Devices (MUTCD) standardizes the parti-
tioning of roads into logical sections by
demarcating highway sections into 100 ft incre-
ments. Although this is primarily used for the
design of highway systems, it additionally pro-
66
vides coordination between vehicles to acquire
road ID and position information which can be
used to organize obstruction location informa-
tion. To determine lane information multiple
methods exist, and we believe the simplest
method is to use slightly higher accuracy GPS
systems than are available in today’s vehicles.
Any GPS unit that can obtain ±1 ft accuracy is
sufficient to determine the lane information
needed for this detection method. More accu-
rate GPS units are also available that have sub-
centimeter accuracy; however, that level of detail
far exceeds the needs of lane determination.
Through detailed experiments we found that
a beaconing rate between 0.5 Hz and 20 Hz was
required to ensure the required performance of
our proposed AID scheme. For beaconing rate
less than 0.5 Hz there was noticeable degrada-
tion of the detection rate of the algorithm. For
beaconing rate greater than 20 Hz, there were
packet drops due to collisions, which in turn
resulted in higher detection time. Indeed, the
impact was higher for higher traffic densities,
which were caused by local congestion near the
obstruction point. The results shown in this arti-
cle have been obtained for a beaconing rate of 4
Hz. Note that the size of the beacon messages is
small (24 bytes), resulting in minimal impact on
network congestion when beacon frequency is
within a given threshold. A more detailed analy-
sis of the impact of beacon frequency on perfor-
mance is reported in [14].
The beacon messages are collected by each
VGrid vehicle, and then used to form a dynamic
view of the road and the traffic patterns. Each
VGrid vehicle gathers traffic information and
uses it to track the movement and position of
other VGrid vehicles. Tracking is done by simply
storing the beacon messages of each distinct
vehicle. Since beacon messages are periodic
when a new beacon is received, the receiving
vehicle can infer the trajectory of the source
vehicle. For example, assume that a vehicle x
receives a message from vehicle y at time 2 s
with a beacon message that indicates a position
of 150 in lane 3. Later, vehicle x receives another
beacon from vehicle y at time 5 s with position
200 and lane 3. Vehicle x infers that vehicle y
traveled from position 150 to 200 in 3 s. In the
event of a lane change, vehicle x makes the
assumption that y changed lanes halfway between
points 150 and 200.
Each VGrid vehicle maintains three informa-
tion arrays for each lane, where each cell in the
array corresponds to a particular section of road.
We choose road sections to be the length of a
vehicle in the simulation (7.5 m or 75 cells in the
simulation). In order to compensate for the reduc-
tion in penetration rate (the percentage of VGrid
enabled vehicles) we then partition the road
inversely proportional to the penetration rate:
road_section_size = vehicle_length/penetration_rate
(1)
These road section divisions are not relative to
the vehicle itself but to the location. The coordi-
nation between vehicles can be achieved rela-
tively simply as highways have already been
naturally partitioned using mile markers. Sec-
IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011
LIU LAYOUT 2/7/11 10:47 AM Page 67
Sec. 1 Sec. 2 Sec. 3 Sec. 4
2 4
T=0
1 3
Sec. 1 Sec. 2 Sec. 3 Sec. 4
5
T=1
Sec. 1 Sec. 2 Sec. 3 Sec. 4
5 2
T=2
X on the highway.
VGrid Vehicle X
Figure 1. Illustration of how vehicles move through in time. Table 2 represents the corresponding array val-
ues as seen by vehicle 1 or 2 as both vehicles are present in all three time instances.
tions zero can start at the beginning of each
unique mile marker on the highway.
We use the following three arrays to collect
information used for the detection algorithm.
The road section count (RSC) array indicates
the number of vehicles that have been tracked
over a particular section. In order to create the
RSC array, vehicle x will increment each cell in
the RSC when a vehicle is either tracked over a
section or is located in a particular section. Con-
sider the previous example. If vehicle x receives
a beacon from vehicle y located in section 150 of
the road, x will increment its count or RSC array
by one at index 150 for lane 3. When the second
beacon is received x will increment indexes
151–200 in lane 3. If y were to change lanes the
increment would be for 151–175 in lane 3 and
175–200 in lane 2 (assuming lane 2 was the lane
vehicle y moved into).
The road section speed (RSS) array contains
the weighted average of speeds tracked over a
particular section of the road. The indices (which
correspond to road sections) in the RSS array
are initialized to the maximum, which for simu-
lation study reported in this article is set to 30
m/s (≈60 mph). Vehicles are tracked over road
sections in the same fashion as in the RSC array.
Speed is either calculated by tracking a vehicle
over time or extracted directly from the beacon
message itself. The RSS for an index i in the
array is updated or calculated using an exponen-
tially weighted moving average given by
RSS[lane][i] = (1 – α)RSS[lane][i]
+ α * vtracked_speed,
where 0 < α ≤ 1, lane is the lane which the vehi-
cle is being tracked, and v tracked_speed is the
observed speed of the vehicle being tracked.
Again, as a vehicle y is tracked over multiple sec-
IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011
Sec. 5 Sec. 6 Sec. 7 Sec. 8 Sec. 9 Sec. 10
The coordination
Lane 1
between vehicles can
Lane 2 be achieved
relatively simply as
Sec. 5 Sec. 6 Sec. 7 Sec. 8 Sec. 9 Sec. 10
highways already
Lane 1
have been naturally
1 2 3 Lane 2
partitioned using
mile markers.
Sections zero can
Sec. 5 Sec. 6 Sec. 7 Sec. 8 Sec. 9 Sec. 10
start at the
Lane 1
1
beginning of each
Lane 2
unique mile marker
Road obstruction
tions, Eq. 2 is applied to each section vehicle y
passes over. A weighted moving average is used
to quickly reflect the speed changes in traffic
over time. We chose an α = .25 to quickly exhib-
it changes in traffic speeds in a particular section
but not overly emphasize the information dis-
seminated by any one particular vehicle. The
end goal was to have newly disseminated traffic
information about a recently created obstruction
quickly dampen stale data in a road section
where an obstruction did not previously exist.
The vehicle lane change (VLC) array con-
tains a counter for each section of the road. If a
vehicle is observed changing out of a lane in a
particular section the index is decremented. If a
vehicle is observed entering a lane at a particular
section, the index in VLC is incremented. The
lane change point is an estimation of a vehicle’s
actual location of change. However, because
beacon messages are so frequent (4 Hz, which is
4 beacon messages/s), and the sections of the
road are large, it was found that this estimation
was adequate for the detection process.
Figure 1 illustrates the obstruction detection
scenario at three different time instances, and
Table 2 shows the RSC, RSS, and VLC array
values for each time frame. In this example, we
assume that all vehicles are within each other’s
transmission range and there are no packet loss-
es (due to interference and collision).
It is important to note that the proposed
method relies on accurate positioning informa-
tion. We assume that the VGrid vehicles have a
GPS device that is accurate to within a few feet
(2) to pinpoint lane location. While currently mid-
range GPS devices are accurate to within 10–15
ft, the higher end units are accurate within 1–2 ft
and would satisfy the requirements to accurately
determine the vehicles, lane, and position. We
also found that there are production quality
67
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Time Array Lane # Sec: 1 Sec: 2 Sec: 3 Sec: 4 Sec: 5 Sec: 6 Sec: 7 Sec: 8 Sec: 9 Sec: 10

Lane 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
RSC
Lane 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

Lane 1 30 30 30 29 30 30 30 30 28.5 30
T=0 RSS
Lane 2 30 27.5 30 30 30 29 30 30 30 30

Lane 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
VLC
Lane 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Lane 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1
RSC
Lane 2 0 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 0

Lane 1 29 30 30 29 7 30 30 30 28.5 29
T=1 RSS
Lane 2 30 27.5 20 20 14 20 29 29 29 30

Lane 1 0 0 0 0 –1 0 0 0 0 0
VLC
Lane 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

Lane 1 1 1 1 2 1 0 1 1 2 1
RSC
Lane 2 0 1 1 1 2 3 3 1 1 0

Lane 1 29 28.5 28.5 28 7 30 27 27 26.5 29

T=2 RSS
Lane 2 30 27.5 20 20 14 21.5 25.2 25 29 30

Lane 1 0 0 0 0 –1 0 +1 0 0 0
VLC
Lane 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 –1 0 0 0

Table 2. Representation of RSC, RSS, and VLC arrays for vehicle 2 in Fig. 1.

2An example of such a
device can be found at
http://www.racelogic.co.u
k/?show=vbox
units that can pinpoint position accuracy to with-
in 2 cm.2 These devices are designed specifically
to measure vehicle positions and are currently
used to collect acceleration and braking distance
measurements. Accuracy within 2 cm is, of
course, not a requirement for functional perfor-
mance of our proposed AID system. However, it
is important to note that such technology is
available and can be applied in the future. Addi-
tional technologies that are able to track lane
change include devices that track a vehicles tire
movement, accelerometers coupled with GPS
systems, or other types of sensors such as those
embedded within the road itself designating each
lane. Although lane determination is a required
component of this proposed AID system, we
have described several technologies that are
available for lane detection. Consequently, we
believe that this requirement would not be a
cause for barrier to entry for our proposed AID
system.
DETECTION METHOD
Detection is carried out by each vehicle by peri-
odically scanning the three arrays in search of
anomalous traffic patterns. In order to quantify
the search object, we first formulated the look of
a road obstruction from a purely human per-
spective. Figure 2 depicts what we would expect
from tracking vehicles around an obstruction
point. The most prominent characteristic of an
obstruction point will be the lack of vehicles in
the lane downstream from the obstruction. In
addition, vehicles upstream from the obstruction,
in the same lane, would attempt to merge out of
that lane while no vehicles should enter that
lane. Conversely, vehicles after the obstruction
point should attempt to merge back into the
lane due to the available space. Finally, vehicles
stuck behind the obstruction point will travel at
much slower rates than the normal traffic, and
vehicles past the obstruction point should be
able to travel at average traffic speeds (where
average speed is calculated by averaging all
speeds collected from beacon messages within
the area).
The detection method consists of two phases.
In the first phase individual VGrid vehicles inde-
pendently search through the accumulated and
aggregated traffic information collected from
beacon messages to identify potential obstruc-
tion points. Once a vehicle identifies a potential
obstruction point, it moves to the second phase
of the algorithm, in which it broadcasts an

68 IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011

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obstruction detection vote. The vote contains the

vehicles unique id and also the details concern- VGrid enabled vehicle
ing the obstruction location. The first vehicle to Non-VGrid enabled vehicle
collect enough votes exceeding some pre-defined
vote_threshold, broadcasts an alert message veri-
fying the obstruction point. In this article, we
consider positive detection only once an alert
message is generated. Once a consensus is
reached, alert messages can be generated to all
VGrid vehicles by the method described in [14]. VGrid enabled vehicle Road obstruction
We define the time to detection as the time at
Non-VGrid enabled vehicle Expected vehicle trajectory
which the obstruction occurs until the first alarm
message is generated. Vehicles that have not
Area of low traffic density
detected the obstruction point themselves are
restricted from broadcasting an alert message.
Only vehicles that have both locally detected the Figure 2. Figure depicts what is expected from a road obstruction. Directly after
obstruction point and acquired enough votes are the obstruction point it is expected that average density would be lower than
permitted to generate an alert message. the rest of the lanes. Before the obstruction vehicles should be attempting to
exit the lane and return after the obstruction point.
Phase 1 (Independent Search) — Phase one of the
detection algorithm begins by periodically (every
1 second) scanning only the RSC array. As pre-
Road section count (RSC)
viously mentioned, the point of, and following,
an obstruction can be classified as a low density Lane 1
80 Lane 2
area, where few or no vehicles entered. In the Lane 3
70
case of the RSC, a search is conducted for large Lane 4
drops in observed count between adjacent sec- 60
tions in the road. For example, if road section i
50
Count

contains an obstruction, each vehicle scans for a

significant contrast between RSC[lane][i – 1] and
RSC[lane][i]. This is done by building an orthog-
onal array RSCdif, which is defined as follows:
RSCdif[lane][i] = abs(RSC[lane][i]
– RSC[lane][i – 1]),
where i is the section of road, lane is the lane in
the road, and abs(x) is the absolute value of x.
Since RSCdif contains the absolute value
change between road sections, vehicles then
search for a large fluctuation in RSCdif. The
scope of the investigation is made more efficient
by implementing a sliding search window, which
reduces the range of the search to 200 m before
the current vehicle’s position and 100 m after.
This is done to increase the efficiency of search-
es by avoiding an entire scan every cycle. We can
assume that few messages will be received from
outside of the search window range and that the
search should not be conducted in road sections
where the vehicle has not passed or reached (in
terms of transmission range). The asymmetry of
the search range is used to limit the scope of the
search upstream from the vehicle (200 m before)
based on the relative range of the vehicles trans-
mission. The downstream (100 m ahead) limit is
due to the fact that sufficient information may
not have been collected for an accurate search
since the vehicle has not yet reached the area in
question. In order to classify a significant change
in RSCdif, we track the mean and standard devi-
ation of the values in RSCdif. Changes that are
three standard deviations from the mean are
flagged as significant drops in road count. When
such a point is detected, vehicles examine the
section in question and use the VLC and RSS to
verify those anomalous points. This is done
through analysis of the VLC to verify that lane
changes 100 m before the flagged section are
outbound, and all lane changes 100 m after are
40
30
20
10
0
0 2,500 5,000 7,500 10,000 12,500 15,000
Position (cells)
Figure 3. Road Section Count (RSC) array for a particular vehicle collected
during actual simulation. Penetration rate = 100 percent, traffic density = 15
percent, and transmission range = 500 m (19.2 dBm, which is a transmission
power that yields a transmission range of approximately 500 m).
inbound. If this is verified the RSS is then used
to check that the average speed of section i – 1
is less than 20 percent of the observed average
speed of surrounding vehicles and that average
speed of section i + 1 is at least 80 percent of
the observed average speed. In essence, vehicle
speeds behind the obstruction should be slow
and speeds in front of the obstruction faster.
Phase 1 can be summarized as follows:
RSCdif[lane][i] > mean + 3 * stdev (3)
VLC[lane][i – k] < 0 ∀ k < 100 m (4)
VLC[lane][i + k] > 0: ∀ k < 100 m (5)
RSS[lane][i – 1] < avgSpeed * .2 (6)
RSS[lane][i + 1] > avgSpeed * .8 (7)
We use Eq. 3 to locate a potential obstruc-
tion point and then use Eqs. 4, 5, 6, and 7 as a
filtering mechanism to filter out false positives.
Figure 3 represents a snapshot of the RSC array
collected from a particular vehicle, in a simula-

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RSCdif Array SIMULATION STUDY

45 Lane 1
Lane 2
SIMULATION TOOL
40 Lane 3
Lane 4 In order to carry out simulations we use
35 VGSim,3 which is a simulator based on Java in
RSC(i) – RSC(i – 1)

30 Simulation Time (JiST). 4 In VGSim, the net-

25 work simulation module is based on SWANS, 5
a Java based network simulator. In VGSim,
20
vehicular movements and applications are
15 transformed into events that are processed by
10 the JiST event driven platform. The network
5 simulator and the vehicular traffic model run
0
on a feedback loop that enables the interac-
0 2500 5000 7500 10,000 12,500 15,000 tion between the networking simulation and
Position (cells) the vehicular mobility. Information obtained
from the SWANS network simulator is fed
Figure 4. The RSCdif generated from RSC array illustrated in Fig. 3. Penetra- into the mobility model and then based on the
tion rate = 100 percent, traffic density = 15 percent and transmission range = mobility model, updated antenna positions are
500 m (19.2 dBm). determined for the SWANS network simula-
tor. The work done in [3] proposes and vali-
dates a mobility model specifically for the
VGSim platform. The vehicular mobility mod-
Sleep for 1 s ule of VGSim is a Cellular Automata (CA)
model, which implements a modified version
Phase 1 Phase 2
of Nagel and Schreckenberg (N-S) model. A
detailed description of this integration of the
Voting threshold modified N-S model and the VGSim simula-
Search for anomalies in No anomaly is reached and
RSCdif array (Equation 3) detected alert is generated tion platform is described in [14]. The simula-
tion tool also has a graphical user interface
(GUI) which provide a visual interface to the
Anomaly detected
Vehicle totals all simulations. The SWANS network simulator
Insufficient votes received and vehicle mobility simulator both update a
votes thus far for this graphical interface that allows network and
Verify anomaly with VLC No detection location
and RSS arrays vehicle mobility parameters to be changed
(equations 4,5,6 & 7)
dynamically.
Vehicle
Anomaly verifed by vehicle broadcasts a SIMULATION PARAMETERS
“vote” VGrid vehicles are equipped with low cost pro-
cessor and memory to store data and carry out
computation on the data. In addition each VGrid
Figure 5. A flow diagram of the detection method. vehicle carries an onboard GPS unit and wireless
network enabled following the IEEE 802.11b
standard. As part of our study, we vary the per-
tion in which an obstruction was present. The centage of VGrid vehicles and refer to this per-
RSCdif generated from Fig. 3 is represented in centage as the penetration rate.
Fig. 4. In order to quantify our algorithm, we use
the following three common AID performance
Phase 2 (Coordinated Voting) — In the second measurements: false alarm rate (FAR), detec-
phase, vehicles cast votes to verify an obstruc- tion rate (DR), and mean time to detection
tion point. We found that in phase 1, approxi- (MTTD),
mately 98 percent of the votes cast were
# of false alerm cases
accurate. However, we argue that not only does FAR = × 100% (8)
the second phase guarantee that votes do not 20 seconds
generate inaccurate alerts, but it avoids even a 1
percent false positive rate, which can render an # of detected incidents
DR = (9)
3 Details of VGSim can AID system unreliable [4]. It can also protect total # of incidents
be found at http://wwwc- against misbehaving nodes, which could broad-
sif.cs.ucdavis.edu/VGrid cast bogus votes. In this article we do not 1 n
explore the effect of misbehaving nodes. Fur- MTTD = ∑ (tdetection − t start )
n i =1 (10)
4This tool can be found ther study of the second phase of this algorithm
at showed that for particular traffic situations the where tdetection is the time of the first alert mes-
http://jist.ece.cornell.edu/ voting mechanism was critical in reducing the sage and t start is the start time of the incident.
false alarm rate while still ensuring reasonable We chose an interval of 20 s to calculate FAR
5 Documentation for detection times. In particular, we found that a because in the majority of the studies presented
SWANS can be found at voting threshold of three was sufficient to weed in [4], the AID algorithms used the same FAR
http://www.aqualab.cs.nor out the false positives generated in the first metric.
thwestern.edu/projects/sw phase of the algorithm. Figure 5 gives a high- We consider a 1.5 km stretch of highway.
ans++/ level overview of the detection method as exe- Incidents are injected at cell position 9000
cuted by an individual vehicle. (900 m) in lane 2 at time 0. The simulation

70 IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011

LIU LAYOUT 2/7/11 10:47 AM Page 71

ends when the first alarm is generated. Trans-

Average detection time, all TX ranges
mission range is based on an estimation of the
corresponding decibel level designated in the 70 Penetration 1.0 Tx tange (meters) 250
65 Penetration 1.0 Tx tange (meters) 250
simulation. A transmission range of 500 m Penetration 1.0 Tx tange (meters) 750
60
refers to the maximum transmission distance 55 Penetration 1.0 Tx tange (meters) 1000
achievable given the transmission decibel level 50
(19.2 dBm). As a result, the average transmis- 45

MTTD (s)
sion range is far less than the designated trans- 40
mission range. When the transmission range is 35
30
set to 500 m, the average transmission is closer 25
to 250 m. 20
The traffic injection is based on the traffic 15
density parameter. The road is initially populat- 10
ed in probabilistic fashion. If the traffic density 5
0
parameter is 20 percent, enough vehicles are 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50 0.55 0.60
placed on the road to fill 20 percent of the cells Traffic density
on the road. Since each vehicle occupies 75 cells
(7.5 m), calculating the number of vehicles to
Figure 6. The MTTD for transmissions ranges of 250, 500, 750, and 1000 m
place on the road for a given density is a simple
and penetration rate of 100 percent.
linear equation. When placing the vehicles the
initial positions of each vehicle is chosen at ran-
dom. The injection pattern is based on exit the
frequency of each vehicle. When a vehicle exits Penetration rate Traffic density DR
the road, a new vehicle is injected at the begin-
ning of the road. If the new vehicle cannot be 5% All 0%
injected, the vehicle is queued and injected when
sufficient room is available. Vehicle are random- 10% 5% 7%
ly marked as VGrid vehicles upon creation (both
in the initial population of vehicles or upon 10% 10% 20%
injection) with a probability based on the chosen
penetration rate. 10% 15% 77%

RESULTS 10% 20% 90%

EFFECTS OF TRANSMISSION RANGE 20% 5% 96%

Figure 6 shows the impact of transmission range Table 3. DRs less than 100 percent.
on the mean detection time (MTTD) for a pen-
etration rate of 100 percent. Figures represent-
ing the other penetrations are omitted due to Penetration Traffic Obstruction
DR
space constraints. Our study found that a trans- rate density present
mission range of 250 meters was not sufficient
for a 100 percent DR in all cases. In fact, for 50% and
50% 1.1% No
penetration rates less than 25 percent, DR was 60%
almost zero except when traffic density was very
high. Conversely, for higher transmission 50% 40% 0.56% Yes
ranges, such as 1000 meters, it was possible to
increase the detection rate even with low pene- 50% and
50% 1.1% Yes
tration rates and low traffic densities. We also 60%
observed some anomalous behavior in the 20 to
30 percent traffic density ranges seen by the 25% 60% 0.56% Yes
erratic values for MTTD. This behavior is a
result of traffic mobility transitioning between 75% 60% 0.13% Yes
free flow (vehicles can travel at maximum veloc-
ity) and congested traffic (vehicle velocity is Table 4. FAR greater than 0 percent.
constrained by downstream traffic). In these
transition ranges the variance in velocity of
individual vehicles is much greater across the EFFECTS OF PENETRATION RATE
entire road, resulting in a higher variance in AND TRAFFIC DENSITY
MTTD. The result in Fig. 6 shows that in order
to enable detection, VGrid vehicles must form To test the limits of our detection algorithm, we
a connected grid or mesh to coordinate detec- focused on penetration rates and traffic density
tion. If the transmission range is too small and parameters in ranges that were less than ideal
the VGrid vehicles are sparse, inter-vehicle for detection. The detection rate is a function of
communication becomes sporadic if not entirely penetration rate and traffic density. In general, if
disabled. As a result, detection of obstructions enough VGrid vehicles were present, detection
(through coordination) becomes unlikely or was possible. With a penetration rate of 5 per-
impossible. Results clearly show that there is a cent, detection was not possible for any traffic
minimum required transmission range to enable densities. Detection became possible with a 10
detection. percent penetration rate. However, at the lower

IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011 71

LIU LAYOUT 2/7/11 10:47 AM Page 72
3D Comparison of penetration rate and traffic density vs MTTD
500
450
400
350
MTTD (s)
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0 for DR, TTD, and FAR may not have been mea-
0.2 0 sured in the same way. The table only gives a
0.2
0.4 0.4
0.6
0.6 0.8
Traffic density 0.8 1 Penetration rate
Figure 7. The MTTD as a function of both penetration rate and traffic density
(transmission range is set at 500 m).
traffic densities (5, 10, 15, 20 percent), DR was
still less than 100 percent. Table 3 represents all
points were DR was less than 100 percent. For
other penetration rate and traffic density values
the DR was 100 percent.
An important metric of any AID system is its
false alarm rate (FAR). If FAR is too large, the
system become unreliable. Even a FAR of 1 per-
cent, can make the system unreliable [4]. For the
proposed approach, we categorize the FAR for
two different scenarios. The first is false alarms
generated in a traffic scenario where an accident
exists (an alarm generated for an obstruction
other than the actual obstruction). The second
case is false alarms generated in the situation
where no obstructions exist (control simula-
tions). Table 4 shows the data for which a FAR
greater than 0 percent was observed. When con-
sidering the FAR for the first scenario (an
obstruction is present) it is important to point
out that all false alarms were generated for loca-
tions upstream from the actual obstruction. This
was due to the traffic congestion generated by
the downstream road blockage. In highly con-
gested traffic vehicles move very slowly, which is
falsely detected as obstructions.
Figure 7 shows a 3D plot of the effects of
penetration rate and traffic density on MTTD.
Excluding the low penetration rate and traffic
density scenarios, we found that MTTD was, in
general, less than 1 min. It is interesting to note
the effect of traffic density on MTTD. We
found that the more vehicles present, the faster
the detection time. This is clearly shown in the
figure as detection time is much slower for the
5 and 10 percent traffic densities. We also
found, however, that for the higher traffic den-
sities there was also a slight increase in MTTD.
The increase in MTTD for the congested traffic
scenarios is due to the fact that the detection
time is correlated with the movement of the
vehicles. Our algorithm is based on each vehi-
72
cle tracking traffic pattern over time and space.
With very high traffic congestion, vehicles move
slowly, which has the same effect as slowing
down time. When the vehicles move slowly, it is
more difficult to quickly identify areas of low
traffic density.
Table 5 is a comparison of the proposed
method (referred to as VGrAID) and other AID
algorithms. When presenting our results in Table
5, we choose to aggregate our findings by pene-
tration rate. The average FAR for a given pene-
tration rate across all traffic densities is less than
the previously stated FAR considering both the
traffic density and the penetration rate. The
results and values presented for other AID algo-
rithms are referenced from the “Summary of
Algorithms” table in [4] with results of VGrAID
appended at the bottom. Note that the values
qualitative comparison of the different algo-
rithms that exist.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this article we have presented a distributed
AID method that leverages ad hoc networking
and computing in vehicles with storage, comput-
ing, and wireless networking capabilities. We
show that information collected by the vehicles,
analyzed, and shared in a distributed manner
can improve AID detection times compared to
those of traditional systems. In addition, since
nodes are mobile and the information they gen-
erate is shared, the data is more accurate and
timely than other AID systems. With the low
cost of each device, we believe that implementa-
tion of such a system could potentially be more
cost effective than other traditional infra-
structure-based systems. Finally, the collabora-
tive nature of the system also greatly reduces the
false alarm rate and can, in the future, protect
against malicious behavior such as a malfunc-
tioning sensor or intentional disruptive behavior.
As part of the future work we will explore the
concept of categorizing incidents based on addi-
tional information collected by the vehicular grid
network. Furthermore, in this work we categorize
an obstruction as a fixed blockage in the roadway.
We can expand this definition to include slow
moving or partially disabled vehicles. As an exten-
sion to this work, we also plan to modify the pro-
posed algorithm to adapt to a centralized
infrastructure where roadside sensors can be
leveraged in order to accumulate traffic data col-
lected and dumped by moving vehicles. This
could greatly reduce the number of VGrid vehi-
cles needed to facilitate detection as the roadside
nodes could collect and aggregate information
over a period of time. In addition to studying
variations in which VGrid AID can be applied,
we will also study the communication impact of
this AID system and how it could impact other
concurrent safety and infotainment applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for
their comments. This research was funded by
NSF grant CMMI-0700383. Dr. Behrooz Kho-
rashadi is now employed with Qualcomm.
IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011
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REFERENCES Name DR (%) TTD (min) FAR (%)

[1] D. Schrank and T. Lomax, “The 2007 Urban Mobility
Report,” Texas Transportation Institute, Texas A&M
Univ., Sept. 2007. APID 86 2.50 0.05%
[2] D. Srinivasan, R. L. Cheu, and Y. P. Poh, “Hybrid Fuzzy
Logic-Genetic Algorithm Technique for Automated DES 92 0.70 1.87%
Detection of Traffic Incidents On Freeways,” Proc. IEEE
Intelligent Transportation Sys. Conf., Aug. 2001.
[3] C.-N. Chuah et al., “Distributed Vehicular Traffic Control ARIMA 100 0.40 1.50%
and Safety Applications with VGrid,” IEEE Wireless Hive
Net. Conf., Aug. 2008.
Bayesian 100 3.90 0%
[4] T. Martin et al., “Incident Detection Algorithm Evaluation,”
prepared for Utah Dept. Transportation, Mar. 2001.
[5] H. J. Payne, E. D. Helfenbein, and H. C. Knobel, “Devel- California 82 0.85 1.73%
opment and Testing of Incident Detection,” Federal
Highway Administration, Research Methodology and
Results, vol. 2, 1976, report no: FHWA-RD-76-20. Low-pass filter 80 4.00 0.30%
[6] S. R. Ahmed and A. R. Cook, “Application of Time-Series
Analysis Techniques to Freeway Incident Detection,” Trans- McMaster 68 2.20 0.0018%
portation Research Record, 1982, pp. 19–21.
[7] S. Willsky et al., “Dynamic Model-Based Techniques for
the Detection of Incidents on Freeways,” IEEE Trans. Neural networks 89 0.96 0.012%
Automatic Control, vol. 25, no. 3, 1980, pp. 347–60.
[8] N. Persaud, F. L. Hall, and L. M. Hall, “Congestion Iden- SND 92 1.10 1.30%
tification Aspects of the McMaster Incident Detection
Algorithm,” Transportation Research Record, tech. rep.
1287, 1990, pp. 167–75. SSID 100 not reported 0.20%
[9] C. Antoniades and Y. Stephanedes, “Single-Station Inci-
dent Detection Algorithm (SSID) for Sparsely Instru-
mented Freeway Sites,” Transportation Eng., 1996.
TSC 7 67 2.91 0.134%
[10] S. Kamijo et al., “Traffic Monitoring and Accident
Detection at Intersections,” Proc. IEEE ITSC, Oct. 1999. TSC 8 68 3.04 0.177%
[11] T. Martin et al., “Video-Based Automatic Incident
Detection for Smart Roads: The Outdoor Environmental
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gent Transportation Sys., vol. 9, no. 2, June 2008.
[12] M. Abuelela, S. Olariu, and G. Yan, “Enhancing auto- Cell phones 100 — 5.00%
matic incident detection techniques through vehicle to
infrastructure communication,” 11th IEEE ITSC ‘08, Oct.
2008, pp. 447–52. VGrAID 10% penetration 74% 3.58 0.0%
[13] M. Abuelela and S. Olariu, “Automatic Incident Detec-
tion in VANETs: A Bayesian Approach,” Proc. IEEE VTC-
VGrAID 20% penetration 99.6% 1.29 0.0%
Spring, Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 2009.
[14] B. Khorashadi, Enabling Traffic Control and Data Dis-
semination Applications with VGrid — A Vehicular Ad VGrAID 25% penetration 100% 1.06 0.046%
Hoc Distributed Computing Framework, Ph.D. thesis,
UC Davis, 2009; http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~VGrid/
VGrid/Publications.html. VGrAID 50% penetration 100% .45 0.16%
[15] J. McKnight and A. McKnight, “The Effect of Cellular
Phone Use upon Driver Attention,” Nat’.l Public Services VGrAID 75% penetration 100% 0.37 0.01%
Research Inst., 1991.

BIOGRAPHIES VGrAID 100% penetration 100% 0.48 0.0%

DIPAK GHOSAL received his B.Tech. degree in electrical engi-
neering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in
1983, his M.S. degree in computer science and automation
from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1985,
and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of
Louisiana in 1988. He is currently a professor in the
Department of Computer Science at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis. His primary research interests are in the areas
of high-speed networks, wireless networks, vehicular ad
hoc networks, next-generation transport protocols, and
parallel and distributed computing.
CHEN-NEE CHUAH is currently a professor in the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis. She received her B.S. in electrical engineering
from Rutgers University, and her M. S. and Ph.D. in electrical
engineering and computer sciences from the University of
California, Berkeley. Her research interests lie in the area of
computer networks and wireless/mobile computing, with
emphasis on Internet measurements, network anomaly detec-
tion, network management, multimedia, online social net-
works, and vehicular ad hoc networks. She received the NSF
CAREER Award in 2003 and the Outstanding Junior Faculty
Award from the UC Davis College of Engineering in 2004. In
2008 she was selected as a Chancellor’s Fellow of UC Davis.
She has served on the executive/technical program commit-
tee of several ACM and IEEE conferences, and is currently an
Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
MICHAEL ZHANG is currently a professor in the Civil and Envi-
ronmental Engineering Department at the University of Cal-
ifornia, Davis. His research is in traffic operations and
control, transportation network analysis, and intelligent
Note: This table provides a high level qualitative comparison of the DR, TTD,
and FAR metrics. These variations are the result of the various measurement
methodologies used in each study.
Table 5. Comparison of VGrAID with other AID algorithms.
transportation systems. He received his B.S. degree in civil
engineering from Tongji University, and M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in engineering from the University of California,
Irvine. He is an Area Editor of the journal Network and
Spatial Economics and an Associate Editor of Transporta-
tion Research — Part B: Methodological.
B OJIN L IU (frdliu@ucdavis.edu) is a Ph.D. student in the
Computer Science Department, University of California,
Davis. He received his Bachelor’s degree in computing from
Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests
include vehicular ad hoc networks, wireless networks, and
parallel and distributed systems.
BEHROOZ KHORASHADI received his Bachelor’s degree from the
University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He is a Ph.D.
graduate from the Department of Computer Science at the
University of California, Davis in 2009 and is currently
working at Qualcomm’s Bay Area Research and Develop-
ment (BARD) facility, Santa Clara, California. His research
interests include vehicular ad hoc networks, wireless net-
works, parallel and distributed systems, and network pro-
tocol optimization. His current work at Qualcomm includes
projects dealing with indoor location services on mobile
devices and multicore systems on mobile devices.

IEEE Wireless Communications • February 2011 73