International Conference on Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI - 2016),

March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India

ROAD TRAFFIC CONGESTION

MANAGEMENT USING VANET
Cynthia Jayapal*, Sujith Roy. S#
Department of Information Technology, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore 641 049,
India *cynthia.j.it@kct.ac.in, #ind.sujith@gmail.com

ABSTRACT - With the constant increase in vehicular I. INTRODUCTION

traffic, existing traffic management solutions have
become inefficient. Urbanization has led to an increase
in traffic jams and accidents in major cities. In order to
accommodate the growing needs of transport systems
today, there is a need for an Intelligent Transport
System. Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) is a
growing technology that assists in Intelligent Transport
Systems. VANETs enable communication between
vehicles as well as fixed infrastructure called Road Side
Units (RSU). We propose a distributed, collaborative
traffic congestion detection and dissemination system
that uses VANET. Each of the driver’s smart phones is
equipped with a Traffic App which is capable of
location detection through Geographic Position based
System (GPS). This information is relayed to a remote
server which detects traffic congestion. Once
congestion is confirmed the congestion information is
disseminated to the end user phone through RSUs.
The Mobile App transmits the location information at
periodic intervals. Using the latitude, longitude and
the current time, the location of each vehicle is
traced. Using location information, the distance
moved by the vehicle at a given time is monitored. If
the value is below a fixed threshold, congestion is
suspected in a particular area. If many vehicles in the
same area send similar messages, traffic congestion is
confirmed. Once traffic congestion is confirmed, the
vehicles approaching the congested area are informed
about the traffic through display boards that are
available in the nearest RSUs (traffic signals). The
congestion information is also made available
through the Mobile App present in vehicles
approaching the congested area. The approaching
vehicles may take diversion and alleviate congestion.
Transportation is an activity involving the movement
of people or goods from one place to another in order
to meet the perceived social and economic needs of a
user. As these needs change, the transportation
system itself evolves and problems occur as it
becomes difficult to serve the public interest. One of
the negative impacts of any transportation system is
traffic congestion [1].Vehicular traffic congestion is a
condition that occurs on road networks, which
involves the increased queuing of vehicles
characterized by increased trip times and fuel
consumption. Traffic congestion occurs wherever
demand exceeds the capacity of the transportation
system and the most common problem is queuing up
of vehicles near toll booths [2]. Vehicular traffic can
be witnessed mainly on highways and major roads
that connect industries. Metropolitan and
cosmopolitan cities are found to have higher traffic
congestion than other parts. Vehicular traffic
congestion poses numerous threats and arises
numerous problems to the vehicle drivers. Various
industries that bank on freight transport lose a heavy
sum of money annually due to traffic congestion.
Various institutions, government bodies and
organizations have undertaken surveys and studies to
understand the causes and consequences of vehicular
traffic congestion and also to provide efficient
solutions to avoid traffic congestion. VANET also
helps us to achieve car to car communications and
perform simulations at a relatively low cost [3].
Recent efforts have placed a strong emphasis on
VANET design implementations [4].

Thus a smart traffic congestion detection
and dissemination system is developed to divert
incoming vehicles and reduce congestion without
human intervention. This system can be further
enhanced by communicating the congestion
information directly between vehicles using IEEE
802.11p protocol.
II. NEED FOR TRAFFIC CONGESTION
MANAGEMENT
The steady population increase in urban areas has led
to a exponential increase in the number of vehicles on
road. Vehicular traffic is one of the most important
social and economic issues faced today resulting in
congestion. With tremendous growth in industries,

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 International Conference on Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI - 2016),
March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India
the need to reach the destination within a certain time
is on-demand. Problem occurs when important
destinations lie on the same route. A single
technology park housing multiple companies with
each company accommodating more than a hundred
employees is one such example. In these cases, traffic
becomes unavoidable and there is a need for a
solution to avoid vehicular traffic congestion.
A smart transport system which will provide real
time information about the traffic by p2p [5] is the
need of the hour. The existing smart transport
systems demand a need for the construction of
expensive infrastructures or a change in the road
structure. Although these systems prove to be very
effective, they will consume enormous amount of
time and cost to be deployed.
Nowadays, the roads within cities are well-connected
and therefore there are numerous routes for a single
destination. If one route is congested, an alternate
route can be taken. A simple solution to traffic
congestion is to gain knowledge about the traffic
congested routes. Once this knowledge is gained, it is
feasible to identify an alternate path and divert from
traffic congested areas. This solution not only helps
in vehicle diversion but also resolves traffic
congestion at a minimal time.
III. VEHICULAR ADHOC NETWORKS
Currently, traffic information systems are centralized
vehicular applications using technologies like Traffic
Message Channel (TMC), provides information
about road traffic conditions. However, it lacks short
delay times (due to the centralized approach),
averages information for large geographical areas
(due to cost-sensitiveness of detailed sensor
networks and limited radio resources) and does not
have the opportunity to provide services for time
critical applications. Such systems would, for
example, not meet the requirements of a congestion
avoidance application, because they have long
delays and would require large capacity due to the
large geographical area of service. In contrast,
VANET-based systems can have short delays and
the capacity can be reused more efficiently.
Moreover, the structure of VANET can be
distributed, which improves the level of
independence, scalability and stability.
VANET is a fast growing and recent technology to
automate and ease Vehicular issues like traffic,
pollution, etc. In this paper, traffic congestion
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management using VANET is achieved by setting
up a Vehicle-Infrastructure-Vehicle network
[6].These networks allow several applications, such
as traffic safety, driver assistance and entertainment
for passengers. The constant movement of vehicles
at varying speeds causes constant changes in the
network topology. Further, vehicles have a limited
time to exchange data among other vehicles or the
Road Side Units (RSU) [7]. IEEE proposed a family
of standards for vehicular networks called WAVE
(Wireless Access in the Vehicular Environment).
WAVE is composed by two categories of standards:
(i) 802.11p for PHY and MAC layers and (ii) IEEE
1609 for security, network management as well as
other aspects of VANETs [7].
The IEEE 802.11p standard establishes
communication in two ways: (i) vehicle-to-
infrastructure (ii) vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
The vehicle-to-infrastructure involves the use of on-
board units and road side units. The on-board units
are placed in the vehicles. These act as transceivers
sending location information and receiving
congestion information. The RSUs are located at the
cross roads. They receive location information,
calculate traffic for the particular location and send
congestion information to all the vehicles requesting
traffic information. In the vehicle-to-vehicle
communication, there are only on-board units which
communicate with each other to exchange traffic
information.
IV. VEHICULAR TRAFFIC
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM
The vehicular traffic management system consists of
a Traffic App installed in the driver’s smart phone
and a remote server. Fig.1 illustrates the traffic
management system. The GPS in the driver’s smart
phone detects the location of the vehicle. The Traffic
App extracts this location information and sends it
periodically to a remote server. The location
information consists of the latitude, longitude, and
date and time which can be extracted through a code
[8].
This location information obtained from the smart
phone is logged into a database periodically using
GPRS. This location information is used to calculate
traffic congestion.
Traffic congestion is calculated by considering the
location of the vehicle and the number of vehicles in
a particular location boundary. If a vehicle is found to
 International Conference on Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI - 2016),
March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India

transmit the same location information for a update on the traffic information is of utmost
prolonged period of time, then the vehicle is marked importance. Being a smart system, it can also analyze
for traffic boundary. A traffic boundary is computed traffic in curved roads and roads of lowest safety [9].
with the marked vehicle’s location. The number of
vehicles within that boundary is estimated. Each of
these vehicles is checked for location to identify the
density of traffic. The congestion information
provides information about the existence of
congestion in a particular area.
V. IMPLEMENTATION

The entire traffic congestion management system

consists of three modules: (i) Data Acquisition
Module (ii) Congestion Detection Module and (iii)
Congestion Dissemination Module.

Data Acquisition Module:

The Traffic App is installed in the driver’s smart

phone and used to obtain traffic information. The
Traffic App has been developed in the Android
platform.

Once this app is initialized, it enables the location

Fig.1. A Smart Traffic Information System
The congestion information is sent to the smart
phones equipped with the Traffic App. By using this
sensor of the smart phone. Fig.4 illustrates the Traffic
App installed in the driver’s smart phone. The “show
location” button present in the Traffic App gains
access to the location sensor of the smart phone and
extracts the latitude and longitude of the device along
with Greenwich Mean Time. This information is
updated every 15 seconds. On clicking the submit

Location, Date,
Time, Device ID
Remote server Traffic detection
Smart phone
(Database) Module
(Traffic App)
Congestion
information
Fig.2. Block diagram of a smart traffic information system

information, the vehicles can divert in alternate route.
A block diagram of the system is illustrated in
Fig.2. Thus, a vehicle-infrastructure-vehicle
communication system can be efficiently used to
relay traffic information. However, while developing
the system, steps must be taken to ensure that traffic
information does not get outdated. As traffic
information is very sensitive and critical, a frequent
button in the app, it connects itself to the internet Fi
using the GPRS in the smart phone and logs the
location information into the remote server. On
clicking the “Get Traffic” button, the congestion
information computed at the remote server is
extracted and displayed for the driver.

978-1-4673-8810-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

 International Conference on Advances
in Human Machine Interaction (HMI -
2016),
March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of
Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India
Fig.3. Database as stored in remote server

The Traffic App detects location information and
sends it to the remote server. The remote server
consists of a MySQL database.This database logs the
location information such as latitude, longitude,
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and the International
Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number of the
device sending the data. The IMEI number is a
unique number used to identify the device or smart
phone.
The location information is stored in an online
database that consists of a table named location. The
location table shown in Fig.3 stores the latitude,
longitude, GMT and device ID received from various
mobile phones that are connected to the network. The
database is refreshed every 15 seconds to log the
incoming values. The location information in this
database is used by the congestion detection module
to compute the congestion information.
The location information from each device is logged
into an online database every 15 seconds. The server
monitors the position of each device every 15
seconds. A congestion check is done on every vehicle
using congestion detection module.
Congestion detection Module:
The system uses PHP for coding the congestion
detection module. The congestion detection program
computes the average of the last three location
information and compares it with the most recent
location received from a particular vehicle. A
threshold value is calculated by computing the
difference between the location of the vehicle and the
location within a 100m radius. If the difference is
below a threshold value of 0.0000333, then it can be
concluded that the vehicle has undergone limited or
no motion. Therefore, this vehicle is marked for
traffic.
The location of this vehicle is extracted and a
boundary of 100m approximately is formed around
this vehicle. All other vehicles lying within this
boundary are checked for congestion. If two or more
vehicles are found to be under congestion, traffic
congestion is declared. Vehicles can perform inter
vehicular communicate if they are within a
threshold distance [10].

978-1-4673-8810-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

 International Conference on Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI - 2016),
March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India
Screenshots of the Traffic App installed in the driver’s app

Fig.4. Android GPS Tracking App Fig.5. Location of the vehicle

Fig.6. Congestion information displayed on the app

978-1-4673-8810-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

 International Conference on Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI - 2016),
March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India
Congestion dissemination Module:
The congestion information is transmitted to the
Traffic App in the driver’s smart phones that are
approaching the particular congested region. The
congestion information is also transmitted to the
RSUs located in the nearby traffic signals. These
RSUs consist of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which
displays congestion information [11]. This
information can be used by the approaching vehicle
drivers and they can take alternate routes. An
illustration of an LCD displaying congestion
information is specified in Fig.7.
Fig.7.A RSU displaying congestion information
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE
ENHANCEMENT
The vehicular traffic information can be monitored
periodically to identify the peak hours of the day.
During peak hours, the roads can be studied for
traffic. A classification of traffic congested roads and
traffic less roads can be obtained. Also, the alternate
routes [12] for traffic congested routes suggested by
RSU’s can be used to direct traffic flow in all
possible routes equally. This way, all the roads are
used equally and thereby reduce congestion.
By using the periodic congestion information, a
congestion coefficient could be computed. A
congestion coefficient is a threshold value that
indicates the level of traffic. The congestion
coefficient value can range between 0 to 10 with 0
indicating lowest congestion and 10 indicating
highest congestion. In order to compute the
coefficient, a study on the traffic patterns must be
done. For each type of road, the factors that
determine traffic are to be studied. Once the critical
978-1-4673-8810-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
factors that affect traffic are studied, their
relationship with the traffic congestion must be
analyzed. A weightage must be given to each factor
and a model can be formulated to compute traffic
congestion coefficient. This congestion coefficient
can be used efficiently in reconstruction of roads,
designing road infrastructure and in intelligent
transport systems that detects and controls traffic
congestion. The GPS details can be used to find the
velocity of the vehicles in front of them so that to be
cautioned if the vehicle in front is taking an overtake
by changing the lane [13]. Evaluations should also be
performed so as to reduce the delay in re-routing the
path for the end user [14]. Furthermore, the traffic
movement speed and the estimated time for traffic
dispersal can also be calculated by using enhanced
algorithms [15].
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 International Conference on Advances in Human Machine Interaction (HMI - 2016),
March 03-05, 2016, R. L. Jalappa Institute of Technology, Doddaballapur, Bangalore, India

[8]http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm#G
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