Sensing and Detection of Traffic Status through V2V Routing Hop Count and Route Energy

Abstract

New approach to manage congestion using vehicular communication is presented in this work. The research work using MATLAB simulation, tracked communicating vehicles travelling on roads with constant registration of changes in routes, number of hops, and energy consumed as a function of travelled distances. The area of travel and simulation is divided into blocks or zones to enable sufficient allocation and distribution of Road Side Units (RSUs) that are used to relay communication signals and transmission of Basic Safety Messages (BSMs). The successfully concluded simulation is based on the assumption that as congestion occurs, the number of hops per route and associated energy consumption per transmitted packets will change patterns in terms of hops, routes and consumed energy as traffic passes from low to smooth (optimal) to high density (congestion) states, where at the start of congestion, vehicles start to slow down and become closer to each other in a two dimensional space. The output is used as input to traffic status pattern characterization algorithm (management system) that uses the data to indicate the start of traffic accumulation, thus pre-emptive measures can be taken to avoid congestion and reduction in mobility. The presented analysis proved that it is possible to predict congestion as a function of both hops sequences and consumed energy, depending on the hops pattern which is shown to be symmetric in the case of optimum traffic that flows smoothly. The analysis also showed that when congestion starts to occur, asymmetric hops pattern occurs with hops sequences elements switch and swap places within the identified pattern. Further analysis and polynomial curve fitting proved that congestion control and smooth traffic management using the proposed approach is achievable.