Proof of Concept of an IoT-Based Public Vehicle Tracking System, Using LoRa (Long Range) and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Services

Abstract

Systems trying to solve mobility issues in cities, such as high levels of accidents and traffic congestion, have been developed worldwide. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) services focused on urban public transport are an option contributing to solve such issues. A few intermediate cities in the Latin American context have developed some of these ITS services, which are mainly based on a tracking system for public transport vehicles. Such tracking systems have great limitations in terms of coverage, availability, and operational cost. In addition, they are commonly isolated mobility solutions, which cannot be easily integrated with other mobility services in the city because they are not based on an ITS architecture. In order to improve public transportation systems in intermediate cities, we proposed the development of an IoT-based public vehicle tracking system, using LoRa (Long Range) and ITS services. In this research, we developed the proposed system as a proof of concept. We designed and executed some experiments, in order to adjust parameters of the LoRa technology and to test its operation. is article presents the methods we followed for developing the proof-of-concept model, a description of the experiments, and their results. e results lead to conclude that the LoRa technology and an IoT-based system are adequate for implementation of a mobility service such as the one we propose, once important technical restrictions related mainly to Line of Sight (LoS) are considered. Key aspects for implementation were also identified for deploying the service (as a prototype) in the city of Popayán.

Experimental Evaluation of LoRa in Transit Vehicle Tracking Service Based on Intelligent Transportation Systems and IoT

“…Implementing LoRa technology in a large-scale transit vehicle tracking system in an intermediate city in a developing country such as Colombia (or in intermediate cities in other countries, with similar transportation systems) involves a high risk, no evidence was found in industry or academy on the implementation of this technology for this type of services in a city. Although there are some related works [2,6,13,14], there is no practical evidence regarding the number of end devices that can be served by a single gateway, maintaining the quality of service. In addition, there is no detailed analysis of the adequate values for the LoRa transmission parameters (spreading factor, bandwidth and coding rate), to achieve the best transmission efficiency at certain distances and with a certain number of LoRa devices.…”

“…In the surveyed related work [2,10,13,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], although some experiments are performed using LoRa (in some cases using only LoRa transmission technology, and in some cases using the LoRa Wide Area Network protocol, LoRaWAN), most of these works are not focused on the application of this technology in mobility services. Furthermore, in works such as [2,10,13,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] a wide range of possible settings (i.e., specific sets of SF, BW and CR values) are not explored.…”

“…In the surveyed related work [2,10,13,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], although some experiments are performed using LoRa (in some cases using only LoRa transmission technology, and in some cases using the LoRa Wide Area Network protocol, LoRaWAN), most of these works are not focused on the application of this technology in mobility services. Furthermore, in works such as [2,10,13,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] a wide range of possible settings (i.e., specific sets of SF, BW and CR values) are not explored. In works such as [17,18,23], although numerous of possible settings is evaluated, the characteristics of the performed experiments, such as distance between devices, number of devices, packet rate, or stationary devices, means that these works do not have a similar context to this work, which is focused on a transit vehicle tracking service.…”

Intelligent Multi-homing Switching for Vehicles Connectivity

“…Note that the usage of a 5G network can increase throughput rates to the user over LTE networks as it rely on data-only IP network core [31] rather than a hybrid data and voice network. Note also that it is not necessary to rely only on cellular network, it is possible to explore other connectivity methods such as LoRa which can be used for IoT-based public vehicle tracking system [32].…”

Enhancing the accuracy of GPS Positioning for vehicle tracking system

“…In the end, about a quarter of the messages sent by the devices were not received. [17] The approaches established enable the degree and direction of error caused by the GPS system to be determined. Another receiver uses this adjustment to correct its own position, increasing positional accuracy and allowing for the most exact distance measurements.…”